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Awareness came back to Baasha gently. First with the pleasant feeling of sun on her face. Then a warm breeze blows the grass underneath her to tickle the side of her hands. Opening her eyes she was greeted with a late afternoon sun hanging low in the sky and painting everything in a strange golden light.
Looking around she saw that she was laying on the edge of a meadow outside some large building, imposing and ill fitting to the rest of the scene. She was wearing her usual work outfit, apron still freshly pressed and white.
She sat up and took a closer look at her surroundings. As the sleepiness left her she was fighting a rising sense of panic. There was something deeply wrong. The sun itself was wrong. She didn’t know how to describe it but the color wasn’t right, the warmth somehow also had a coldness to it. Most of all though she didn’t know how she got here. She checked her pockets and found some coins she didn’t recognize and a penny dreadful.
“Baasha!” a voice she didn’t recognize called out to her and as she turned to its source she was greeted by a blond man wearing a creepy red mask walking briskly over to her.
“Are you hurt?” he asked in obvious concern and offered her a hand to help her up.
She blinked as if ready for this figment to disappear and took it when he didn’t. She rose to her feet and then craned her neck and took a step back. Whoever he was, he was much taller than her. She tried to remember if she might recognize his voice from somewhere. Immediately, she felt a headache coming on.
The man tilted his head slightly, still waiting on her response.
“Oh. I have a bit of a headache but otherwise, I think I’ll live,” she tried to give him a joking smile, “Things are a bit blurry though, do you know what exactly happened?”
He broke into a wide grin that contrasted the exaggerated mask ghoulishly.
“Well, that’s a bit of a long story, why don’t we go inside and I’ll recount what happened where your memories leave off,” he tells her warmly and holds out his hand for her to take.
She suppresses a shiver. He was being far too familiar. Forcing down her unease she tried for placating and asked, “I’m terribly sorry but do I know you?”
He dropped his hand to his side in apparent shock. He seemed to be searching her face for some recognition that wasn’t there.
“They really took that much from you?” he asked in a tone approaching dawning horror.
“Who did- took what?” she asked while trying to keep from getting frustrated with him.
He raised a hand to his mouth and then seemed to steel himself for his next question, “You really don’t remember me?”
She took another searching look at him but nothing from his face, voice, or clothing struck her as even vaguely familiar. What she did notice however, was that on top of everything else his eyes were disturbingly reptilian, bright blue but with slitted pupils.
At a loss for a way to point out the strangeness of the situation without being impolite she instead answers simply, “No, I’m sorry, should I?”
The pain was obvious in his strange eyes, “I’m your fiance, Edward.”
“No, you are not,” she blurts out before she could think of a more tactful approach.
He simply pointed down to her hand and continued, “You’re wearing my ring, you accepted my proposal at Wolfstack Docks.”
Sure enough, on her finger was a gold band with a peculiar red gemstone.
“I would usually suggest we go back to see if maybe it would help you regain your memory but I don’t think either of us should be seen in London right now,” he, Edward, told her without giving her any time to digest this revelation.
“Why-” she cut herself off from a frankly rude question and instead settled instead on, “Why would we have been in London? I mean- how long were we down there and where even are we now?”
He reached out his hand again for her to take, “Please, let’s go inside, you must be hungry, I’ll recount everything I can.”
She glanced at the slightly ominous red brick building and then back to Edward, “And this is?”
“This is the Orphanage, or at least a copy of it,” Edward told her without withdrawing his hand.
Without an obvious excuse not to and feeling like she needed to hear what he had to say she hesitantly took his hand and allowed herself to be led into the building. In stark contrast to its exterior it was sterile white inside and deathly quiet, not like any orphanage Baasha had ever seen. Edward led her confidently through the labyrinth of identical halls and she hoped she had memorized the way out correctly.
