𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 | 𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐨 [HEAVY EDITING]

𝟐𝟓 | 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐧 𝐄𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐬: 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐅𝐢𝐯𝐞

Everything around me is blurry. Well, that's not exactly right. Everything around the woman is blurry. It's like tunnel vision – my eyes are stuck and stuck on her.

I'd realized only a moment after I'd called them "grandmother" that it'd only been someone who looked like Makara-sensei. The resemblance had been just so frighteningly uncanny that I ended up just blurting it out at them. They are not my grandmother.

So then, "Who are you?"

The woman, who'd just been standing like a statue about ten feet away, slowly raises a hand to cover her mouth when she starts laughing. How I hadn't realized it before, but this woman is see-through. L-Like a ghost, she's see-through!

"Or, w-what are you?"

"You still don't remember me yet, do you?" she suddenly speaks, her voice echoing in the clearing.

I squint at her in my attempt to. "... should I remember you?" I ask. "You look like someone I knew, but you're not them. I don't know you."

She lowers her hand to grasp the other in front of her.

"You said "knew"," I just barely catch her mumble. "They are... no longer alive, then."

I swallow something hard that'd been lodged in my throat. "No... I don't think that they are."

"I see..." The woman swallows, too. "I'm... sad to hear that."

"Who... are you?" I repeat, deciding to approach her. She looks apprehensive as I do, her eyes shifting around to look at anywhere and anything else except for at me.

"As I thought – it's not the time yet," she says. It startles me when she finally meets my eyes. "I wish that it were."

"What are you talking about?" I ask her. "Are you a ghost? Am I hallucinating?"

"You're injured." I'm confused when she raises her hand to extend it to me, her fingers tucked together. "I am not a ghost. You aren't hallucinating. Come close to me."

"I... I don't know," I end up stammering, but her new expression reads of a desperation that has my steps backward faltering. And then—

"Please, Kari." She raises her other arm. "Come to me."

My breath hitches. She knows me; she knows my name? And she looks so much like Makara... and... dare I say it... a little like me?

"W-Wait!" This time, I trip toward her instead of away. "You're that woman from that day in the Land of Waves! Y-You called yourself a "memory", b-but — Are y-you—? Are you Mara?!" I leap over a large stone and attempt to stop just before her fingertips can touch me, but I stumble over another stone I'd missed and fall forward. I'd expected to fall right through her, to hit the ground hard enough that I might knock myself out for a second time – but she catches me, her hands, neither cold nor warm, holding me up by my shoulders.

My eyes automatically snap up to look at her, expecting some kind of smile like what she'd had on before, only for my heart to drop at the sight of tears.

"H-Hey! Please, tell me you're Mara!!"

Free flowing, she doesn't bother to even try to stop crying. They just keep rolling down her face, some of them falling onto the skin of my cheek, but I don't feel them. They're like ghosts, too. It stresses me out when she pulls me into her chest, one hand on my back and one on my head.

"It's just..." She sniffs. "It's just not the time for us yet. For now... rest. And I will take care of everything."

Before I'm able to register what happens next, the pressure of having this woman's arms around me disappears, and I fall forward and further into the forest, quick to... to fall as... asleep—

Updated February 6th, 2022 | 635 words