[Memory Crystal Two: Little Butterfly]

  Maya's Perspective:

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  Marcel left to gods-know-where after that. Part of me still wanted him to stay and explain himself; another part wanted nothing to do with him at all. A small, annoying part of me held onto potential forgiveness, naive as it was.

  And the more time passed, the larger that part of me grew.

  It was hard to suppress, especially with the pounding headache behind my eyes and the emotional swings I’d started developing. I certainly didn’t want to, but a little, nagging voice said, maybe now… Maybe now he’ll realize how much his absence hurt me. Maybe now, he’ll put down his—

  Delusional…

  Eliza intermittently brought medicine, though it was ineffective. Clear-blossom runes did nothing but wake Val. My headache seemed to worsen, and my chest felt like it was bleeding inside.

  I got up off the mat and stumbled my way toward the door.

  “Get back on the mat, Maya,” Eliza warned sternly.

  “I’m going to see Hugo,” I replied. “I have an idea.”

  “Then say that before walking off!”

  “You wouldn’t approve at all,” I shook my head.

  “Then what does that tell you? And how can I protect you if you leave? Stay, Maya.”

  “You’re a doctor, Eliza. The best one I know, so you might not understand my point of view… I know you hate reckless behavior, but I truly, genuinely have nothing to lose anymore.”

  Eliza flushed red, spluttering over her own words while I left the infirmary. The sky was red; I had no idea how long I’d been with Eliza, but it was late evening.

  My vision blurred as I walked; I almost felt drunk. On my way, I’d vomited in my dizziness, but eventually, I made it to Hugo’s forge.

  “Hugo!” I called, leaning heavily against the wall. My vision briefly blackened from the exertion.

  “Maya? At this time of day?” He turned the corner to greet me. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “If you don’t know already,” I huffed breathlessly, “you don’t want to.”

  “…what happened?” he asked, concern decorating his face.

  “Can you pull a memory crystal for me?” I asked, ignoring his question. He smiled.

  “Any time,” he said, leading me to the back room. Eliza had said that nothing could be done for me, but I wasn’t ready to accept that. Perhaps having the memory removed and destroyed might mitigate the symptoms, I thought.

  Perhaps it might kill me instead.

  I sat in Hugo’s chair and let him fasten me in place.

  “Alright,” he said, picking up his hammer. “Just think about what you want to think about.”

  I wanted to think about the experience as a whole, but I kept distracting myself with the emotions I was feeling. When Val and I had first seen the Snow Leopard on the ridge. The torture I’d experienced when he pulled the crystal. How I’d have done anything, anything, to keep him away from me and Val…

  A purple glow flooded the whole room as Hugo gently pulled the crystal. I tensed slightly; it felt like I was wounding myself all over again. It’s this or amnesia, I convinced myself.

  “It’s… heavy,” Hugo remarked as the crystal came free. He peered into it, squinting against its brightness.

  “Can you untie me now?” I asked him. My hypothesis had been correct: my headache immediately subsided the moment the crystal left my head, along with my queasiness and chest pain. All that was left was the horrid memory itself, which I would forget the moment I destroyed the crystal—

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me what happened to you?” Hugo asked sternly. “I could’ve killed you just now!”

  I remained silent.

  “You had a memory forcibly ripped from your head,” he fumbled with my wrist straps, stumbling over his anger, “and your response was to draw another one out!?”

  “I had to do something!” I rubbed my wrists as I was freed. “You want me to sit by and let delusions take me?”

  “How do you know that what you did won’t exacerbate your symptoms? You’re out of your depth! We all are.”

  Hugo dealt with emotional, psyche runes; they were the secret Snowcrest had been hiding from Reminisce. Because he was the only one who could forge them, Hugo was much wiser than he let on. He was effectively Eliza’s psychological equivalent.

  So for him to say he was out of his depth…

  “Well, I was planning on destroying it anyway.”

