Two young girls explore a shattered world, filled with sound: a past to be uncovered...
Each awakens in this blank, ruin-dotted world to discover that she is equally blank, remembering nothing of what came before.
And then they make a second discove...
A joyous landscape. For so long, she has walked through a ruined yet beautiful world, finding things and admiring them.
For so long she's traveled shepherding glass that the sky has become a mirror bending light as far as she can see, and shaped almost geodesically. The fantastic and glittering roof never leaves her, and with her surrounded by only fancies and goodness, the world has become endless bliss.
She traipses down a spiral staircase that once led into a manor, but the walls have now all fallen and memories replace them. It is all the better: she leaps out ahead and dashes the memories everywhere, basking in sparkling Arcaea that, when she finds them, float up to join the others in her artificial sky. So enraptured now, she laughs with cheer.
A flower, a kiss, a love, a birth: a life followed by a new life in a river of glass flies past her eyes and blends into the rest. She has seen this reflected countless times, and it still pleases her.
She gazes at the wall above. As they've come together, they've grown more vibrant. She smiles, satisfied, before she wanders on again. And, as ever, heedless of all consequence.
They say that this is true: anything in excess is a poison. She either didn't know, or hadn't cared.
The girl now walks past what seemed to have been an old concert hall, the impact of its grandness dulled as it had been split perfectly in twain, as if some higher power had willed it so. Out of the tomb of sound drift memories again: of dances, of performance, hopes, victories.
Her mouth twitches. Has it simply become boring, or is this something else? She lifts her hands and the Arcaea come to her, gently weaving over her palms and through her fingers. Blankly she notes them. How many times has she seen the last hurrah of a retiring band? How many times has she seen two brothers embrace? Too many times she's seen the formation of a love, so frequent it was apparently standard in old and forgotten worlds.
She lets the memories go, and genuinely thinks nothing of it.
They rise. They fly to join with the memories she's still been gathering, and she looks at their destination now. It's grown much brighter since she began her collecting. It seems to grow brighter every day...
How many days has it even been? She winces, and a grimace twists onto her face. She shakes it away.
Maybe she only needs more, then whatever is missing will be found. She calms herself and carries on, not letting it bother her that no matter what, she cannot push the Arcaea following her away.
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"Heaven" is a kind of hell.
The truth is, idle peace and thoughtless pleasure are anathema to passion. Imbibing and imbibing of happy things endlessly dulls the senses and makes "happiness" indistinct, blurred, and ultimately without purpose. Now nothing has a purpose. She'd never had a purpose.
The sky is almost blinding.
She may be wandering, or she may be standing still; she isn't sure and it doesn't matter. The sky she's made has her attention, but the memories within it can't be sorted out. It has all become an opaque and overpowering haze compelling emptiness. She is losing her self.
And as she is losing her self, she remains numb to the encroaching dissolution. Though she did not remember, she invited this pleasurable and suffocating cage, and she locked herself within it. Now she lacks even the will to worry.
The sky grows brighter and she loses more of herself. With little time for her left, she stares upward as if waiting. Bright, bright, bliss, beauty above: effulgent memory overtakes her.
Her mind whites out.
And, without meaning, light fades away.
Without meaning, time passes.
And a girl stares up into an empty sky, her mind ended, and thus her story along with it.
