[author]
CW: Emotional abuse (mother-daughter), gaslighting, dissociation, panic attack, self-harm (punching mirror until hands break), suicidal ideation
[/author]
"Lyra?!"
Aspen forgot how to breathe. One second passed, then two. "Hiss!" What was—
She was scratching her arm. Her skin was ice cold. Her vision blurred and refocused repeatedly.
I'm dying.
She looked down at her chest. The pieces of the necklace's pink gem sat in her lap.
It's broken.
Why? I need it. I need it. What's going to happen to me?
Her eyes shot back to Raine and Quinn, searching for answers.
Something answered behind Raine's head. What? There was something there, carved into the gray wood. A name.
Forghatin?
The letters were fresh. Were they always there? They pulsed with the same aqua light as the mushrooms, as the sap in her veins. The grooves were too clean, too deliberate. Placed perfectly in the gap between Quinn and Raine, right where Aspen would see.
Right where they wouldn't.
"What…?" Her tongue felt swollen. "What is that?"
Raine's brow furrowed. She glanced over her shoulder at the blank wood. "What's what?"
You're looking right at it..? "It's right there. The words. Forghatin."
They glanced back at her like she was crazy.
Am I losing my mind? I'm actually hallucinating.
Then Raine's eyes widened. "Y-You can't be a Namelo—"
Aspen's lungs collapsed. I'm actually going insane.
The air in her chest compressed into a single point of pressure behind her sternum. Her ribs locked. She tried to inhale. Nothing came.
No air and no thoughts.
Her hand shot to her throat and clawed at skin that felt like stone. Her mouth opened. "Hu…. huh…." Out came raspy breaths she could barely hear, and the wet click of her jaw unhinging.
Raine lunged forward. "No no no—what's happening?!"
Quinn followed suit. "Breathe, girl. Force it. Come on—"
The words warbled to nonsense. The hum of the threads grew deafening, a single sustained note that vibrated through Aspen's skull. The room tilted. Or she did. Her spine arched off the silk basin, tendons pulling taut as bowstrings.
Her vision tunneled.
The last thing she was before the darkness took her was Forghatin, burned bright into her eyelids.
Is this how I die?
God, I'll ask one more time.
Am I dreaming?
✦ ✦ ✦
The girl blinked asleep to an old desk.
Dim moonlight leaked through curtains thin as paper skin, the air was alive with dust, and all was cold.
She imagined herself to be the sun, and her desk was her desert with no end in sight. Sand waves of wood flakes gorged on paper corpses bleeding ink, worn by her pencil and salty rain.
Her lamp would blazon them with a bitter light—purple platinum—shedding godrays like an angel treading atop the damned and the burning.
She couldn't remember where her mother got it. Or why she always used it.
It.
Was the light of the apathetically loving, the color of old bruises. Old burns. And old thoughts… things she thought she'd forgotten.
Her school bag slumped against the chair leg like a victim. Like a sinner. Like it had no role in this mess, like it was sorry for her. It was a liar. Gave those damned papers a burial. Well-trodden, she couldn't trust its like. The lamp buzzed a tone her brain couldn't ignore. Like those papers that spread before her as accusations. The math problems that twisted and rearranged themselves endlessly.
It.
Was the sand that blew and reformed again and again in the wind. It didn't care how hot she burned.
And again, it found new ways to bite at her skin. She gripped the pencil so tightly her knuckles ached white.
Its voice cut through the air. "What's wrong with you? Just answer the question."
Mom—Mother. Her hair smells like... peonies.
Its smell seeped into the wallpaper, the floorboards, the salt rain, the light, the very fabric of her mind. A mountain of sorry sand grains and paper-thin corpses. Paper-thin lies. The girl, flimsy, a paper corpse, and her mother was the sun.
It didn't matter what role the girl played. Sun, sand, or sorry, she would sin.
Body crumpled into habit. The sand storms left scars. That warmth left burns. Those loving hands left fingerprints on the soul.
Shoulders must curl inward, the head must drop. Never meet her eyes.
Don't look too pathetic, but look pitiful.
When mom is nice, relish in her. Joke with her. Avoid her on her bad days. Hide on worse days.
Be like still waters. Speak like it hurt. If you were angry, look hurt. But you can't look pathetic. Never show aggression. Never be a storm. Even if Jamie is the victim.
Don't sound too assertive. Use others to bring up problems. Don't seem too strange. Be smart, but not too smart. But you can't be too normal...
So be excellent.
And when you can't, be what's needed.
And when you can't manage even that, well, just be nothing at all.
Her mother's silhouette loomed behind her and eclipsed the light.
Aspen was a sinner in the sand.
And her mother was an angel. The living embodiment of charity.
"Speak up. What is wrong with you? I know you can do this." Her silhouette cast a shadow over Aspen. A void.
Aspen's little lips parted despite herself. "I-I don't know. I'm sorry."
"Did you forget?" Not her mother's voice. Too soft.
Aspen spun back, but there was nobody there.
Just a mirror. With one name etched into its surface.
Forghatin.
The name was positioned on her reflection's chest.
"Forghatin…? That name." Her arm rose against gravity, a marionette string pulled by the reflection. Her finger landed on her heart, matching the etching perfectly.
A cold certainty settled in her gut. The next word she whispered came like a guillotine.
"Forgotten. It's calling me forgotten."
She recalled Raine's last words.
That hurt. That throbbed. That ached.
Somewhere deeper than fight, flight, or fawn—she tapped into kill.
So she punched it.
And then she did it again.
One more time, for good measure.
Then another, to seal the deal.