  “Destroying it? I thought you were making a rune—”

  “I asked you to pull a crystal, I said nothing about runeforging.”

  “Well, now that it’s out, destroying it is a horrible idea. What if it doesn’t work and you still have to deal with symptoms? You won’t even remember what caused them! No one should live like that.”

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  “Then what would you do?”

  “Well, right now…” he said slowly, de-escalating, “you are very fearful. I’m not sure what’s happened to you since that Syndicate dog violated you and Val, but it’s clear that your… experience is governing your choices.”

  “How could it not? That’s—”

  “Exactly,” he interrupted. “But you have an opportunity you may not have realized. You can command this experience instead of suffering the other way ’round.”

  “You just want an excuse to forge a rune, don’t you?”

  “Well, admittedly, that’s part of it. But it also could be symbolic. The beginning of a transformation: not a victim, but a survivor.”

  “I want the crystal destroyed, Hugo.” I was barely holding myself together. I could feel my nails digging into my palms.

  “You want to give up and let that bastard win?”

  “He already did!” I screamed. “He already did! He mortally wounded my sister, he took my brother gods-know-where, probably killed or injured him too! Half of Snowcrest wants me gone, and the other half couldn’t give a damn either way—so what am I holding onto!? What option is there other than giving up!? This is the only choice I can actually control while everything else crumbles around me, and now you wanna take that from me, too!?”

  “I’m not taking anything from you, Maya,” he said calmly. “I’m giving you something: agency. I see you exercising it in your small, rebellious ways—but you haven’t yet grown into yourself. It’s too soon—”

  “Too soon? It’s too late! I should’ve given up way sooner. Twelve years. That’s how long it’s been since anyone has given a shit about me—”

  “That’s a damn lie, and you know it!” he shouted. “I just watched your sister take an ice pick to the gut for you now you want to squander her sacrifice? Your brother has been bleeding out for you for twelve years, and you have the auda—”

  “He’s the first offender! He’s Syndicate. That’s why he’s been leaving for so lon—”

  “You think I don’t already know that!?”

  “…what!?”

  “I knew the moment he joined. I’ve known all this time.”

  “Why in the hell would you not tell anybody!?”

  “Do you not know who you’re talking to? I’ve seen every memory crystal that’s ever exited everybody’s brain; the best of it, and the worst of it. Everyone is more of a sinner than they let on, and everybody has their reasons—especially him! I’ve seen damn near every one of his crystals, and you are in all of them, Maya! Even when he’s standing right in front of you, you’re the only thing he thinks about—and if you want, I can literally prove it! So don’t dare ever say he doesn’t care about you in my presence—do you understand me!?”

  “Maybe he cares, but not more than his little ‘adventures!’ Not more than being a sell-sword or assassin or whatever the hell a Tiger Fang is!”

  “Wrong. Again. If that were true, he’d stay gone—but he always returns, doesn’t he? He always brings gifts, doesn’t he? He always tries to fill in the gaps doesn’t he!?”

  “Tries to fill in the gaps he created himself! It’s his own fault!”

  “Is it? Or is it the literal man-eating monsters who felled your country in a matter of weeks? For someone who’s been through so much in your short life, how can you be so selfish? You don’t even remember what happened, you don’t know what he sacrificed, much less what was taken from him. What was taken from you!”

  “I—”

  “I know everything about you, Maya I’ve seen your crystals too. I’ve even cast them on myself, invasive as that may be. I know you’re petrified of being an outcast, and you subsist on others’ approval—”

  “Of course I do, and I’m proud of it! You all saved our lives, why wouldn’t I want your approval? Why wouldn’t I want to give back to you?”

  “I’m telling you that that is poison. You swear these people don’t care about you, yet you still cling to the slightest iota of recognition and kill yourself trying to get it—even if they never see or reciprocate your effort.”

