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When she first woke up, she didn’t know exactly what was to come. It made sense, given most of her life was spent on the sandy dream-like shoals of her imagination, comatose cotton clouds lining the skies and slumbering sands beneath her in shades of violet and cyan. And her brother too, the pair were inseparable, even in their waking life.
But, later sown the line, there were signs. Her brother would appear, but he’d more agitated, more focused than usual. Wouldn’t have time to conjure up a movie of his own subconscious or try and erect mountains out of nothing but grains of sparkling sand. He seemed distant, growing further and further away from his little sister. Until one day the distance grew and the tether between them snapped. It was a theoretically infinite plain, but she couldn’t help but feel like the plain grew smaller somehow, and worse yet. She couldn’t find him.
When she woke up, in that shoddy, broken bed of hers in a dusty safehouse, no windows, no light to greet her, much let alone a voice, she was immediately puzzled and frightened. Gone were the strange yet beautiful tones of their dream-world, now replaced by dismal and miserable tones, the whole place lined with metal, trapping and confining her. As she crawled out of the bed, she almost had to learn how to walk again. Spending most of your life asleep naturally you didn’t get a chance to move your actual body, and hers were atrophied and almost wasted away. Hurt immensely when she tried to take a step.
And yet, she took that step. She took many steps that day, walking out of the bed and this strange holding facility, even if it did hurt like Hell, and the pain she received now was real, coming from her actual physical stimuli to her nerves. She was just tall enough to react the door’s cold handle, stepping outside into the vast grey beyond. Her surroundings were a desert, but not the kind she was used to, where glowing sand was once was, it was simply replaced by dry and cracked ground, the victim of drought for millennia and the cold subtle reminder of this unfamiliar world she now had to face.
Her brother never much liked this world, and although he had to always leave to it, he’d never exactly tell his sister just what it was like on the other side, just passively swiping it under the rug without so much as a second thought. In retrospect, maybe it was just because he knew what it would be like, how her first steps wouldn’t be on lush green grass but cold metal.
But far away, it awoke on green grass.
Its body was fractured, destroyed, rusting and decayed, and yet somehow, by some stroke of luck, it managed to survive. A few loose lines of code evolved themselves into a tangled web of thought, sticks into synapses, lemons turning into lemonade. That was what that saying was supposed to mean, right?
To say it awoke peacefully would be like saying to them now that the sky was green and water was corrosive. It juttered and jittered with each movement, nits and bolts flying away as it rose up to its pointed feet. A careless step here or there would mean another limb going unresponsive, so it tried its best to observe its surroundings, although that was a challenge in of itself. An eye was missing, and the other was cracked and hollow, showing the carnal flesh underneath that gave light from its incarnate iris.
The sound of simple tweeting from birds overhead and the faint blowing of wind against its chassis gave it the pleasantries of knowing it could at least feel and recognise objects. It scanned the lush landscape, a paradise that wasn’t burdened by the destruction it was created for, not yet at least. Its eye was working, and now it was time to test out its other limbs.
Legs? Affirmative.
Arms? Affirmative.
Fingers? Affirmative.
It looked down to its hands, the rusted metal fingers a mere visage of its creator, it’s host, and all it was was simply a large overgrown parasite, now bolted away from the one thing giving it life. Or so it would seem. Deep within its heart, or its cortex, or whatever crossed wires resembling flesh and blood there were within its body, it had a mission once more. One that completely betrayed its previous purpose.
Protect.
It didn’t know exactly what to protect, but it could tell it wasn’t the birds in the sky, or the insects in the trees, or the fish in the rivers. It was something far more greater than that, something a bit more… familiar, even if it didn’t know exactly why at the time. It tredged forward, its spikes digging into the sod below with each step, walking a foot, then a kilometer, then a mile, continuing on and on to some direction, to fufill its mission. Its purpose.
It didn’t take her long to find him.
Her brother had made it into this world, but he wasn’t at the same time. Gone now from both worlds, all that had remained were his glasses, sitting stop a cracked pile of brown rubble. She was drawn to its location as the setting sun shined from the glass, blinding her slightly, but just a moment after, she was blinded once more. Not by light, but by her own tears, her fingers shaking as they picked up the thin black rim of those now cracked glasses.
Even in their ideal dream world, he still kept those glasses on, she couldn’t see why he would still cling onto them, in a world where they could watch universes billow out in smoke before being birthed into the world as ash and light like a newborn phoenix, surely he could have just found a way to fix his vision normally. He was astronomically clever, and she only paled in comparison, he was the one who usually helped out with her problems, made all her worries disappear into the ether.
