Portals & Realms

Epilogue 2 - Don't Forget

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??? years later...

    Dear diary,
    Everything is much different now than when I first wrote in you all those hundreds of years ago. So many new faces and people and lives have been met and lived, and yet I cannot help but feel anxious as to what is next. I have been granted another chance at life, and the others have praised me for this. Yet I cannot live the life I once had. I physically am unable to go through all of it again. My first life was when I died, and when I came back, and then when I found a new life by making all of the lies Ghost created right in Fodlan. That's where Annika and Dimitri lived. Well, of course not the blocked host world that no one can access, but rather the one strong, accessible free-world. I made a life there, having a wonderful life and finding love and breaking the curse that had been placed on me before with the links. I won't go into the details of course. As cheesy as it sounds, I did live, laugh and learned how to accept the love in my life. It was all so confusing at first, but I am happy that I let my heart follow what it wanted.
    Yet now here I am, once again dead with everyone being loaded back into the world in which they came, their resets coming soon to the time where the soul of the host worlds had faded out and resulted in them becoming drowsy, being in a dead-like state yet never dissipating. When the worlds come back, they will return to either the day in which I would have returned to my last life or to a time in which it all started and flash forward through time. Who knows. It is apparently a gamble.
    "What are you writing?"
    "My diary. It doesn't have that many entries, but I like writing down my thoughts," Mae shrugged and turned from where she was sitting cross-legged on a white log in a pure grey and black space, but it was at least familiar to her. The Reset Landscape, a realm of sleep where someone's heart sits and waits for the reset to take away their memories as they watch a world become reborn, yet it can also be used for greetings and messages to be sent between the living and the residents in Aeonia through projections. "What do you care? Last I remember you said diaries were for babies."
    A man in red and black walked over to her, black long hair with slightly spiky points towards the ends of his hair and bright yellow eyes staring back at him. He groaned as he sat down on the other side of the log with Mae. He was slightly see-through, mostly around his chest down. "You must've been talking to someone else. I never said such a thing!" He brushed her off.
    "Oh sorry Vanitas, did Asra say something like that then?" She rolled her eyes and looked at her book and closed the page, pencil stuck in it. "Sorry, it just slipped out."
    "Why are you apologizing? He's fine."
    "He may be fine, but he will never be in his own world ever again. He's in a completely different free-world and replaced the data Asra that existed there."
    "But at least he's alive," Vanitas responded and looked down at his hand. It was partially see-through, and the rest of it had slowly moved up his left arm and now was across half of his chest, but he could be far from worried. If he even could feel worried. "Say, how come you ignored my request the first time?"
    "You... remember seeing me last life?"
    "Well, I wrote it down. Kept the note to myself of course, but I still kept it. Besides, it's gone now, so it doesn't really matter anymore. Soon our world and others will be completed in their point of reset, and we will be brought back and live back out the beginning and then it'll all become the free-reign of destiny later on in our world. Still, hurt me to know that I was simply ignored."
    Mae looked at the mountains in the distance of the dark world, "In all honesty, I thought it was a dream while I was in that void-state of sleep. I thought about it but I had bigger things on my hands, like a huge war I had to fight. I didn't have any time to explore, and that was my mistake." She watched as more of him become transparent, like in an instant. She was whole while he was split. How a creature of darkness was better than her in life was beyond her, but she didn't care to think too hard, "all I know is that my next life... I won't interrupt destiny. Not again. Not ever."
    "If that's what you want then sure, don't do that," he shrugged and tapped his foot, "still, you should this time. You should visit. Even if I don't remember this visit as clear as day, I think that if you want to explore, our world is a good place to start."
    "I also need to find Elvadoer. The other Watcher's worry that somehow she evaded all the resets and is out there somewhere. They haven't found or detected her since I died."
    "So like a hundred years?"
    "More."
    "Dear heavens..."
    "Yeah. It's a priority now. Since I'm going back I have to take care of the issue. I don't even know how I'll live with a second life," she looked at the book and tapped the pencil against the cover. Images from her past life flashed, but she chased them away with the invisible guns in her head.
    "Well, at least you remember how you died this time," he sighed and got onto the ground and leaned his head against the lot, hands behind his head and legs spread, "continue writing, I won't bother you."
    Mae nodded and turned back to the book in her hand and reopened it. She had to get this done before the final world reset. She had to. It would only be a month here until it was her time to return and continue with her expedition and her job. A month.
The guilt of the past won't leave me alone for a long time I feel, and no one will be able to know what happened in my past life. Perhaps they won't even be able to find out that there was one. I am unsure of how much I would want to share. I cannot go back and try to relive the life I had last time. The guilt of just looking his way in Aeonia was he was leaving to go back was way too much. He will forget, and that will be just fine. That's a lie, it won't be. I cannot throw my heart out like that again. Not to any man or woman.
    I'll miss the life I had. Though it was far from perfect I enjoyed my life. I grew stronger and stronger every day and never faltered or weakened. I was strong. I stayed strong. I had my friends. What will I do now? I cannot go back and try to go through all of that again.
    The more I think of it, the more I think I will take up Vanitas's request to visit his worlds. They seem to radiate a good energy, and I'm not completely opposed to visiting. Still, I cannot get attached. I cannot commit. Friends and only friends, if I ever get in contact or communicate with anyone there. I can't let anything else bloom like last time, that hurt too much. Besides, it's for the best. An immortal cannot get too attached to a mortal. It's destined to fail.
    As I sit here now under the darkness of the Landscape, I cannot help but wonder what awaits me in the future. Greatness? Defeat? Will I ever recover from the nightmares of my past haunting my head? Will everything be ok? I have no answers as of now, but I will soon. I will be the Watcher. The guide for those who need it. I cannot stray away from my tasks anymore. Love is for mortals, and work is for me. Protecting everyone I care about is the most important. I don't care if my body and mind begs me for love, I will ignore it. Silence it. I am strong. I can overcome it. I am me. I am myself.
    I am Mae.
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A story concluded as she sat on the log, and watched one of the last remnants of her past dissipate into fog. Though she remembers all and they remember not, she can only do her task and try to move on. If she can't, hell will rise, as later in the future she will have her first test: commitment in those blue ocean eyes.