  “That recognition is what brought me twelve years, and it will bring me twelve more—”

  “But you don’t want that, do you? You want to be yourself, don’t you? You want to save yourself, don’t you!?”

  “I—” I spluttered. I couldn’t lie about it. He was right. How many times had I been saved, just in the past few days. Even in the smallest, simplest ways.

  And the bitterness I’ve always felt…

  “There’s the answer,” Hugo huffed, “and you can’t even deny it. But I’m not here to antagonize you. I’m an engineer: I find problems, and I fix them.” He held up the purple crystal. “If you want those things, and if you want to define yourself, then… this is step one.”

  “You know what, Hugo?” I glowered at him. “Fine.”

  ***

  Hours. I remained in the forge for hours, waiting for Hugo to create my new rune. I had my arms crossed on the seat, ignoring him as he worked. I knew what my most prevalent emotion had been during the Snow Leopard… encounter. It wasn’t valor or bravery. When was the last time I’d been so afraid that I couldn’t move or even speak?

  “You know, Maya,” he started, pulling his crucible from the furnace, “I’ve seen what happened in Cosmara from your brother’s perspective.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?” I snapped, as he poured the runic pitch into a mold. “You just raved about me needing to ‘save myself’ from others, and now you’re bringing up my brother’s trauma.”

  DOOON!

  “Not your brother’s trauma,” he said as he cast a Frost rune on the mold, “but my greatest sin.”

  “It seems sinning has been in style for a long time, then.”

  “He asked me to forge the crystal into a rune for him. Psychological. It was some of the worst experiences I’d ever seen, but I did it. I wanted him to command his trauma, just as I want you to command yours. But he didn’t want growth, no, no… Those eyes… he’d visited hell and wanted to visit it on others. I didn’t see it. I failed him.”

  “You failed him?”

  “By creating his rune, I’d sent him into his spiral. That single moment put him where he is now. That rune… ‘Despair,’ it read. Gods…” The runic pitch cooled into a glowing, purple rune. He floated it out of the mold, but I couldn’t read its name.

  “A Despair rune?” I asked. After Cosmara, Snowcrest was the only place that could manufacture emotional runes; but we didn’t often use them. They often tempted one to coerce and control others; another exemption from Snowcrestian culture.

  “All of this is my fault. I took your brother from you. For all intents and purposes, I created the Tiger’s Fang. But perhaps I can atone. You have the same look in your eyes that he did… but you’re different. He wanted to shed blood, so much so that he didn’t see that it was his own sister that had been bleeding. So my prayer is that, with this, you’ll finally be able to staunch your wounds.”

  He turned the rune around, and my breath caught in my throat. The rune, glowing an almost malevolent purple, read one word:

  Fear.

  ***

  “Well enough to be out and about, but not to stand trial?” Thorin grumbled as I stepped into the infirmary.

  “I’m warning you now,” Eliza said, while I ignored him and went back to my mat. He was sitting defeatedly next to Val, who’d again covered her head to hide from him.

  “No, no,” I waved reassuringly, speaking explicitly to Eliza. “My hypothesis was correct. I actually feel a lot better now. Physically, at least.”

  “Really?” she approached me and touched my forehead. “Wow… how did you do it?”

  “Well, Hugo yelled at me a lot…”

  “You had him pull a crystal, didn’t you?”

  “Nothing wrong with a little experimentation.”

  “I held my tongue when you told me where you were going,” she sighed, “but that was extremely dangerous, Maya.”

  “Lesser of two evils,” I dismissed. I didn’t tell her about the Fear rune. Nobody had to know about it.

  Yet.

  I grabbed Marcel’s crystals from the floor and started toward the door.

  “Where are you going now?” Eliza asked. I intended to go back home, wash my sheets finally and sleep in my own bed. But if Thorin heard that…

  “I don’t want… him staring at me all day,” I grumbled, simply.

  Eliza glared at Thorin but huffed and nodded with understanding. I took that as permission and made my way out of the infirmary.

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