Illusion ~ A Short Story

Downfall

Ten Years Later...

Mira and Aziza's already crumbling relationship completely deteriorated after Mira started inflicting his compulsions on every group of travelers that arrived, regardless of whether the group was respectful and appreciative of the hospitality given to them or not. Each individual in every single group of travelers ate a hearty meal of illusioned foods that activated the compulsion to walk across the Desert Sea chasing what they desperately desired despite knowing in the back of their mind that they would never reach it. All Mira wanted was to punish the travelers since they repeatedly took advantage of and damaged their family and home; yet, his mind had become so twisted that he truly couldn't understand why his punishment of the travelers had driven Aziza away from him so much.

Aziza was in such a state of absolute disbelief at Mira's disintegrating morals that she couldn't even bring herself to make a stand against him to attempt to change his ways. Instead, she shut herself off and distanced herself from her twin as much as she could while still living in the same house as him. No longer did she go anywhere in the front of the house where the Dining Room and Back Room resided, preferring to keep to her room, the Solarium, and the Sitting Room. With each harvest of the crops she tended to, their food supplies increased, allowing Aziza to store food for herself in the Solarium, which completely negated the need to go to the Back Room. While the increased amount of food was a positive development for the twins, it did nothing to curb the growing awareness of their isolation in the middle of the Desert Sea.

To pass the time, Aziza took to reading the books their parents had collected, but once she finished them, there were no other stories available to her to help pass the time. It didn't take long after that for her to start collecting the various empty scrolls and writing utensils scattered around the house so that she could write her own new stories. At first, she didn't dare write down any of her own thoughts and feelings out of fear of Mira going through her things and reading them; however, eventually, she realized that she could create her own way of writing that Mira wouldn't be able to read, allowing her a freedom she hadn't had previously. Mira had been quick to pick up on Aziza's interest in writing after he noticed piles of scrolls started appearing in the Solarium, so he searched through the abandoned travelers' belongings in hopes of finding things that Aziza would appreciate.

A part of her wanted to reject each offering Mira left in the Solarium for her, knowing where they had come from and why she was receiving them in the first place, but as the years passed, she became reliant on them since she had burned through all of the other supplies she had accumulated from around the house. In hopes of bringing herself some comfort for her compliance in Mira's actions against the travelers, she created a makeshift shrine for herself in the Solarium to the gods. There, she was able to pray for forgiveness and leniency for her part in the ill-doings against the travelers coming to their home asking for hospitality. She lived in fear that one of the travelers who arrived at their home would actually be a God in disguise and would bring their wrath down onto the twins.

One day, Aziza sat in front of her shrine to the gods and prayed that someone would come to save her by taking her away from her home so she could explore and learn about the rest of the world. As she got lost in her prayers, she didn't realize that she was actually saying the prayers out loud, nor Mira's presence just outside the Solarium, listening to everything she said in her prayers.

Mira tightly clenched his fists and retreated away from Aziza and the Solarium back to the dining room. He angrily paced the room as he attempted to figure out how to prevent Aziza from leaving. His rational thoughts had been long gone, or he would have realized that Aziza had made no attempts to interact with any of the travelers that had arrived in the past decade, thus her chances of actually meeting someone who could take her away from there were slim to none. But since his mind was trapped in darkness from his excessive use of his illusion abilities, he began to hatch a plot of how to convince her not to leave him. Despite their separation and lack of communication, he still wanted Aziza to stay there with him as he hoped one day he would be able to repair his relationship with her.

His fractured mind began to weave together the plans of creating a person via illusion that Aziza could connect with and use the illusion as a way to convince her that she didn't need to leave the Desert Sea to learn about the world around her. He incorporated everything he knew that Aziza would like into the illusioned person but still autonomous enough that she wouldn't be able to tell it was one of his creations. It took a while to perfect the illusion, as well as continuing to listen in on Aziza's prayers to add more of what she was hoping for into the illusion, but after a few short weeks, Mira perfected the illusion.

Not wanting to waste any more time, Mira immediately dispatched the illusion to start making connections with Aziza and made sure to introduce the illusion in a seamless enough way to alarm her. To his complete surprise, she completely accepted the illusioned person and grew quite close with them in a short amount of time. It was like a sigh of relief for Aziza, being able to actually connect and interact with another person after an entire decade of solitude. She loved interacting with them as they happily told her stories about the world beyond the Desert Sea and about their own travels around the world, making sure not to leave out even the smallest of details to truly immerse her in the places they visited.

However, as quickly as she had grown attached to them, everything she knew to be reality came crashing down upon her by just one single off-hand comment they made. As soon as the comment left the lips of the illusioned person, Aziza started to realize the fairytale she had been living with the person was just that, a fairytale. All of the connections and memories she had made with them were completely fake, a farce Mira had created to get closer to her again. Any hope she might have had of ever reconciling with Mira became whispers in the breeze as she began to question if anything that had occurred in the time she spent with the illusioned person had truly occurred or if it was just another part of the illusion. And as much as she wanted to abruptly stop all interaction with the illusioned person as it was becoming too much for her to bear, she had absolutely no idea how Mira would react or do to her if he knew that she was aware it was truly an illusion.

Instead of doing what she so desperately wanted to do, Aziza picked herself back up and put on a happy, ignorant mask as she attempted to figure out what she could do to free herself from the situation. Finally, she decided to do what had gotten her into this whole mess, to begin with, she returned to her shrine to the gods in the Solarium and prayed. Aziza prayed with her entire being, desperately hoping that the gods would hear her prayer and help her, unlike her previous prayers. She continued to recite the same prayer over and over in her mind in front of the shrine as much as she could possibly get away with without it being suspicious to the illusion and, ultimately, Mira.

When the illusion began to question her constant prayers in front of the shrine, Aziza hoped her casual brushing the question off by saying she wanted to make sure the gods heard her prayer of being grateful to them for sending such a great companion was enough to redirect them. But as the days continued to fly by without a single acknowledgment from the gods of even receiving her prayer, Aziza began to wonder if she would ever be able to get free from Mira's manipulations and deceitful illusions.