But now, the tables were turned, and she was awake, but alone. She could feel her face heat up and her body scrunch down to the floor in exhaustion and sadness, the tears welling up in her eyes as strings covered her mouth, disrupting the cries from her dry throat. Despite how much of a mess she was being however, she kept special care to those glasses, her arms were shaking like they were being put through an earthquake, and her pale fingers were losing their grip, but they still hold onto them, still kept it gently close to her chest.
She could feel the metallic screws embedded deep within her flesh rub against the thick fabric of her sleeves, necessary obstructions for the both of them. She wasn’t told much of the world outside, but she knew that her body just couldn’t handle it, her brain would simply calculate and process things too much in too little time for her body to effectively react. If she were awake for long, she could overheat and perish, so the screws were applied to her, to numb that pain if she were to ever wake.
She only felt them when she woke up, their thin points digging directly into her as metal become one with flesh. How long had they been in her? Days? Months? Years? Of course, she never felt the procedure, and they didn’t exactly hurt, but it was all so strange, they were anchors now, tying her into this weird and frightening world while she was stranded far from the surface.
She didn’t exactly know what to do, just sitting on the floor, next to the pieces of her brother, trying her best to wrap her head around what could possibly have happened. She had the brain power for it, so now was just the time for her to try and put two and two together, to give her purpose in this world, and to give her brother some form of closure too. Her brain looked through every possible answer her developing mind could conjure up, possible motivations, behaviours, patterns in their dream world to give some form of hint to unravelling this strange mystery. But no matter what question linked to an answer, there was always just one possible conclusion to it all.
She knew that whatever her brother had planned, this clearly wasn’t it. The two had been bonded together for years, ever since she was born even, and although he may have acted erratic or rude or apathetic to her recently, she knew it must have been for some heinous reason. And that reason would only be found by investigating further.
In the distance she could see the once orange radiant skies now being swept away, turning into night, the dark shades of blue and black not as beautiful as the one their minds could conjure up. She could feel the chill of the wind now pricking at her neck, her bones shivering deeply as she looked down to her brother’s glasses. There was no magical road ahead or some clear defined path, but she knew that standing still would leave her as good as dead.
It was time for her to make a step once more. Her soles of her feet rubbed against the cracked dry ground with each step, but there was now strength within them as she slowly rose back to her feet. She took her brother’s glasses and folded them neatly, tucking it into her shaggy green hair, right on-top of her little arrow. Staring into the horizon, the girl knew this wasn’t going to be an easy task, but then again, her brain was never one for easy tasks, asleep or awake.
It meanwhile had continued on walking across the world, searching endlessly for the thing it was supposed to protect, trekking across many different landscapes. Lush forests suddenly diverged into ocean towns, those towns giving way to bustling cities, and those cities descending further and further into nothing but grassland. It got a few stares of course, it was a broken killing machine, and the dried blood that painted its remaining broken spikes of course set that clear for any uneasy eyes to bare.
The low pounding of its spikes digging into the ground with each step became the simple sound of a march to its ears, the black crown that now precariously floated over its damaged head fizzling and moving with each step, a king’s carrier on parade without its king. This would continue on and on and on, the days and the landscapes all just blurred, all one and same now to its eye, but that little spark inside of it still burned away.
No matter what, it would achieve its primary mission, if it was no good at combat anymore, then to hell with it. It had a new purpose now, one that it was never meant to question for a single fleeting moment, its code would never allow for something like that to happen. The days and the weeks bled more and more, continuing to stomp and move without any form of rest, its journey was long and arduous, but it was made for this.
She meanwhile, had significant trouble on her journey, and it was all because of her condition. It wasn’t just the fact that she couldn’t last more than a couple hours without crashing into slumber, or that her muscles were underdeveloped. No, everything was just so new to her now. The sights, the smells, the sounds, everything once replicated in her own world now given manifest, and now that they were no longer tailored by her own subconscious, it was as if she had never even put them to thought before.
The wind was never usually this harsh, the sun never usually this hot, the chatter of townspeople never so loud, and the colour of fruit so disappointing. She couldn’t find it hard to ignore the overall beigeness of the world, and she loathed it. Partly because it reminded her of the ground where she discovered her brother, but because out of every colour and shade in the wide spectrum available, choosing beige was certainly a choice. A stupid choice, but a choice nonetheless.