At the end of one hallway she saw two white uniformed orderlies with matching white masks peeking from around the corner and whispering. Edward made no indication that this was out of the ordinary and they continued until finally reaching what appeared to be an office. It was well furnished although everything in it seemed a little worn, probably all inherited from whoever had been in charge last. Edward pulled a chair out for her and then made his way around the desk which was apparently his. He pushed a bowl of unidentifiable fruit towards her.
“I’ll eat after we talk,” she said, trying to be polite.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Edward asked her.
Racking her mind all she could remember was her usual day, work at the hospital where she was almost finished with her training as a nurse. She told him as much.
“So you don’t remember coming to London at all?” he sighed deeply and sat back in his chair awkwardly. Something about the movement, slumping his shoulders slightly, making the correct sympathetic gestures. He struck her as unsuited for it.
“No, do you have any idea why I did?” she asked and tried to subtly look around the room for further clues to the bizarre man in front of her.
The orderlies weren’t wearing masks quite like his, for one thing. Case files sat on his desk in a neat stack along with fresh paper and a wax seal with a simplified version of his mask on it.
“You wanted so much more than the surface could offer you, and with your intellect you have so much to offer to the advancement of modern medicine. You came to London to become a physician.” He tells her simply.
“Would that have been possible? I know from what I heard London is different to say the least but-”
“Yes, absolutely, I have no doubt if that was all you decided to settle for you would already have opened your own clinic,” he cuts her off assuredly and with an obvious hook for her to take.
She swallowed and hesitated, “What did I decide was more important?”
The grin returned as he told her, “You saw the pain and misery that Mr Fires inflicted on the people of London and you joined me to stop him.”
“Ok, and who is Mr Fires?” she asked, unsure of what role she could have had in overthrowing anyone.
“It owns the real Orphanage, in the waking world, its where I was taken as a boy, and eventually worked my way up to running for it,” he paused as if unsure how much to elaborate and continued, “It's one of the Masters of the Bazaar, the group that controls London.”
“The waking world?” She asked, “So this is a dream?”
She wasn’t sure if that made more or less sense than anything else.
“Not exactly, this is Parabola, it is the realm of dreams but we’re both physically here,” he informed her and waited for her next question.
She thought for a moment and put a hand to her head, feeling a headache coming on for a new reason. The more he told her the less she understood. When a short time passed by in silence Edward cleared his throat.
“I’m sure this is all a lot to take in, I know this can’t be easy for you,” Edward tells her again in his unpracticed sympathetic way, “But please know that we can figure it all out together.”
Baasha sighed and continued, “So is Mr Fires the reason I can’t remember anything?”
“Not directly, it was the Fingerkings who must have eaten your memories,” He told her once again waiting for her to ask before elaborating.
“Ah, of course, naturally it was the Finger Kings,” she said while leaning back in her chair.
She knew it probably wasn’t the best idea to antagonize this man, regardless of his off putting assurances but it was getting harder not to let her frustration show.
“Alright, different line of thought, are we under any time limit right now?” Baasha asked, preferring to get to business if possible than play whatever game Edward was with his unhelpful half answers.
“No, our part in stopping Mr Fires plan has already been played, it's up to-”
“Ok great!” Baasha said with forced enthusiasm, “Let’s just start at the beginning then, shall we?”
“If you were working for this Mr Fires what made you decide to turn traitor?” Baasha asked, ready to bolt if he reacted violently.
He tapped a finger against the arm of his chair before standing, “Perhaps it would be easier if I showed you.”
Baasha quickly stood as well and backed up towards the door. Trying to minimize any time she had her back to him. Once again he led them down the white walled maze that she was already beginning to hate. Mercifully it was a shorter walk. They stood in front of what to Baasha seemed to be an identical white door to all the rest.
Edward pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. Inside was mostly bare, it seemed like a sparse prison cell but not remarkable otherwise. She hoped he didn’t expect her to go in.
“What am I looking at exactly?” she asked warily.
“In most ways that mattered, my whole world for many years growing up,” Edward told her without looking in the room.