And again.
And again. And again and again and AGAIN AND AGAINANDAGAINSHE DIDNT CARE TO COUNT. Not again. Her hands bled. NEVER AGAIN. She couldn't form fists anymore. Doesn't matter.
Yet she didn't make a sound.
Not a cry. Not a scream. The walls closed in. She didn't need hands. It was getting hot. She struck and lashed and mauled and thrashed her reflection. Tooth and nail, bone and knuckle, marrow and skull, mind and everburning soul.
Nothing.
The mirror stood unblemished.
Why?
Her heart was beating. Every part of her skin burned. She could barely see past the tears.
She should have been angry.
She should have wanted to curse it.
It should have hurt.
But Aspen kneeled atop the mirror, one word at her heart.
Forghatin.
She raged in lowercase. As if she hadn't remembered how to fight.
Really..?
Is that it?
A quiet whisper echoed through her mind.
I know you can do this. You just need to try harder.
She looked into the mirror, really looked at it.
I've been trying.
Into her old brown eyes.
I'm tired already. And it's only been one day.
Her old freckles and brown hair she'd never been allowed to dye. Hair cut to a prim shoulder length.
Why did it have to be me? Why, God? Or if there's no god, then the universe. What do I have to do to get back home?
What do I need to try? What do I need to learn? How long will it take?
Will I ever see them again?
Her old, pale face crumpled. It was a simple face. An ugly face, when she let it take control. A face that didn't belong to her soul.
But neither did her new one.
Before any thoughts could fall, a single tear did.
It tapped against the glass, and the mirror shattered. Forghatin spilled like ink along the glass shards.
Her lips spoke words she hadn't yet learned, they tasted like burning flesh.
"Fractured Beginnings."
The only words that seemed to fit.
The syllables carved themselves into her sternum. Not a blessing. A brand. A prophecy.
The cracked glass wept a new dream.
She fell—
✦
—and landed in her new body.
Aspen tore through the dream like a drowning animal breaking water.
Sleeping? I-I was sleeping? Was that a dream?
Her lungs seized, clawing at air that felt sharp as scissors, each inhalation a small violence against ribs that had forgotten how to expand.
The waking world didn't welcome her, it stabbed into her chest with the weight of gravity. Then, her memories twisted the blade.
Tears flooded from her eyes, but before she felt safe enough to sob—
"You're awake!"
Raine hugged her from the left. Her wings were tucked so tight they looked fused to her back.
Aspen's mouth worked. Her tongue was too thick. "How… long?"
"A span."
Sigh.
Aspen stared at the ceiling. No thoughts yet, too raw for that.
Raine's voice cut her thoughts. "Quinn had to leave. There's… the community asking questions. She's still prominent enou—"
"Hold on." Aspen's breath hitched. I'm done.
"Hey, hey—" Raine leaned forward, hands hovering. Not touching. "Do you need something to drink? Or food? I can—"
"No."
The word came out harder than she meant. Raine flinched back.
Aspen closed her eyes. Wrong move. Behind the eyelids was still blue. Always blue. My head hurts.
Really, that's what...
Sigh.
I can't even joke anymore.
Why can I still even function?
Her jaw clenched. Her teeth ground together, the phantom sharpness from Hierophant's scent still haunting her gums. Her arms went hot and caustic. Her lungs itched. An ember started in her sternum and spread like wildfire through her veins. Her fingers curled into the silk sheets—too soft, too wrong, not hers—and pulled.
You rip me from my home and put me into a fucking corpse. Her mind ran. To the sight of her old face. A final reminder, as if out of spite. To High Priestess holding her down while the woman prepared to fracture herself just to extract information.
To being invaded by Hierophant's divine needles threading through her neurons like she was a specimen.
And now this.
A dream, no, a punishment. Penance. Something meant to remind her of everything she'd lost. To excavate 'Aspen' and lay it bare just so she could watch it rot.
To fill it with 'Hermit', 'Lyra', or 'Forghatin.'
Because she was a sinner.
What kind of sick joke—her breath quickened. Her wings throbbed in time with her pulse. Something in her mind shot to calm her.
Be logical.
She couldn't. Scenes flew behind her eyes. The necklace pulsing, drowning her thoughts in peonies and chemical calm. Raine calling her Lyra. The dream forcing her to remember her Mom's voice.
Why?
Why did this happen to me?
Pinned. Sedated. Invaded.
Is it because I'm weak? Does God find this funny?
Her nails bit into her palms. Raine's voice was muffled. Her palms screamed.
This is funny, God? Spirits? Lyra?
Every new taste scarred her tongue. Every new smell scorched her nostrils. Every whisper of home burned into her soul like a brand.
Okay then.
No words could possibly encapsulate the choice she made. The most that could be said is she would 'get the heat out', one way or another.
Every part of her body ached. Be logical. Be bloody, if I have to. Her mind molded into a new shape.
A 'better' shape.
Pain was clarity. Pain was real. Pain meant she could feel.
I can't go back home. Not now.
The thought settled like lead in her gut. None of Jamie's jokes, no bedroom, no ice cream. Maybe her body was still there, comatose in a hospital bed. Maybe it had vanished entirely.
Her eyes burned. Pressure built behind them, hot and insistent.
No. Not now. Don't you fucking dare—
A tear slipped free. Then another.
She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, grinding down hard enough to see stars.
You can't lose.
She couldn't.
Are you going to let them all win?
No. You can't. Because—
She was here. In this body.
And with her new eyes, she looked at Raine.
That's still not my face. But...
I don't need it.
I shouldn't need it.
I can do this.