1185. Cynis & Hedonis, 8
(Armylè)
Around this time, our young revolutionary mind was digging for data through her own ways.
Our city was eroding in ways that had probably been foreseen, but not secured enough over the generations passing.
Inner contempt existed, and awareness shifting just enough away from the expected mind set, on the long term and constant spin, gradually grew new fissures for changes to come.
Cheryl had not washed herself for a while. She sniffed her own smell and noticed it was more than that making her react. She turned around. Her room in penumbra was quiet and messy, but she recognised who stood there silently.
C - Néphéline... It’s been a while. Set yourself comfortably, I’ll show you what I’ve found.
Néphéline’s mind was still messy. She let herself fall on the bed widely, as she always had. Cheryl looked back at her screens.
C - They are... very interesting, the researches of doctor Morhens. It’s really a shame you didn’t take the chance from your visit to study them.
Néphéline had an aggressive jolt.
C - Shush, shush. If I’m not wrong, you might have a real chance to hear her sing again. And I could even say that if you play the right and pretty role, she might sing only for you. Because you might be the one who will save her sister Elyne... from herself.
N - Stop playing me... Where is she then?
C - I don’t know. But I’m completing the puzzle of her last hours around thanks to you.
Cheryl showed a few schematics and lines over her main screen. Néphéline sat up to read.
Cheryl highlighted the oddities in the reports from the medical team, military team, and automated systems reports. There were holes and gross mistakes in the attempts at covering them up. It had no marking of an elaborate conspiracy thought of ahead in time nor retrospectively at high level. It only appeared as panic and incomprehension from the many separate actors who could have been held responsible for some damage.
N - That’s... weird.
C - Very. Look at that.
A video clip played. It was a first person view from a soldier’s helmet. A record of the top side incident. Néphéline felt her heart breaking as she saw Prume there, alive at the time, fighting things off.
The sound of the record has been lost.
That soldier erased some data from the computer and then returned closer to Prume, bearing her last terrified gaze. He pricked her neck with something and she fell listless. The soldier then left.
Néphéline felt ice falling through her spine as she saw what appeared as murder.
But Cheryl kept her there and fast forwarded the view to a few minutes later. The soldier had spoken to doctors for a while elsewhere and then returned to the operating room. The movie played at normal speed again.
The door opened and the soldier found the operating table empty, the straps ripped off. Prume had disappeared.
He looked through the room which didn’t hold many hiding spots, even for a child.
Néphéline was as confused as the soldier at the time. She didn’t think of asking where her friend found all this. Cheryl was pausing the record when the soldier was looking at some specific data on the operations computer screen. Details there had interested her.
C - The testimonies that reached Éloïse are concordant with this truth. We don’t know what happened to Prume in that room. The body was never found. The soldier presumed her dead since that’s what the medical system detected. This record was kept for the investigation and archive time.
N - ... What the...
C - I pieced out together what occurred next. The hospital had some repairs done to its sewer systems. And other sectors beneath had here and there other exceptional repairs that had to be done. Look.
Cheryl showed in highlight the moment and location of each other separate event on a volumetric view of the city underground. It drew a pattern through space and passing minutes. Something slipping through the cracks, and making new ones along the way.
Néphéline was gawking and holding her breath.
C - I think she managed to leave the city, slipping behind the scenes.
~
Elyne meanwhile was flowing through the dreams, oscillating between good and bad. Sometimes dreadful and sometimes all too nice.
Her brain kept working constantly, while resting still some acceptance of reality. In some wider liberty there, she was evacuating slowly what she couldn’t bear. Elyne was still reliving the events she experienced alongside Prume, without clear chronological order. Time didn’t matter. And Prume barely changing over a decade made it easier to wonder.
For Elyne, Prume was this unchanging creature she mostly recalled throughout her life. The body of a child barely a teenager, with maybe a slightly wider ribcage for all the bones had changed. Her skin had the paler scars, her lip was oddly fleshy, her eyes always had shadows.
This constant appearance, nearing the unreal in the end in her head, Elyne dreamt of reaching her again.
She felt her heartbeat jolting when she dreamt she could touch her. Albeit the dream was never real, it was still impacting. It faded every time as memories did.
But in the arguably happier times, the dream lasted. Elyne could reach her and hold her between her arms.
She might not realise why she desired that moment so much nor why it made her so happy and relieved to finally succeed. Not in the midst of these blissful fantasies.
Sometimes the dreams were just nice, and reality was forgotten.
Elyne held her, not letting her go. Not much else happened generally. Just lost moments of tenderness.
She could hold her sister and kiss her dear. She craved her presence and her mind satiated itself with these dreams while it could.
There was little scenery to these moments, perhaps gentle breezes and blurry landscapes behind them. She didn’t look at it or where it should be. I liked to imagine verdant sceneries of Pre-Raphaelite countryside.
Out of time. Making the most of it, parts of her brain slightly aware of the wider context and looming reality.
Elyne made the most of these rare nights, relaxing and resourcing in a way.
The dreamt Prume was just as happy to be cuddled, without the need for many words.
Elyne’s mind was free to play. And this time it changed toward something else which had been abandoned.
Her satiation made for this presence, her desire shifted toward another thing she had mostly neglected ever since the saddest day.
She dreamt without anguish about being in the more familiar place of her bedroom. She had been having fun with Perrine sometimes over the passing years. Enough to dream about it this time, in a twisting way.
Elyne was having her erotic dream about the petite nymph she knew very well. It was a collection of nicer sensations melting and merging along the movements. It was a change of pace and colours for a first in a long while.
Pleasure was settling as it mixed inside of her along this dream.
Until Elyne realised with a mixture of shame and other things that Perrine had become Prume at some point in the dream.
Elyne had a burst of shame and shyness, but the fantasized Prume accepting everything. She grew closer in confidence and softness to Elyne, in all kindness. Elyne was confused, feeling the warmth touching her lips, and then pleasure everywhere.
Elyne woke up in a jolt, but not from terror this time. She felt the bliss and the shame, in a wide contrast grossing her. She felt disgusted with herself, to nauseating heights.
My poor daughter rushed to the bathroom to vomit, even if her legs felt guiltily weak this time. She tripped and fell. She mostly felt contempt against herself at this level. She blamed herself, struggling to reach the toilets.
Elyne vomited what little water she had left in her stomach perhaps, hurting her throat and damaging some tiny blood vessels along her eyes.
She judged herself harshly. She couldn’t forgive herself for dreaming that.
Maybe she thought I would repudiate her if I heard of it.
I would have been grossed out just as well as she had been.
But I would still love her as my daughter.
She didn’t have time to contemplate the ignominy of her dream, because someone knocked on the door.
Elyne was startled so much, she thought she had a heart attack.
She mumbled loudly something to have them wait a moment.
Elyne forced herself to evacuate most of the dizziness from all the previous sensations. She washed her face and went to wear something before going to the door.
Her head and throat were still thumping, burnt. She tried not to think about anything else and went to open.
Behind, rather soaked by the rain without minding, it was the girl she had momentarily thought about recently.
Nephéline had come to talk to Elyne.
~
