Chapter Text
Her heartbeat slowed, and she remained still, only staring at the back of the boys head of hair. She didn’t bother running. She simply started walking slowly out further into the clearing. She raises her right arm and wing and waves it skilfully in the direction of the house, each sweep of her hand conducting the orchestra of smoke as it slowly moves backwards.
The once rising heap of grey now flowing backwards as if a waterfall reversed in time.
Until it’s all gone.
And only raw scattered embers of a blaze remain upon the ashened home.
Only now does her gaze shift from the boys figure, following the flashes of fire up the skeleton structure, and into the newly cleared sky - seemingly back to its original form. The illusion of nothing ever having happened except
Fracture.
A split so jagged running across the sky itself - the crack she created upon colliding into the Arcaea - into this pocket world. She continues gaping at it as she forces herself to finally move more towards the scruffy haired youth.
She walks over, her large sized talons digging into the dirt, keeping her stable as she crouches down in front of him, eye to eye.
‘The sky’
‘Mom… she heard the shatter. She went outside. She . She .’
‘Pieces of the sky, like blue puzzle pieces from one of my jigsaws.’
She opened her mouth to speak - respond - console - comfort.
But no words were able to escape the larynx holding them all back.
‘All the puzzle pieces that hit the grass started… burning. the bigger the piece the more the fire spread.’
Tears flow from his eyes, she was no longer able to see clearly into them.
‘A big one. A big piece. Right in the middle of the house.’
‘The big lights in the Center of the entryway shattered and hit dad - ‘
She stood up, silencing the child with her overshadowing wings. It was her fault. Was the Harpy of good actually a monster of evil? If her wings had have worked would she have avoided crashing into the Arcaea? If -
If only she could rewind. Go back. Do it again. Do it better.
No .
To a seperate hell with ‘if only’
If this world urged to paint her a villain, then she would repaint the canvas a different shade of truth. ‘If only’ was a weak mindset - she refused it.
She left the boy. He had been sitting there for a while, and he could sit for another minute.
The boys cries where useless, he clung onto her tarsal, but she couldn’t let herself care. ‘I will point you back to a moment in time where you were happier.’ She said to herself in her mind.
‘Let me fix my mistake, for you.’ A single tear from her Iris cried out.
She shook him off, letting him gently place his palms back on the tarred grass before she continues walking away.
The clearing behind her begins to warp, and so does the kids stuttered crying. The weeping turning to distorted and muffled agony as the worlds distortion encases her, and seamlessly takes her out of the glass.
She halts her talons back on the snow coloured sand, looking down around her at the scattered pieces of Arcaea, and turning back to the one she left - easily noticiable with the sharp scratch almost separating the shard completely in half.
She lifts it off the white grain with her sharp finger tips, and can still faintly hear the boys tears.
With one claw holding firm underneath, she uses the other to cover the top, entrusting it between her palms.
A moment passes and she unfolds her hands like a blooming flower, allowing the other world to float upwards, meeting her at eye level. She concentrates on the shard dimming - glowing - dimming - again as the time and space inside is forced backwards.
The centered split in front of the flashing of night and day begins to shrivel, crawling from the outside inward, repairing itself at her command.
The scratch disappears and the shard stops flashing, the timeline being reverted back to its original state:
Complete - and completely unchanged.
Gravity resumes hold of the dull Arcaea once more, pulling it back to the sand before swallowing it whole, not to be seen for a long while.
With the tragedy reversed, this world had no use for it to be shown to the dark-adorned raven anymore. So it reclaimed it, snatching her mistake and her hard work from her grasp.
And this she learned.
The Memories Arcaea would show —
The Worlds Arcaea would gift to follow her —
They would be ones of Tragedy.
This Target is what Arcaea bestowed upon her on arrival in this new world - and departure from her old one.
So she turns her back to the divot of Despair and Tragedy; And she walks off
The harpy with defected wings as her arms, sets her sights on the sandy horizon. A tower so far in the distance it’s just barely in focus, hiding behind the border of night - a tower so abstracted in its cylindrical shape that reaches far beyond the clouds and into infinity with no tip to be perceived.
She knows more shiny and luminescent Arcaea will continue to find her, follow her, cling to her, for that is who she is and will be. The Harpy Shrouded in Tragedy.
And you know this now…
から「Kara」