His gaze didn’t waver from her. He was waiting for a response.
“I apologize for how I worded that question, you clearly had every reason to hate this Mr Fires,” she tried diplomatically.
He sighed, “To answer your question, you were what made me take the chance.”
“You have a zubmarine that you used for scientific expeditions, I guess you built up a rapport with the dockworkers because the next time that Mr Fires sent its strikebreakers you had been organizing the workers,” he told her while gesturing for her to follow him once again.
On this trip through the halls she noticed one hallway that has a floor that seems to become dark stagnant water and silently resolves to not get separated from Edward while they’re in this nightmare building.
This time he has led them to some sort of cafeteria. Several old wooden tables and chairs which have seen better days filled the unoccupied room.
“I’ll get something for you to eat, I’m not going to let you starve yourself,” Edward tells her and he disappears into what she presumes is the kitchen.
Without Edward watching her, Baasha takes stock of the room. Same white walls, windowless and unpleasant. White tiled floors, only broken up with occasional splotches of color that have clearly couldn’t be removed from the grout. The idea to leave passes her mind. She didn’t like the idea of wandering the labyrinthine halls and if she assumes Edward was telling the truth about this being a dream world she didn’t want to bet on the path staying the same. She instead takes a seat near the center of the room and waits for her supposed fiance to reappear.
Before long he comes back out with a tray of food. Apparently, he didn’t intend to eat too. He takes a seat opposite to her and lets her look over her choices. There was a small bowl of fruit that looked somewhat similar to cherries, a bowl of soup, and a glass of something with a pearly or silver sheen.
Eyeing the berries she hesitantly takes one. The idea that she shouldn’t eat the food comes to her but with a small smile she pops one in her mouth anyway. If he wanted to hurt her there were far simpler ways of going about it then poison.
“They’re solacefruit, I know you liked them but it's hardly an unpopular opinion,” Edward tells her as he continues to watch her eat.
Unsettling as ever, she was trying to make herself ignore the way he watched her every movement. As the fruit burst over her tongue she was pleasantly surprised by its refreshing flavor.
“Well, that’s one thing that hasn’t changed at least,” she tells him in a way that she hopes is encouraging.
He just smiles at her fondly, still with a bit too much teeth.
“What’s this one then?” she asks, picking up the spoon and pointing it at the soup.
“I believe the cook was trying to copy Mrs Chapman’s recipe, it's a mushroom soup,” he tells her.
Taking a spoonful she finds it to taste more or less like normal mushroom soup.
“And this one,” she asks pointing at the glass of unappetizing liquid.
Edward’s grin spreads, “Moon-milk.”
Baasha lightly chuckles at the name, “And where does moon milk come from?”
“A moon-miser,” he tells her, once again answering her question in a way that he knew wouldn’t answer anything.
Sighing in a way she hopes comes off as jokingly exaggerated irritation and not plain irritation she follows up with, “Ok, and where might one get a moon miser?”
“From the roof of the cavern that London is located in,” he elaborates.
She takes another spoonful of the soup before adding, “That sounds like an undertaking to get.”
Edward laughs at that, something else that doesn’t seem to come naturally to him, “You don’t know the half of it.”
Maybe it was the absurdity of waking up in a dream world, the idea of leading a shipping strike in a cave, or just the strange man who seems far too fond of her for her comfort but she laughs with him as she imagines how one might get to the roof of a giant cave to milk some sort of creature that lives there, dangling off a stalactite.
“Do I like this too?” she asks him as she continues to eat her soup.
“You haven’t had it before,” he tells her.
“Is it even good? Have you tried it?” she asks instead with an eyebrow raised and an unimpressed smile.
His grin doesn’t waver as he tells her, “You made me try it once.”
“Ah, so that’s how it is?” She asks with a knowing grin of her own.
She lifts the glass in a mock toast to him, “It's only fair then.”
Edward doesn’t break eye contact as she takes a sip, “Only fair, my sweet.”