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The scones were still on the counter.
Those walnut and nutmeg monstrosities had been sitting on the Lotus Lifers kitchen counter ever since Sylvia, the self proclaimed Trapmaster, stumbled across her first picnic.
She didn't plan to spend an afternoon sitting on a picnic blanket with her teammate Foil, some other strangers and a watcher named Ellith, while sharing a plate of scones and other baked goods but life can be weird sometimes.
And Sylvia would take random picnics over surprise attacks on her or her teammates any day of the week.
But now that the dust had settled and things had gone back to normal, the scones were still sitting on the counter that she left them on a week ago.
Sylvia knew she should move them, put them in a barrel for later so they wouldn't go bad.
But she couldn’t.
Those scones helped her make some new memories, good ones.
And even if she knew that, realistically, those memories would easily get lost to the passage of time just like the last 20 years of her life…
(There's no point in fighting back. Everything is forgotten in the end.)
Staring at the scones certainly wasn't going to move them, and Sylvia didn't have the components for a levitation spell right now.
She just couldn't move and put away the scones.
It was a simple task!
“Why is this so hard?” Sylvia asked Ginger, her bee who by all means couldn't talk.
Even if she had found out some way to speak bee, that information was long gone now.
(What else have you forgotten?)
Just her, her bee and the scones.
Although she really liked her teammates, Linny and Foil, Sylvia was glad that no one else was around to see her talking to her bee while standing in an empty kitchen.
With Linny off doing her own thing and Pidge either making friends or getting killed, Sylvia had the base to herself.
Although in Creative Life, she knew that she was never alone.
Those dam Watchers were always around and left Sylvia with a prickly feeling of wrongness and being watched that never seemed to go away.
She could feel that prickly wrongness now.
It was probably Ellith.
She didn't feel safe in her own base after meeting Ellith, The Host Watcher. Ellith was the reason for the protective wards that had been hurriedly nailed to the Lotus Lifers lifers front door and any other entrance into their base.
(Just how effective do you think that they will be? It's laughable, really.)
Interacting with any of the watchers never left Sylvia in a good mood. Even if she tried to be nice to Ellith during the picnic, although that was painfully faked and everyone could tell.
Sylvia didn't know if that did anything to help her relationship with the watchers, considering her disdain for anyone who ignored the laws of nature.
Just like what happened with her first death.
From green to yellow.
(Soon to be yellow to red.)
Sylvia was very happy to learn that she wasn't dead forever, but when things were killed they died. When things die, they rot. And those rotting things get reborn into the world.
And she certainly hadn't rotted away yet, but the memory of her death was still festering away in her mind
(Then get rid of it.)
The death was quick.
Quick and painless. Everything you would want in a death.
(That was a lie. Quite a boldfaced one.)
The server was quiet.
It was never quiet.
It was then.
But she wasn't alone.
Those eyes and feelings of wrongness wouldn't let her be.
And Sylvia didn't know what was worse, dying as others stood and watched or getting killed with commentary through every step of her demise.
Sylvia didn't know what was going to happen when she woke up. She didn't know that waking up was an option. Yet as she awoke in her yellow life, with fire in her veins and anger in her heart, along with an unhealthy amount of fear, Sylvia was overjoyed to remember everything that happened in the event up to her death. Her biggest fear about waking up again was that she would have forgotten everyone again.
(That's already happened. Don't you remember Trapmaster?)
But that wasn't the only thing she had felt.
The rotting claws of death dug into her skin as she felt her consciousness slip away, with her mind being filled with the strongest type of fear that paralyzed her.
The fear that she hadn't done enough, didn't know everyone else yet and wasn't important enough to be remembered once the topic of conversation moved on.
She didn't even know if anyone realized that she had died.
And just as she had accepted that she would die in obscurity, Sylvia was jolted back to life by one of those stupid watchers and their ability to break the one constant in her life, the natural world.
And Sylvia hated it.
But she never told anyone.
Would that knowledge be lost with her?
(What's the point of doing anything then?)
You can only lament about your non-existent plans for the future you don't see yourself achieving and your deep-seated fear of being forgotten, until people get bored. And Sylvia had done enough of that for this event.
(That would be memorable. Pity certainly is effective)
No. Sylvia had a task at hand and that task was putting away scones.
That were still sitting on the counter.
(Just move. Come on Trapmaster, move.)
…
She could start with putting on music first.
-+-+-++-+-+-
Sylvia’s record collection was an impressive group of five records that she kept all together in one of her many chests scattered around her room.
She was always delighted to learn about someone else wandering through time and the records left behind were the best way to remember whoever left them behind.
It made her feel like there was someone else out there just like her. Someone who understands what it's like to float through life without goals or memories.
So Sylvia made sure to look around for any records when exploring and when she found a new one, she would clean it off and add it to her collection.
Well whoever left these records around was great at making music but awful at naming things.
If Sylvia ever met that person, she wanted to ask about how they made the records as that kind of recording would guarantee some catalogue of her experiences would be left behind.
“That would be nice.” Sylvia thought as she slipped the record named "cat" into her jukebox, one of her favorite records that didn't sound anything like a cat, and reluctantly returned to the kitchen.
To the scones.
Sylvia didn't even like scones! Or walnuts! It was the only thing her goldfish brain could remember how to make.
Why couldn't she remember why she decided to dump buckets of nutmeg into the batter?
Why had she started forgetting things ever since losing her green life?
The location of her base, how to grind up blaze rods, and even the attendees of the picnic that happened a week ago!
All things that Sylvia knew she should remember but for some reason couldn't.
Why was this so hard?
(The scones are still sitting on your counter.)
(Why can't you just put them away? You have arms, move them.)
…
(What will happen next time? Next death? You only get three lives. What happens afterwards?)
(Will you remember your team? Or will they become strangers who pass you on your travels?)
(What will happen next time?)
…
“Stop it.”
Sylvia mumbled to the empty kitchen, but that never stopped the voices.
No matter how hard she tried, they were always there.
(Answer me Trapmaster. What happens when your luck runs out?)
“I'll put the scones away later.”
(Later doesn't come. Time will keep flying by until you look up and see the scones rotting in front of you with the knowledge that you could have done something to stop it.)
(That it is your fault.)
(You know it is.)
…