2019-10-17: A Different Nightmare

• Cutscene: A Different Nightmare
• Cast: Emeralda Kasim
• Where: The Thames
• Date: October 2019
• Summary: Emeralda has a different nightmare.

Emeralda sat on the edge of the Thames, swinging her feet over the side of the great ship in exactly the way that would get her in trouble if Fei saw her doing it.

She wasn't really supposed to be there, of course, but the lower part of the Thames - hidden in the shadow of the upper deck with the cranes, where people frequently worked and even lived - didn't get much foot traffic, and none at night. Who was going to climb down there? Besides her, anyway.

Emeralda hadn't been back on Filgaia for very long. Some of the Wolves and their friends - Fei and Elly, Riesenlied and Noeline, Xantia, Citan, and herself - had fallen into the Shrine of the Water Trial and then made their way through it. That was today, or maybe yesterday; Emeralda wasn't entirely sure when 'today' started being 'tomorrow'. It must have happened by now, though - it was very late. (Though if it had happened, wasn't it very early?) Fei and Elly were asleep. She was supposed to be, too.

Since arriving in Filgaia, Emeralda had not been her normal cheery, energetic self. She'd almost managed it during the actual Trial, but as soon as she went to bed, it all came back again. Emeralda didn't need to sleep as much as her parents seemed to, and so when she woke up, she'd snuck out in the middle of the night rather than stay and have a nightmare inside.

The nightmare had started with Elly, at Macalenia. She'd been afraid - terrified, really - when Elly was sent away somewhere Emeralda couldn't feel her. She'd been so angry she couldn't think at the Solarian who had done it. But Elly had come back; it was a scary thing that had happened, but it was over and done with. It was Lydia she couldn't stop thinking about. Lydia had not come back. And Emeralda's imagination was vivid.

Emeralda had been there when Lydia had been... replaced with OS. Overwritten, though she didn't know where the word came from; it just seemed to make sense. She'd seen Krelian give the command and it happen. And she knew Krelian. Not well. She'd never spoken to him, but he had spoken to her when she was in the labs, before she'd really woken up. Even though she had been only half-awake at the time, she remembered what he'd said to her - words that she never thought about, that she tried to forget.

She tried to forget them now, squeezing her eyes shut tight.

But even if she could push away the words, she couldn't push away what had happened. Lydia was... different. Replaced. And Krelian had had Emeralda, too. They'd let her go and find Fei. She wasn't supposed to have heard what Citan had said about that - that there must have been a reason Solaris let her be rescued. They'd never told her, precisely, only talked about it among themselves.

Emeralda knew she was different than most of the other girls. That her body wasn't the same. Even if she didn't do anything she was different; she had to be careful playing because she was both heavy and strong comparead to all the other kids. It wasn't just that, though. It was just so easy for her to do things. She didn't even think about changing herself, even; it just happened when she needed it to, and her Ether came with no prompting. She had never worried about it. It was just the way she was. But now that she was afraid, she was remembering other things that had happened. Things that she hadn't noticed, or paid attention to, when they had happened - but things she remembered anyway.

The time Ida had tried to stand in front of her when she changed her hand into a helpful tool, so that nobody would see.

The time Leon was shocked when she helped drill into a piece of stone with her leg.

The time Lydia panicked when she just slipped away out of a crowd... by going under it, flattening herself down into a stream, or a puddle.

She was different. And she was different the same way OS was different. Was Lydia dreaming, now, too? Like before she woke up? Would Lydia ever wake up again? Or would it be like that forever in the dark, before... before. Before the lab; before she saw Fei and thought he was Kim again. Was Lydia lost for a hundred years? Two hundred? A thousand? Emeralda didn't know how long she'd slept, but Lydia couldn't sleep that long. She just couldn't. It wasn't fair to Lydia. Everyone and everything she knew was now. Who would she not be able to talk to, if she slept? Who would OS hurt, while she slept? And OS... was OS something like Emeralda was? Or something like she could be made to be? They were hard thoughts for her, and Emeralda had no answers.

"I want Lydia to be awake again," Emeralda says, quietly, to nobody but the soft sound of the ocean at night and a creak from overhead as one of the cranes settled on its base after a wave rocked the ship. "And... I don't want Krelian to put me to sleep."

But what if he could? What if she was a danger, too? OS had hurt people, even though Lydia didn't want to. Emeralda was afraid that she'd do it, too, if Krelian asked - and she wouldn't be able to stop herself. She might hurt her friends. She might even hurt Elly... or Fei. And she wouldn't be able to stop. She shuddered, and her squeezed-closed eyes felt wet; she rubbed them absently, without thinking about it.

"...I don't want to be different."

Emeralda tucked her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, resting her head on her knee and tucking her chin and mouth under her scarf. Eventually, she fell asleep that way, rocked by the slow motion of the Thames.

This time, she didn't dream.