Arcaea: The World of Glass

[Short] Scarlet Cage

She kept expecting there to be more people here.

She wasn't sure why. All around her was a white wasteland, filled with nothing but faded, ruined
buildings, bereft of all life—all except for her.

In these few days since waking up in this place, without any recollection of what happened before, she walked quite far and explored what she could. The tattered structures did little to answer her questions. Each of them was empty... and while she found the architecture itself familiar, she seemed to have no memory of when she'd learned their names, their shapes, their functions.

Time and again, that was the idea she'd come back to: knowing "what", but not "why". It could be the idea was just a distraction for her, something to ponder in favor of the more obvious, weightier things regarding this world—and inside herself.

She had to say, though: this was certainly a bizarre and bewildering place.

She pulled her guitar's strap tightly over her shoulder, and the questions returned. Where had she gotten it? Why in the world was it with her? Despite having woken up alongside it, she couldn't answer those questions. She only knew to pluck the strings to make sounds, to hold the strings over the frets to create others. To strum them in time, to create rhythms, melodies, chords, harmonies. More than that, it was almost... comforting, when she held in her hands.

But why? No, she did not know why. Why didn't she?

The sand around her—eroded over eons by water. No water here. No liquid, even. How was there
sand? Walking. She knew how to do that. Why? She had no answer. She never had any answers.

For what it was worth, was any of this knowledge even "memory" at all?
Was she "remembering" these things? Had she "forgotten" other things?
It seemed to her she had amnesia, but was amnesia this... selective?

Knowing things, but not knowing why that knowledge existed within her, had her deeply and
fundamentally upset. It made her feel like an incomplete person. Like someone had removed her skin and muscles and bones and placed them into some false container, but had forgotten to put in all the other important things, leaving her hollow, forgotten.

She hated not knowing.

A kaleidoscope of questions shifted and rotated in her mind. She forced herself to focus on all the sudden and overwhelming turns and angles. But answers? Again, no. There were no answers.

During her barefooted expeditions (she decided early on to keep her shoes looped around her
neck, since the large heels were inconvenient for the terrain) she'd learned next to nothing.
In fact, the more she saw, the less she felt that she knew.

She hated not knowing. She knew so many things about what was around her, and yet she felt
like she knew nothing of herself. So much of what she saw was baffling nonsense—not least of all the glass wandering through the air for seemingly no reason. Glass that showed her other people, other times, other worlds. Reflections, resonating in the oddest ways. Reflections, she thought, which were undoubtedly familiar.

Yet the familiarity was but a feeling. The glass never showed her in their reflections.
These were not scenes of a remembered past.
These were not memories... or, at least, they were not hers, these Arcaea. Nothing was hers.

Deep down, her emotions shifted. With that shift came a growing sense of concern, of being out of place, of confusion, of faint loneliness, of something crucial being missing somewhere inside her. And she didn't like it one bit.

She started walking again. Walking always seemed to help.
It let her focus on what was around her instead. On what was outside.

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But she could only ignore that creeping feeling for so long.

Eventually, she sat down on a relatively smooth chunk of stone and anxiously ran a hand through her hair. Looking back, she could see a long set of footprints through the faded sand, stretching all the way to the horizon. How was it possible there was this much sand? She was starting to get sick of it.

After a moment's thought, she brought her guitar around and held it, again, in her hands.
And there it was again, instantly: that comfort. It was like... a reassuring parent, or a friend.
She sighed. Really, that was all that she needed to keep going.

Without thinking, she began to hum a tune. Her fingers strummed the strings, their quiet, tinny
chords adding that precious harmony to her melody. She could remember how to walk, and she
could remember how to play. It brought a momentary smile to her lips: how both of these acts
came about as natural as breathing.

Her lips turned down again a moment later, however, losing their humor. Words were coming to her tongue, her teeth, her lips, wanting to be added to this song. At first they were scattered, whirling, trying to form a complete, sensible picture.

And so, dressed in black and scarlet, she sang—in this world of white:
this colorless and seemingly infinite cage.

Gradually, her words gained volume. Her feelings roiled within her, wild, building in intensity.
These instinctive words weren't new, nor were they old and forgotten. They were always with her, and now they were clawing, screaming their way out of her chest. Just speaking them wouldn't be enough. They needed to be shouted, roared so that they resounded in the furthest corners of this dead world. She yelled them as loud as she possibly could.

