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Torn, battered, and worn out, but Norea’s sketchbook is still in a better state than you are. You scoff as you pull out the tiny book from your breast pocket, your calloused fingers carefully grazing the threads holding the paper together. The cheap fabric cover has survived numerous scuffles that would tear apart any other sketchbook, so you like to think of it as a lucky charm.
The pages are still fine though, no tears or smudges. It’s frozen in time, unwilling to change since that day when you tried to return it to its owner. The picture of the lake is the same as ever. Soft yet deliberate pencil lines speak out that this was a memory of love, not like all the other anxious scribblings of rotting birds and withering branches.
You feel the clock ticking above your head in synch with your heartbeat, and it’s best to hurry on your path. Time waits for no one, especially for those who don’t have much left.
The sky takes on a sickly green tint as the last of the stars take their last breaths, preparing to glow anew for tonight. Don’t dwell too hard on what’s above. You had enough flights and fights up there; you’d rather spend the rest of your short life grounded in gravity.
Really, you could be spending your time on something pleasantly hedonistic instead of toiling on a road with an unsure destination. You could sleaze around cities and make good use of that pretty face. Not many recognize your uncanny resemblance with Peil’s former successor on Earth, where everyday lives wouldn’t meddle with Benerit’s business. With a low radar and countless possibilities, you could be doing anything and everything you want in this world.
Instead, you’re gritting your teeth and wiping beads of sweat from your forehead. The steep slope of moss and grass takes patience to not slip and fall. Terminus ad quem is unknown.
It hasn’t been that long since everything. You don’t know how the others from Asticassia are doing, nor the real Elan Ceres. Hopefully, you’ll never hear from them again. The only person you contacted was Nika from five months ago. It felt like a dirty last resort to crawl into your former cellmate's message box and anonymously ask her about Norea, right after she had been released from detainment, but underhanded tactics aren’t something you’re a stranger to.
Not much is known about her. You can only piece out the puzzle of Norea Du Noc through disjointed memories, fake Asticassia enrollment sheets, and a few words from a hesitant Nika. (“We didn’t know each other well.” “I was just a factory worker; she was one of the pilots stationed at...” “She was from…”)
It turns out Nika’s instructions of where Norea came from were still a little too vague. You had no idea where she lived, here at east. Where she kindled her hatred towards Spacians. Where she was terrified of dying every day. Nothing, except a sketchbook full of dying things.
Norea wasn't even her name. Before Nika dropped out that it was simply a codename, you learned it from stupid Four's beloved books. It's just a name from some religion you aren't interested in, probably chosen out to fit some symbolic purpose, but you couldn't care less.
(Wrong. You read those passages again and again. Norea, the daughter of Adam and Eve; Norea, the sister of Seth; Norea, the girl who set fire to Noah's ark. You don't know if you want to chuckle or cry. Of course she would be named after a girl who loves the flames too much; Norea, the girl who set fire on him.)
Names, huh? You opt to smile bitterly instead of scowling. Even after a year, you barely recovered anything about your past. Truth be told, you never wanted to go back to then. It’s only a burden to you— a painful, disgusting thing that you want to forget and leave behind. And here you are digging them back up for the sake of a dead girl.
Really, it should have been you who asked her name instead of her. Such a goddamn hypocrite, that Norea.
The thick clearing of the forest slowly starts to thin as you progress. Leaves glisten in morning dew. The fog fazes in and out by the sunlight. From estimation, it'll be about a few minutes until the sun will rise. You don’t know if the place exists.
Three years of chasing every lake you heard of, both big and small. Three years of crossing out locations on your map once it's another failure. Three years of letting your hair grow over your shoulders.
You don’t know if this was just an imaginary world that she made up to run away. You don’t know if there is any meaning in trying to find 'somewhere' that might not even be real, traces and paper trails of a girl who died asking your name.
And yet, and yet—
You just want to stop feeling like a dead man walking. Back then, you were both nothing but disposable witches. The moment you both stepped into the Gundam, you had guillotines over your heads, the blade lowering down each time the Permet Score went from one to two to three to five.
A life more dead than alive, that's what she would hiss at you. So you want to prove to her that you’re still living, that both of you are still something worth living on.
You still remember that day, when Suletta Mercury did her little magic trick. Norea's smile back then was a kind you could only imagine as reserved for Sophie and the lake. It's just a ghost, an illusion, your former self would try to say. That her smile isn't real. But that would mean that the hills, the lakes, the beauty she saw in the world once upon a time isn't real either. It's too cruel of a thought, even for you.
With a heart trying to believe in miracles, you pray every day that the girl you saw back then is real. Norea, or the girl who goes by that name, really smiled. It's only your opinion, and she'd probably punch you if she ever heard it, but that smile was prettier than any of her drawings.
You stop in your tracks. The slope that was only uphill finally dips down—
—down,
—down,
—into a lake. Dawn ripples on the surface, the wind quietly breaking up sunlight onto the water. Grassfields dance in a perfect choreography, curves and lines just like how she would scratch the lead onto her sketchbook. You blink, then blink again as you put the sketched scenery and the real scenery side by side together. It’s nearly a carbon copy.
A laugh bubbles from your throat. It’s half-hysterical, half-gentle, but it’s been a long time since you ever laughed so you don't care how grating it sounds to your own ears. You sit on the dirt ground, the first time you stopped to rest for years.
It’s almost disquieting. The peace. It’s not the same without the constant gun blasts and bombshells going off. Not the same without running away constantly, being afraid of never seeing the sun go up again. Not the same without the twinge of disappointment as you cross out lake after lake. Deep sighs heave out from your body as if a heavy weight has been lifted from your shoulders. You still feel the ghosts of a smile on your face as you watch the sky go from purple to bronze to clear, silent blue.
You open the book and press the paper close to your lips. And then, you start whispering into the pages. From inside you, a steady stream flows out from your heart and seeps into the paper, what you never told anyone.
You tell Norea about how much death scared you. You tell Norea about how the real lakes and mountains look prettier than her sketches. You tell Norea about how your eyes weren’t green, they were an ugly brown. You tell Norea about how much you used to hate this world, and how you haven’t really forgiven it yet.
You tell Norea your name, a secret that will be hidden in the still waters of her sketches.