Another Way

Chapter 12: Daybreak

Sue remembered little of the rest of the day that followed her heart to heart with the village's mayor, her exhausted mind slipping in and out of consciousness throughout, entire hours reduced to a single moment her tired self could recall afterwards. Being held by Solstice in silence for somewhere between minutes and hours, enough for the sky to start taking on a more orange hue, before being half guided, half carried back to the village, her walking left even clumsier than usual. Eventually ending up back at Willow's little clinic, and then in bed immediately afterwards, intermittent images of the pink and cream medic tending to her before she dozed off yet again throughout the evening. The very final recollection of them standing in the doorway, the faint candle light from the night stand only barely illuminating them against the backdrop of an almost moonless night.

And then... she was here again.

For once, the once human decided to take her time before springing head first into yet another scene haunting her dreams, the recollection of the actual campfire this facsimile was based on still fresh on her mind and rawer than ever. Maybe if she just pushed herself hard enough, she could force herself to snap out of this dream here and now and be spared all the imagery that mere weeks ago made her turn her head the other way whenever she by chance spotted it in her daily life. Maybe if she told Duck and Night Father off firmly enough, they'd leave this recollection alone and not defile it any further with their presence. Maybe she was just being repeatedly tested, almost every single night since she'd ended up here, and would be stuck in this world until she cracked some sort of deeper puzzle in her dreams she wasn't even aware of.

As intriguing and amusing as each of these possibilities was in their own metric, some of them appealing to her in the current moment more than others, there was little she could do without knowing just what she was in for this time, or even who she would have to tell off. And so, with a deep breath, Sue turned her gaze skyward and opened her eyes, determined to stare down whichever deity was-

The Moon was not there.

The recollection took its sweet time to fully settle in, the Forest Guardian confusedly looking around the rest of the starry sky in hopes of spotting the usually unmistakable celestial body, or even just a Moon-sized hole in the astral backdrop, but no, nothing. No Moon, be it full or new, no clouds, only an endless canvas of darkness dotted with uncountable pinpricks of light, a couple of them moving across it.

Sue hesitated a bit before lowering her eyeline and taking in the rest of the recollection, having absolutely no idea what she would end up seeing, the sky being simultaneously so familiar yet so deeply wrong chilling her to the core. Still, it wasn't like she could avoid having to face it all sooner or later, taking a deep breath, then another, and then going for it in one swift motion, mind hoping it was ready for whichever horrors would end up lurking just out of sight-

Okay, this is... slightly less unnerving.

Most of the scene appeared to look exactly how she remembered it, with only a couple differences, though they were pretty major ones. To her right, on the next bench over, laid her mom's guitar, the same one she played on that evening, the same cheap wood and even cheaper looking varnish, the same out of tone strings, a couple of them due for a replacement years ago, the same magic-themed stickers that Sue remembered going ham with after her parents grabbed her a pack on the flea market covering most of its sides and front, a few in the process of flaking off. The details rushed into her mind one by one, most of them thought long since faded from memory, the once student forcefully prying her head away from the guitar to look in the other direction, the changes there larger if more disjointed.

There was a closed door standing nonchalantly off to the side, golden frame and ebony wood giving it an otherworldly appearance, even putting aside the absurd fact of its mere presence there. In front of it rested a small, pink jewelry pillow, with a pair of shiny semicircles she was sitting too away from to pick up on any detail on resting on top of it. Their combined appearance was stark and vivid enough that all they needed was a large wobbling "Click Me!" popup to truly complete them, the realization forcefully diffusing the tension by the virtue of Sue giggling quietly at her own humor.