Daybreak

Eighteen - Odilia

Odilia felt like taking a big dump.

    She'd been holding it in for hours now; ever since the prince had given her dinner. Cooing from discomfort, Odilia hoped that the cries of a bird would go unnoticed. Luckily Merlin, or Kenta, as Odilia quickly learned was the young man's other name, stood talking to another samurai by the doorway. Their conversation was short and soon Merlin's full attention was back on Odilia who flapped her uninjured wing in desperation.

    "What's wrong?" Merlin asked. He seemed to rather recognize the habits of a very large bird like herself, because soon he'd scooped her up gently and quickly took her to a patch of dirt outdoors so that she could relieve herself like a four-legged animal.

    Odilia stared at Merlin intently with her golden eyes till Merlin looked away.

    "Okay, okay," Merlin held up his hands, turning his back on her. "Birds need privacy, I get it," although Odilia could hear the confused tone in his voice as if he couldn't believe what he was doing for a bird.

    When she was done, Merlin took Odilia back to the lounge where a pile of paperwork and books lay on the coffee table. It was the prince's unattended work, which Merlin promptly filed through after setting Odilia down next to him.

    Odilia unconsciously stretched her neck out so her tiny bird's head and beak would rest on Merlin's thigh. She watched him work, but it was boring unlike her own Va'ti's, Erwin's work as a medic.

    A sense of yearning for her adoptive father fell over Odilia. It's been over a week since she'd last talked to him. She wondered if he'd noticed her absence. If anyone has. If so, then were they looking for her? By Merlin's tranquil shuffling of the prince's work, it didn't feel like that was the case. Then again, Odilia didn't know if a report of a missing person of the villages was subject to alarm anyone within the palace walls.

    Odliia shifted her position, attracting attention from Merlin who began to stroke her obsidian feathers. She thought he might say something and peeked up at Merlin's jawline. However, his focus was still on the paperwork, his pen making a small scritch scritch as he flipped through them.

    He remained silent the whole time after too, so feeling bored and eventually drowsy, Odilia fell asleep.

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    Odilia stood in front of a grand mirror, fanning out her wings in a proud display. Black, and the white at the tail, between her eyes, and shoulders. She admired herself, the beauty of being a bird leaving her in awe. She flexed her giant wings and gathered the energy within herself.

    Then released.

    Odilia shifted and then instead of an eagle, a girl stood before the mirror. She was smiling. Tall and willowy with the slender frame of a bamboo stalk, the girl's hand lifted to touch her hair. It was red as a maple leaf in autumn and contrasted against her black taffeta empire dress like blood.

    Then the girl noticed something. A smudge of stain in the mirror.

    Annoyed, Odilia took a corner of her long, dark sleeve and rubbed against the glass. The stain was suddenly a crack in the mirror and it began to stem out like a latticework of thin webs. Growing ever so frustrated, Odilia furrowed her brow, bending forwards so that she could pick at it. Her nose was almost touching the nose of her reflection.

    Odilia saw beneath the mirror, there was a deep, dark hole. For some reason, Odilia felt she had to uncover it to get there. She knew there was something there on the other side. Odilia groped at the mirror and pulled out all the pieces, ignoring the sharp pain of glass piercing skin.

She didn't notice the pattering of red hitting the floor beneath her feet. The drip, drip, drip of blood was like the rhythm of her heart. The crimson blood flowed unnoticed until she swam through it to fit herself into the hole she'd made in the mirror.

Odilia fell into darkness and found herself looking at a door. It looked familiar.

It was an old Kuroban-style sliding  paper door with a wooden frame. Geometric designs crossed the thin paper in a rhythmic pattern. There was movement behind that door, like people dancing.

Odilia pushed against the door and slid it open. A sort of desperate smile strained across her face–

And fell.

Orange and red flames licked up towards the ceiling and lit the room. Suddenly Odilia could hear thunder and lightning flash from the windows lined up against the wall. Odilia watched the nightmare of four years ago as her sister screamed "Save us!" and the wind rattled against the window panes.

The flames were a tornado.

The events Odilia tried to forget played before her.

"Get us out of here!" Ai begged. "You can do magic. I know you can."

Odilia could see the silhouette of her younger self in the tornado. "I can't!" All the other girls whimpered by the far wall through blurry eyes. Flames were at their feet. "It's not aloud," the Hakusei sobbed through the flames.

"Please save us!" cried the girls who'd lit the matchstick.

"Please..." begged Ai. "If you don't we'll all die."

Then Odilia heard her younger self speak, but it wasn't her voice. It was dark and deep and rose high like the fire. It spoke to her. "If you reverse the spell, you will lose all of yours."

And the flames consumed everything as it slowly crept up to her in the doorway.

When the fire began to lick her toes, she found that she was no longer a tall, willowy figure. She was short and wore a dirty, fading kimono. Her hair was long, matted, and a greasy gray.

"If you reverse the spell, you would lose everything," repeated the voice. "Do you really want that?"

Odilia shook her head, her voice stuck in her throat. She tried to step back, but her legs wouldn't move. Her eyes blurred as the fire rose around her and reached out to her like binds.

"Do you really want that?"

"Do you really want that, Saihi?"

Odilia blinked bleary eyes and saw that Merlin had abandoned his seat on the couch and stood staring at the prince who stood in the archway of the doors leading into the lounge.