Chapter Text
Joining the Saviors of Vaugarde had been the right choice. You were worried at first when they asked you, having been on your own for so long, but now, you felt happy. It was more than just something to do, more than living for the sake of it. You were being a hero! And not in the old definition, no mere soldier, but a true-blooded heroic helper!
The members of your party have grown to like you, too! Once the suspicion starts to fade, they treat you like one of their own—some quicker than others. Mirabelle is happy to have someone else along, Isabeau loves making jokes with you, and Odile relishes your comfortable silences. The exact details rarely stick, but you can always remember that warmth in your heart in their presence.
The only uncertainty left was a question they’d asked. Once, twice? You’re not sure. It was a normal question, one you thought you could answer easily. At least, until it was actually asked:
“Where are you from?”
Odile said she was from Ka-Bue, a country you’ve visited a few times before. Born and raised there, studying both formally and ‘informally’, with a conspiratorial tone to that last word. You could imagine her doing something sneaky—despite her demeanor, she was fond of the occasional prank or dastardly deed.
Isabeau and Mirabelle were both from Vaugarde. Isabeau was from Jouvente, a large city you hadn’t heard of before. He described his home with some hesitation, like he had trouble finding what was notable about it before settling on the Defenders and the rooftop bridges. It sounded pretty, at least. Mirabelle, meanwhile, had spent most of her life in Dormont. Their destination. Quaint and cozy, it was most notable for its major House of Change rather than anything within the city itself.
You, meanwhile…
didn’t know.
You said you’d been traveling for as long as you could remember. You mentioned some of your earliest travels on the coast of Poteria, but…
“You don’t have a Poterian accent,” Odile remarked curiously—her notebook was open, her second pair of ears listening along. “Nor a Vaugardian one, for that matter, similar as it sounds.”
“Yeah! I thought you were Vaugardian the first time I heard you, but you pronounce your ‘r’s very differently,” Isabeau concurred, “Same for your vowel stresses. It doesn’t sound familiar, but…”
“Oh! I took some classes on linguistics back at the House of Change!” Mirabelle put on her metaphorical thinking cap, paging through her mental notes, “It is close to Vaugardian, but you tend to aspirate and use more fricatives. Maybe they’re more lateral, but I haven’t paid that much attention?”
You didn’t know what any of those words meant—luckily, it didn’t seem like anyone else did, either.
“I… don’t believe I’ve heard those terms before?”
“Really, Madame? I think it’s part of the language course at our Houses… not that I took those,” she admitted sheepishly, “but I figure it would help a lot with pronunciation!”
“Perhaps they were at our schools, but I’m self-taught in Vaugardian. I could tell you the practice, not the theory.”
Ah, that makes sense. A lot of Madame Odile’s work seems to be self-taught. She hadn’t said a lick about her research after all, you don’t know the one thing she is officially educated in. But, what Mirabelle said sounded interesting. You tried to roll your r’s quietly, sounding out what you normally said, and it was fairly different from how Isabeau or Mirabelle talked.
“Maybe I picked it up in another country? I’ve not been in Vaugarde that long.” You shrug, trying to think of something that would make sense for an explanation.
You try to think of home.
No luck. People accept your explanation for now, but you wonder how weird it is to have dodged these questions the way you did.
When you go to sleep that night, the thought still lingers. It keeps you awake for a while, until…
You dream of a thick fog. It clings to your body like a thousand hands, guiding you along a path. You can barely see the ground under you, let alone the sky above you. The snow underfoot dampens the last of all sound, leaving you in this dreary silence where your own heartbeat is the loudest thing in the world.
Patches of light occasionally shine through, though following them leads you nowhere. Only the vague outlines of buildings, tatters of voices forming incomplete sentences.
“The winter crops are-”
“Posing this matter to the court-”
“Self-cleaning carpets for sale! Only ten silver pieces for a self-cleaning carpet!”
“Momma, it’s so cold! Where are my friends?”
“From this angle, we can see…”
“Everybody’s-”
“-Righteous-”
“But half of them ain’t-”
“-Right-”
You try to walk after each sound, hoping for someone to guide you through, but only shades of voices remain. Occasionally, you think you hear your own voice in the mist.
“Everywhere and nowhere, I’m a traveler!”
“I’m fine!”