Of course, she would get stares, a young girl walking all alone, heavy bags under her eyes and a dark cloth draped over her, not to mention the more obvious features like the screws sticking out of her, or the arrow nestled within her bird’s nest of a scalp. But, she always made sure not to show her brother’s glasses, especially in crowded places. She hated crowds the most, the noise, the atmosphere, the tight spaces, all mixing and turning together into an overloaded cacophony of the senses.
And as she made her way through these man-made waves, she held tightly in a tiny fist, her brother’s glasses, a symbol of why she kept on walking, despite the growing uneasiness deep within the growing pit of her stomach. She would never let go, it was the one thing that bonded the two of them, even in death. Maybe it sounded silly, it being just a simple pair of glasses, but for her it was the only mark he had left on this world, and so it was as priceless and valuable as the shiniest, most valuable emerald on Earth. She wasn’t sure when she crashed into slumber where she would end up, but she always made sure to hold the glasses tightly, if the worst ever came to fruition.
She wasn’t good at speaking to people, only having your older brother to speak to for your entire life would do that to you, so most times she would just hope that some person would come and see whether she was in trouble and offer advice or something from the kindness of her heart. That was how she managed to scrounge up food and scraps to survive, she knew that if she stole it wouldn’t take long for people to catch up to her, and from those old books she had read thieves often got their hands cut off, and that simply was not an option for the young girl.
She got a little greedy and impulsive at times, asking strangers for shoes or stockings to keep her legs warm, and surprisingly enough they obliged. It was almost as if they knew already what was going to happen, a simple obligation they had to do whether it be by fate or some other sense of predestination, but she figured that it was silly that every single person she met was fated to do things so easily for her.
Her journey was long and tedious, but despite everything she still kept moving onwards. Her body might collapse somewhere dangerous like the side of the road, or near the shorelines of the beach, but somehow she’d always wake up soon after, greeted with the sight of the sun waving hello or goodbye. She liked to imagine it was her brother looking out for her, protecting her even, from all of the dangers in this harsh world.
But the more she thought about her big brother, the more she felt alone and furious at the world for ripping her dream world away from them, now she could only visit it temporarily, an unwelcome guest to her own mind. And she had more and more thoughts about her brother, in the last few moments she saw him, he had seem more agitated than before, too focused on a ‘project’ to spend time with his little sister. He told her that a girl her age shouldn’t rely on her big brother and it was time for her to be independent. But when she independently asked when the project was due, it as as if her brother had no mouth to speak from.
She had no idea what it was, but it didn’t stop her mind from overthinking, like it always did. Given where his body was, it could be a large planet-scale waterpark that everyone would be welcome to, but then she started to think of how long the lines would be, hoping that she and her brother had free passes or something childish like that. Given his serious and often pompous nature, maybe he was trying to find every book on the planet for some grand library, tracking down one rare tome in particular and pulling out his lavender hair in frustration at it slipping through his fingers like sand.
Or maybe this world was just meant for the two of them, an extension of the dream world, only given physical and corporeal form now, that was the reason why every sense felt magnified to her nerves. But… was such a thing even possible, even for him?
Whatever the case may be, the girl’s body had become exhausted once more, it needed rest, and overthinking was something she could do in her dreams. She was in a forest of some kind so it shouldn’t have been too hard to find some nice place to rest her weary bones. Admittedly, she didn’t mind where she slept, so long as it wasn’t a spike pit her body would just crash on any surface without prejudice or danger, although it was hard for her to get used to the feeling of not lying in a bed.
She may not have realised what it did feel like at the time, but the feeling of lying on a mattress, no matter how aged or thin was just a little thing her mind desired, an annoying reminder of her wants, and not necessarily her needs. Before long, she found a suitable spot, just a simple pile of leaves, brown and caramel to signify the changing seasons. It was hard to find any traces of these leaves, considering most had left their homes to migrate, picked up by some stray winds, but these leaves didn’t have the courage to take wing, bundled together on-top of one another for warmth.
She made sure to cover herself with these leaves providing herself with a blanket, it was a thin and damp blanket, but one nonetheless, giving her mind some slight comfort as her eyes began to flutter and close shut. She made sure that the glasses were buried too, she didn’t want to risk some savage squirrel eating them right in front of her, or a badger, or a monster, or whatever roamed these woods.
Now was the time for her to rest once more, and to drift softly to sleep, to go back to her comfort zone.
