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Scopophobia, the fear of being seen in public or stared at by others.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Black Swan seldom felt fear. In her line of work, her creed of existence and dedication to the Remembrance, fear was a precursor to the greatest of feats or the downfall of the mighty. It belongs to the past and those lost to it, nothing more. Irrational, the fear of being seen, as was the nature of fear itself. As a Memokeeper capable of severing memories and choosing to whom and when she appears, being seen is a coquettish affair, a cloying past time befitting the phenomenon she named herself after and, above all, something under her complete control and discretion.
But in the event that she is seen by someone who shouldn’t? In the event of realizing just how swaddled she’d become in this luxury of invisibility—of invincibility? Well, it’s rather ironic that though she named herself after an enigmatic phenomenon of hindsight and tantalizing memory, a black swan remains a prey animal.
Slowly, Black Swan turned, a smile plastered on her face and musical hum sounding from her throat. It’s a wonder that she didn’t choke on it with the way her body became overwrought with tremors. “So, we meet again, Galaxy Ranger.”
As Acheron approached, her steps smooth and assured, the instinct to step back, to run, reared in her mind, and yet she stood rooted in place. All around them, the flashing lights of Golden Hour, its music, and endless libation continued on in cheerful indifference. But she couldn’t blame them, not really. No one else shared in the knowledge the Memokeeper now possessed. As per her devotion to the Garden, her perfect memory now turned against her, the rest of this world, the rest of this universe, were rendered willfully ignorant of the predator that stalked in their midst.
“I realized after our dance that I didn’t catch your name,” said Acheron. Yomi. Huangquan. Death. Death. Death. The woman where memories go to die.
“Really? What a shame.”
“I thought so too.” Was that a chuckle she heard, that sharp exhale that fell from the ranger’s curling lips? As the distance between them grew shorter, the light of a neon red street sign caught the point of Acheron’s tooth. What might’ve been a mere imploring smile took on a bloody visage.
At last, she came to a stop, nowhere near the proximity they shared during their dance, but it was stiflingly close. Close enough to hear a swan’s racing heartbeat and quickened breath as it came in staccato dread.
“Your name, pretty bird. May I have it?”
That voice. That terrible voice echoing in Black Swan’s ear. The same flat inflection and tenor as the ranger it inhabited—this thing that wasn’t Acheron or was perhaps the real Acheron all along she didn’t linger in those torrential memories long enough to know for certain—or maybe she had and now feared its certainty more than not knowing at all and the deluge of chaos knowing would inevitably wrought—was her Garden now tainted by this knowing? The field of glittering blue-white crystal petals, delicate and darling, now bearing a thick red scar across its face, the shattered teeth of a smile once precious. She could not forget, could never forget, must not forget she was Remembrance, without it without memory what would be left? What would be left?
“You’re frightened,” Acheron observed, her voice her own once more and flecked with genuine concern.
Run. Run. Run.
“I am,” Black Swan confessed faster than her sense of self could stop her. Frightened. Such an irrational thing to possess. But where in Fuli’s vision and grace, the eons both spent and inevitable of collecting and collecting and collecting, was the comfort after starting into the unfeeling abyss? The assurance that it won’t be for naught and memory is truly eternal? That Black Swan and the rest of the Garden Memokeepers are forever?
Where was the assurance when Acheron. Yomi. Huangquan—places in which death resides, the woman where memory goes to die—now stood before her, gazing upon her when she should not be?
What would be left of me? Black Swan wondered in the painful breathlessness of the moment when a hand gingerly stroked her cheek, and the other slid beneath her veil to caress the back of her neck. Her pulse jumped beneath Acheron’s fingertips, colder to the touch than they were in the nightmare because it was real now.
A soft exhale warmed the hollow of her throat, a reverent brush of lips followed with a tantalizing whisper of heat as breath is shaped into words to caress the shell of her ear.
“But I would remember you, pretty bird,” ‘Acheron’ crooned in her mind’s eye. “I will remember you.”
Of course.
Of course.
What would be left, of this place, of the universe, of memory, of her, but the End.
She slackened a little more at the touch of Acheron’s cheek against hers. The weight of finality shedded in a blessed moment of surrender—the abyss is too vast to fight against, why not let it coax her into ease?—expose her neck to take in the murmured, “Don’t be afraid,” husked against her mouth.
Afraid? Black Swan was a Memokeeper, what was there to ever fear?