It just seemed like the right thing to do.

She shouted about confusion. She shouted about the unknown, about the bleak landscapes,
about the bounteous memories in tiny glass shards flitting past for brief moments before
disappearing again.

She shouted about—

Fear.

For that one critical moment as she played, she realized what she'd been feeling, deep down.
This empty world, her empty memories...

They terrified her.

Who was she? What was this quiet place? What was going to happen to her?
What HAD happened to her?

But she already knew that she might never know. Not here.

Her voice broke for a note, but she pushed past and forced her lungs, should they exist, to their
limits.

Her fingers flew madly across the six strings. She could hear it vividly in her mind, the power, the
weaving together of rumbles, screeches, and vibrations.

A storm of her soul and of music—a tumultuous undercurrent rushing beneath her lyrics along
with the simmering dread, growing into a powerful heat, which reached her eyes as well.

But somehow, in some way she couldn't pinpoint, it made her feel a little better.
A little less confused, a little less afraid.

After a time, the echoes of her shouting faded out. A few final plucks with her right hand, and she dropped it from the strings, her work finished. Her song vanished into the bright sky, the evidence it had ever happened now residing within her near-empty memories.

She put her other hand to her eyes and rubbed them, shivering, refusing to look at the heavens
that had taken her song away.

But then she gave a laugh. It surprised her. It was an honest laugh—and the smile of a job well
done. She wiped her hand on her dress and sighed to herself.

Man, she hated this place.

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The world was no less confusing now—no less intimidating, no less empty, no less merciless.

But now, she felt like she could deal with it.

She couldn't be sure, but she could have sworn that fear was something she was familiar with.
She knew things about it—how it could make your legs weak, how it could make you run away,
how it could prevent you from making decisions, how it could control you.
The fear of the unknown. The fear of failure.

And she could only assume it had been instinct that had led her to play that song.
Maybe she'd done it before. Maybe she'd shouted through her fear before, in much the same way.

Maybe she had. At least, now she felt like she could handle it.
She had a firmer grip on that twisted little emotion now.
If she wanted to stay sane in this baffling world, she needed to keep it in check, keep it from
controlling her. But it would always be there.

She exhaled, then turned in her seat and carefully put her guitar aside, laying it onto the stone.
Then she heard a soft clink.

A small cloth bag had fallen out of her inside pocket to the stone sticking out above the sand.
In it were several needles, a little pair of scissors, a thimble, a few spools of thread, and a measure. A sewing kit. It had been with her when she'd first woken up. She could only assume it was hers.

When she'd first found the pouch, it had just confused her. She knew what it was for, but had no
clue why she was carrying it. Each of the accoutrements within was, of course, "known" to her, but like the guitar she carried with her... it hadn't come with any helpful little notes explaining where it came from.

But now, when she reached down to retrieve the pouch, upon seeing her sleeve, she froze.

She... knew, didn't she? How that sleeve was made. She knew the stitches, she knew all of the folds. She knew the exact colors. She knew those threads were in the sewing kit.

But any further connection escaped her. She could easily draw conclusions based on logic,
but her mind still felt closed. That cruel disconnect between knowledge and experience...
It was agonizing.

Now, though... Now she wouldn't let herself be overwhelmed by the fear caused by that disconnect. She would recognize it, use it. So what if she didn't remember? What mattered was that she knew.

A concrete goal would certainly help, though. She didn't have one yet, but maybe, in time,
she could find one.

A grin crossed her face as she started off again, still thinking of the kit which had just made her
shiver. Pretty convenient, huh? She could at least keep her clothing intact on this inane journey.
And with that thought... her outfit certainly wasn't practical, but it was hers, and she wouldn't
give it up for the world.

Yes. It was hers.

That, her guitar, and her sewing kit—in this wasteland of memory, they were all hers.

Knowing that helped a little, and a little help could go a long way.

...A few steps later, something below her caught her eye.

Footprints in the sand...

But they didn't belong to her.

Crossing her path, leading off to the left, they were definitely a few sizes off.
She stared the way they headed, and saw that they disappeared behind a few gentle hills.

Another genuine, familiar grin crossed her face.

Huh...

Maybe she'd had an audience after all.