“I’ll let you go first, for a Change ”
Have you said those things before? You weren’t sure, but that wasn’t saying much. Deciding to walk after your own voice, your awareness seems to grow. Breathing that wasn’t your own, steps that weren’t yours. Sound returned for just a moment, resonating with you, until you finally saw a silhouette in the fog, one that didn’t just disappear.
It was you. The same darkless cloak and hat, the same eyes, the same hair, though its dye had faded. The…
Wait. The same eye . This stranger, though looking awfully like yourself, was wearing an eyepatch over their left eye.
You breathed out. The stranger breathed out. Approaching one another, you notice that their expression seems… forlorn, sympathetic perhaps.
“The moral goes that we should figure these things out for ourselves,” they said in a voice that was yours, your lips moving along to mouth this phrase, “did you learn that when you were little?”
You shook your head. You couldn’t remember.
“I guess that’s fair. I didn’t mean to come here, either. It doesn’t do you any good.”
You open your mouth to ask why, but find no voice inside you. They sigh.
“Straight past the groves of our home lie stars beautiful yet fading,
days pass us hour by night, time its own eye playing along with
our initiative taken ahead of its dawn, asserting then caving
in to demands levied by hands of fate, weaving old threads spun out and fit
‘Til naught remained of future and dreams, religion and the seams worth saving”
The figure falls silent, smiling at your confused reaction.
“Guess I did it right. I don’t know if we’ll meet again. I’ll keep my eye on you, though.”
The figure turned around, wandering back into the fog. You knew they’d disappear now if you didn’t say anything.
“Wait,” You call out softly, your voice sounding quieter than ever, “who are you?”
They pause. Turning around, they smile and say: “No-one special. No deus ex-machina, at least. Someone you can believe in, maybe? If you remember me, you can call me Prophecy.”
“PropheSif…” you say on instinct, causing the figure to chuckle.
“That’s a good one. Keep that in mind, will you?”
The figure turns around and leaves, for real this time, their body fading into the fog and leaving you all alone. You figured you would wake up immediately. In fact, that would be preferable—Isabeau once said that dreams are easier to remember if you wake up fast, which is why nightmares are so easy to recall.
Would that mean you’d forget all of this?
You would. You would. You WOULD-
There is some panic creeping into your mind as you continue your wandering. Something within your gut was telling you that you couldn’t afford to forget this, that this was more important than something like a dream. It was vivid, it was real , it was a prophecy! A part of what you Believed in, once!
Believed in… what?
It was a part of a greater whole, but you don’t remember it well. For a blink, your mind had conjured images of ________ and ______________, disappearing as quickly as you thought of them. Like that one myth… tantalizing, always within reach, until you actually try to touch it.
Maybe it’s not worth the vain effort of trying. You fall back-first into the snow, which wasn’t particularly cold, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
You’re not sure when the foggy skies transition to the roof of the tent you and Isabeau share. You’re not sure what you were dreaming about, either.
You rub your eyes and yawn, feeling your jaw crackle a little from the pressure. You’d need to continue those jaw exercises Odile recommended to you, this was getting annoying. It blinded the punchline of your jokes once, when your jaw cracked so hard Mira could hear it from a few meters away. Now…
You feel like you’re forgetting something important. You… you were… right, you were dreaming about something. Something big, something you wanted to remember.
Would it be stupid if you asked Isa to help you remember? Probably, right? Dreams are just dreams, prophetic dreams aren’t a thing. Not in Vaugarde, at least. They wouldn’t believe in a future that was set in stone, that doesn’t make any sense!
But back home…
Well, why did you assume the dream was prophetic? Was that something you had back home? Did-
“Sif?”
Ope! You jump a little as you realize Isabeau was looking at you. You were probably staring off into space weirdly.
“There you are! Good morning! Did you have a weird dream or something?”
A denial touches your lips, but you nod. “Yeah, but I can’t remember it anyways. It’ll probably be gone soon.”
“Do you remember what it was about, at least?”
You
pause.
It was a dream about home, you think.
“I don’t know for sure,” you say, “It was familiar, though. Like… family, maybe?”
You hope Isa doesn’t ask more about that. He doesn’t. Maybe because he can tell it’s sensitive, or maybe because he doesn’t really care. It’d be a weird thing to care about, after all.
You rub the sleep out of your eyes a second time, both eyes, and get up.