Eye of the Needle: Into the Reikai

Yolanda I: Introduction

Who would you want most by your side?

The bullet tore through DeMain's head before Yolanda could even utter a spell in retaliation, and the spirit turned its flickering gaze upon her with baleful amusement.

"I feel like— I've seen this one before." It cackled. 'Like father, like son!"

The blood from her friend's skull pooled on the floor, an unceremonious death. So many of Yolanda's memories had been scrubbed, reexamined, and lost to time. Not the one like this, though.

It was a snowy day when they arrived in their cabin. Yolanda and her mother had emigrated from their homeland of Russia, from one of the fairly busy city areas-- a dense world of concrete she barely recalled. She hadn't fully understood why they'd moved then, and she barely remembered what her home before had actually been like at the time besides the differences in the inside of their house. Her mom, Alina, had reassured her it was a personal decision, but one that wasn't without difficulty. She'd been planning to leave for years, maybe before Yolanda had even been born.

"Why did we move? I thought you liked where we were." She had asked, perched by her mother's side as she had journeyed through the airports together with her.

"I did, Yolanda. But kind people like us should not be trapped where unkind people rule. I cannot call myself a part of that place anymore."

Yolanda's great-grandmother had been a child of the Spanish Civil War, and it had just been her when she first arrived in Russia. Living hadn't been easy, but eventually one of the men took a liking to her enough to persistently call her beautiful. It worked after some time, and the rest was history. Her grandparents unfortunately hadn't shared the sentiment when Alina had wanted to leave though, so their family was forcibly split. Yolanda didn't get much contact with her grandparents from then on, but it affected her less than she expected throughout the years.

She had been maybe six or seven at the time of their arrival in America, but the memories from around then were fuzzy and hard to draw back. It'd been a long road. Some of the details slipped her then, so she couldn't hope to recall them now. The only thing she could definitely remember was the first time her mother brought in a set of videotapes for her birthday (again, she didn't remember which one). Seasons of Sailor Moon, My Little Pony (the original films, not the newer ones), and others within those realms of fantasy, friendship, and adventure. They were extraordinary, and sometimes they were all she really had to come home to. Some were older in styles, but she loved them regardless. Her mother mentioned finding them in a nearby video shop, and they'd sit and watch them together for hours on end together.

During a walk with her mom, Yolanda managed to find a stick out in the woods behind their house that resembled her idea of a magical girl's wand. It was straight, with some brambles near the top that curved in on themselves like a hand. The grasp of the branches was empty though, it needed something to give it its own magic. Something... special-- besides the magic that was already in her, of course. Her mother spent a lot of time attempting to find rocks that would fit in it, always bringing one home from her walk to work. Yolanda refused, because she believed that the right rock would come to her, choose her. It was a strange belief, but Yolanda's imagination trumped most reason in her life at that time.

There came a point when Yolanda's mother asked her to stay at a neighbor's house for a little while so she could get just a little more time to herself, which initially offended Yolanda. Now though, since she had watched children herself in the Witch Hamlet, she understood.