But for it, was there any chance to rest? It still had a mission to do, and it could tell it was getting so tantalisingly close. If it had some nose or something like it, it could sniff just how close its target was. It now found itself in the woodlands, a reminder of when the journey first started, like fate was pulling some sort of ironic joke in a sad attempt to try and be funny. It didn’t laugh, not that it could anyway, but it didn’t matter. Just one more stretch of land, one more maze of trees to cross, one more step, and its mission would finally begin.
Even as the wind slowly blew against its favour, guiding leafs into the crevices of its cracked face, it still pressed onward and upward, showing metal and machine would best mother Nature herself. If it could feel accomplishment within its code, it would be awarding itself the shiniest trophy it could find, for just after a few small steps were made along the sodden ground, it finally found its target.
It found her. Or more rather, it found her voice.
She was rudely awakened, but not by it, by the sound of fizzling and the distant snapping of twigs, a rather minute sound in the grand scheme of things, and yet this drop in the auditory ocean was enough to wake the girl from her sleep. Maybe it was a sign that she needed to rest earlier, her brain was too focused now to properly think, and this was clear proof. Her ears were too busy picking up that strange noise, like the whinny of a horse, except more artificial and electronic, and a strange violet light just out of the corner of her eyes.
Before long, these noises and the light subsided, followed by a large kinetic wave that made every leaf blanketing the girl’s body fly off in fear, she could feel the chill of the night now blowing against her skin. She was curious to see just what could be making such a racket, and as she stood up from the floor, she saw nearby what appeared to be a strange woman. She was dressed head-to-toe in scarlet leather clothes, like a poisonous animal warding off any stupid predators, as a strange, pointed hat pierced from the top of her head, and a turquoise guitar poked out from her side.
She was intrigued by this strange woman, the girl had never seen anyone like her before, and the fact she had just appeared in these woods without any trace was certainly fascinating. The girl thought maybe her mind was just playing tricks, this woman was just some malformed figment of her imagination from parts of her subconscious like back in her dream world – a sign that she just needed some shut-eye.
She made sure nor to make a sound, unsure of what exactly this woman would do to her, maybe she’d stomp her head with those boots, or bludgeon her over the head with that guitar, so she had to make sure she was quiet. She covered her mouth with her hand, little whispers of her breath escaping from the small holes of her fingers as she tried to keep herself low to the ground. If she didn’t show she was there, then everythinf would be oka-
SNAP!
It’s spiked foot had snapped a twig carelessly, striking the wooden thing in two, it had heard the sound so many times it was basically background noise to it now, but despite its careful journey, this careless blunder was enough to jumpstart danger. Out of the bushes and leaves it was hiding behind, it could see a tall slender woman dressed head-to-toe in blood-red, a strange object in her hands and an almost sadistic curl around her lips. It was definitely the sign of someone who could cause trouble and mayhem on a whim, and what did it do? It set her off like a spark to a fuse.
She turned around, noticing the glowing red of a nearby bush, clearly not something made by an animal, and very clearly light, however the way those rays dripped down onto the loose faded greens looked awfully similar to blood. She thought nothing of it, just her mind playing tricks like it always did, until she heard another sound – this one very clearly man-made, and although small it was still undeniably there. It was the sound of a faint gasp.
As she turned herself a mere 45 degrees more, she noticed the strange girl, lying on the floor like some kind of wounded animal, hair messy and shaggy with leaves sticking out, green like the bushes nearby. If it weren’t for the strange yellow arrow and screws sticking out of her, she would have thought it was some kind of wilderness child… or something, like something out of a bullshit fairytale that’d get picked up into some kids movie.
The two stared at each-other, she could sense that the girl was feeling uneasy around her, and tried her best to be her calm and casual self. She could sense that the woman was clearly putting up a front, ready to strike and deal with the problem right in front of her eyes. It stared it the two, blood-red light seeping from the dark crevices of its cracked face, saying not a word and feeling nothing. Or at least, it seemed like nothing on the outside.
Inside however, it could feel a strange new feeling, one it had felt before, but never to this magnitude. When it was just a weapon, it had to protect its host, but he was fastened to the bed, he had magnetic plates that attracted to the screws so he could hold on, and so its prime directive was focused on elimination rather than protection. It was just a little blip then, but now it was a huge wave, ready to crash down onto the sandy shoals below and sweep away whatever dangers were lucky enough to get caught right in the crossfire.
It didn’t know what to protect at first, it could only see the woman from this angle, but her moves were short, slow, clearly taking her time as she slowly walked to the right and away from view, a smile growing on her lips although whether it was out of sadism or any other sort of malice wasn’t exactly known, but it wasn’t taking any chances now.
