The Clock Pendulum Swings | A Mesmerizer Story

𖦹°‧ | DAY FOUR

This is the fourth day. Oddly quiet, oddly normal, so it feels.

Hell, even yesterday ended very normal. We talked until we were blue in the faces, cracking jokes left and right that were side-splitting and comforting to the soul (as they say, laughter is the best medicine), talking about the very limited and faded information we had of one another as our memory had begun to slip since our entrapment here, and generally enjoying each other's company, not as if we hadn't before, but without any incessant interruptions. It was bliss.

I figured that the Flower Fields were like an area that we were the most safe in, as there was no unshakable feeling of being watched, or It decided to screw off and give us just some spare time to be alone. Not much, and never did I think I would be, but I was grateful; grateful that we weren't subjected to torture by It for only just that time. I was raised with gratitude, but act a fool, and it'll be with attitude. That's how I've always been.

Miku put her skates back on, I followed her, and back to the Plains we were. It would have been greater to have slept in the Fields, but then again — what could one know what would have happened if we even slightly broke our prescribed locations, roles, and tasks? It was a risk I still remained unwilling to take. Unpredictability was a game of life and death, and our souls were nothing to experiment with. One moment something would be okay to do, the next, it might not be. That was something I struggled to make clear to an exhausted and tired Miku, who wished to sleep in the Flower Fields.

"But Teto! It's comfortable here... C'mon, you need sleep too... pretty girls like us need their rest." Miku said.

"While I appreciate the compliment, I would rather not find out what happens if we don't go back to where we're supposed to." I replied.

That night was colder than usual, the breeze glazing our skin and causing Miku to shiver in her sleep. I made the simple sacrifice to wrap her in the blanket and lay on the grass, its sharp blades pricking my back as they poked through the fibers in my striped shirt and pants. Sacrifices like such were ones I did not mind making for Miku.

And so I laid awake. It was difficult to sleep, so I watched the stars, their gentle spinning and that rich yellow color of theirs, artificially shaped and so unnatural to gaze upon, but it gave me something to do. That was my evening yesterday. I wasn't really complaining — it could be worse, we have been through worse, if anything, I was happy I was blessed with the time to be at peace after all of the stress yesterday.

I deduced from each situation, the Closet and the Flower Fields, that there was more to the world if you made an effort to explore and look around, something I surprisingly wasn't interested in during our arrival. Now that the fear of being in a new world had run its course, or what at least felt like such, it was now time to replace my prey behaviors with strategic ones, endeavors to outsmart the bloodthirsty predator made even more terrifying by the concept of the unknown. So, in Layman's terms: we needed to look, piece things together, and find a way out without falling to the Cycles.

That was what I was going to make, or at least try to make the Fourth Day about: The Ultimate Escape.

Not to mention, four was the number of death, the number of bad luck — I couldn't just dawdle around and think something would magically come to fruition and we'd wake up back home, back in our room, back in our life as normal women. That was something I had to work for. And so, as much as time allowed, I would look around for some way out through a "glitch" in the world. Perfect.

So, then came the early dawn of the Fourth Day. I yawned and stretched my fragile, exhausted form with such fragile hands rubbing tired, blurry eyes, my legs feeling sore and wobbly from the extensive walking yesterday and my arms feeling weak from supporting Miku's tired body on the way back to the Plains. An unamused grunt came from me as I was greatly displeased with just how much my tolerance to even simple things was reduced. Being part-chimera and all, at least formerly, it was a mockery for me to have this body. I couldn't complain, though — at least I was alive 'til now.