She stared over at the woman as it slowly approached her, she reassured the girl that she wasn’t going to harm her, and she had no reason to anyway, there were ‘more important matters’ to deal with then kids like her. But that didn’t stop to settle the girls’ nerves, this stranger was getting closer to closer, and she had no feasible way to defend herself, she could run, but she knew how bad at running away she was. So now, all she could do was stare, and hope for the best that something would stop this strange woman from walking closer.
CRASH!
snap.
A loud noise erupted from her ears, causing the girl to cover them and lean back, feeling the sticks press up against her elbow and break under her weight, the woman noticed this as well and instinctively ducked out of harms’ way, while nearby it had fired off a simple warning shot. One of its disposable spikes had fired directly into the side of an old tree, the metal object burrowing right through the oak and causing a rather nasty gash. Slight smoke started to rise from its neck, the frayed wires paying for its act of heroism. It sat still, stalking and setting its eye directly over to the woman, and after she turned her head to inspect the damage, she turned the other way and stared it down as well.
She had no idea what it was of course, but she knew the blood-red light was bound to be some kind of sign towards danger, the girl watched as she gripped the strings of her guitar, her painted nails digging deep out of concentration, or perhaps even fear. That would certainly be cathartic. Whatever the case may be, the woman and it were staring at one anither, while the girl just sat back and watched, unsure of what to do of what was even going on behind the thin veil of bushes and leaves.
It did ‘t take long for the woman to back away, scoffing slightly before stepping forward, mumbling under her breath how this ‘wasn’t worth her time’ before disappearing into the thin line of trees over the horizon, leaving it and the girl all alone.
It had kept up its mission, even if it wasn’t sure who or what it was protecting, that strange swinging sense of security kept growing more and more, like a radar pinging closer to its target. The girl meanwhile got back up to her knees. This place wasn’t safe, she knew that now, and although her legs ached and her eyes were this close to closing shut, she would just have to press on further and further on her own quest and mission. She reached up to her hair, trying to reach her brother’s glasses for security, to hold on tight and…
They weren’t there.
They slipped out and her palms grabbed at nothing but dirty green locks, causing her a slight bit of panic as her arm patted away, trying to find where they could have gone. It was only until she raised her other arm that she found out where they were. Blanketed under that loud crashing noise, she remembered hearing something else, something breaking, but she wasn’r sure what. That was until she lifted up her arm, revealing cracked glass shards and warped lenses.
Her brother’s memory was underneath her arm, and she carelessly crushed it.
She stared at the broken pair, feeling an immense sense of grief, the very same ones that she felt when she discovered his body, only this time she was sure that it was her own fault. Her chest felt like it was being put through a vice as she choked, shaking hands and boiling tears coming once more at her stupid mistake, blaming herself, and only herself for it. She was all alone now.
It was just about to leave, until it heard the sound of a young girl crying, not a rare phenomenon, whenever he walked past towns some child would burst into tears believing it to be a monster ready to grind their bones for their bread, but this girl was different. It felt a strange tether to her, and it couldn’t escape those waves once more, they were now burning inside of its cranium, the black crown floating and fizzing once more from its head as its hunched neck moved closer to the right and it began to take a careful step.
It erupted from the trees and the bushes and made itself known to her, although she didn’t notice at first, her eyes were glued shut by her own emotions, it was only when she felt the ground rumbling underneath her that she finally noticed its presence. As she crooked her neck to the side, she stared at it; a behemoth of mechanical magic, frightening and monstrous in size and in appearance, like something that escaped from a mad scientist’s lab and had a hard time surviving in the outside world.
Meanwhile it looked at the small quivering girl in front of it, tired sunken eyes and screws that made her look like she escaped from a mad scientist’s lab, and was finding it hard to adjust to life outside. That feeling magnified greatly once it looked to her, sensing the need, the duty to protect the frail thing, slowly raising out its hand. The girl naturally was reluctant, especially at a time like this, so all she could really do was stare at it and wonder what it could be.
Was this some sort of messenger perhaps? Did it cause that massive hole in the tree, and if so for what purpose? And why on Earth was it staring directly at her and hesitating doing its job already. Unless, there was something more to it, as she stared at its cracked face, one warped from recognisability and the dark sunken fleshy eye that glowed with red moonlight inside, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of… familiarity within it.
And the fact that it was built from a bed was seemingly no coincidence. Could it be…?