“Why did you bring me here?”
A gentle sound of waves crashing against the shore filled the air, harmonising with the breeze. The moon and stars all glistened against the reflection of the water. Sand clung to my bare feet as my shoes were placed behind me, next to another pair.
“I wanted to take you out of that old village for once,” the man beside me said, his dark hair flowing against the wind as his blue eyes reflected the image of the ocean in front of us. “I thought you might enjoy the view.”
“The view from your house is fine. If that’s the only reason, then it was a waste to come here.” I said, but my eyes couldn’t help but trace the movement of the tides. Something about that scene was transfixing.
He leaned back against his hands that rested on the sand. “I thought you’d say that, but I figured we might have some fun at least. Besides, you should go out more and see new things. You don’t have to keep staying me with, you know.”
I turned my head, my brows narrowing him. “Are you trying to kick me out, Matthias?”
His mouth curved upwards as a gentle laugh left his lips. His eyes were still gazing out towards the ocean, filled with a certain carefreeness I hadn’t yet seen from him. “No, of course not. But don’t you think you’ve been stuck with me for long enough already?”
I clenched my jaw, my arms tightening around my legs as I pulled them closer to me. “I don’t. Why should I leave when I still owe you my life?”
“That’s a bit of an overstatement, don’t you think?”
I didn’t think so. “Well, you could’ve just left there to bleed out and not have brought me to your home.”
“You and I both know you would've recovered just fine even if I didn’t find you back then,” he said, letting out a sigh. “Besides, you’ve been staying with me every day since. You are free to do whatever you like, you know. I’m not trying to force you to stay with me.”
I didn’t respond immediately. He’d already tried to convince me to leave the village before, but I refused every time. Was he just that eager to discard me?
“And what if I want to continue staying with you? Am I allowed to do that?”
He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, staring at my face as I stared at the ground. His hand clenched the sand underneath him before he finally turned away. “Well you have free will, don’t you? I don’t mind if you keep staying with me, but only if that’s what you really want.”
What I want? I didn’t know what I wanted. Was I supposed to want something more than what I already had? Ever since I’d woke up in his house, I’d been wandering rather aimlessly by his side.
But even after all this time, at this moment with him beside me, all I wanted was to stay by his side for as long as I could. I’d take as much time as I could get to keep living in this peace.
“This ocean reminds me of something,” I said as my eyes wandered across the edges of the waves. It was a serene blue that glistened under the moonlight with each of its hypnotic movements. I’d never seen something so enchanting.
“And what’s that?”
“Your eyes.”
“I didn’t think you’d know how to ride a horse.”
“I didn’t either,” I said, my hands on the reigns while Matthias sat behind me as we rode back to the village. He was close, almost touching my back with his body. But he kept his hands close to himself, being cautious to make any contact. Though, I could still feel him breathing against my skin each time he spoke.
He hummed quietly in response, his eyes still gazing towards the ocean as we rode along the coast. “It’s strange though, how you barely remember anything but you still instinctively know how to do things like this.”
Matthias rarely ever mentioned anything about my past. Neither of us did. The memories I had before he came into my life were fragments—flickers of a nightmare better forgotten. But the truth always loomed over my head.
“Do you ever wonder about the person I was before you found me?” I asked, my face expressionless as I kept my voice steady.
“I do, sometimes,” he admitted as I could feel his eyes staring into the back of my head. “But it doesn’t matter to me if I know or not. What matters is who you are now.”
Damn it, he was always too overly trusting about my character, almost foolishly so, despite us both knowing nothing about who I was before. I didn’t deserve that kind of trust.
“You know, your eyes remind me something too,” he said as his eyes drifted towards the dark sky above us. The sound of the horses’ hooves clopping against the ground and the rush of the tides echoed through the air. “The stars.”
—
“So why is the duckling bullied for his appearance?”
“That’s not the point, Irene,” Alfred said with an exasperated sigh as he rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“But it’s unreasonable for the yellow ducklings to ridicule the grey one just because of the colour of his feathers.”
“Stop trying to analyse the book, and just keep reading,” he groaned, sighing loudly as the frustration grew on his face.
Alfred was currently trying to teach me how to read. We were both seated behind the front counter of the funeral home. After we went through the alphabet and some basic words, he decided we could finally move on to the next stage. He’d bought over some old books that he thought would assist with my learning.
From what I could tell, these were supposed to be children's books. Even with my lack of literacy, I could still tell the language was overly simple. They were also often accompanied by rather peculiar illustrations.
I wasn’t quite sure what the use or purpose of these drawn animals served to the narrative. I especially found the content of these stories to be strange, to put it likely. Never had I heard of sentient ducks who could express their apparent prejudices through human language. It was rather off-putting.
“The ugly duck hung his head low as he…” I continued, holding in my questions as I kept reading the page. While I still had difficulty deciphering some words, with Alfred’s help, I could manage most of these sentences.
But even as I read, my mind couldn’t help but drift to thoughts of that dream I had last night. It’d been some days since the last one. I almost thought they wouldn’t return, but of course, I wasn’t that lucky.
After my experience with Anthony Wright’s memories, I could no longer reasonably dismiss them as just dreams, especially with a certain recurring character in them.
Matthias…
I finally had a name to call him by. But even then, I still hardly understood the nature of those dreams. It was all the more confusing why they all seemed to be centred around the same damn man. Surely if they were memories, my past wasn’t so fixated on just one person.
That wasn’t even mentioning the outlandish content of those dreams; everything from the things said to what we did was ridiculous. From what I understood, riding horses was outdated. And the thoughts my body had in those dreams certainly didn’t belong to me.
I already concluded those dreams weren’t likely to be from my past. The age of that body was young but too old to be from my childhood before the war. Though, it didn’t make sense for me to be dreaming about someone else’s memories. Davis and I already confirmed I had to be touching a corpse to see any sort of memories, and I was highly certain I wasn’t in contact with any deceased bodies while sleeping.
It was infuriating how little it all made sense.
“Hey, are you even listening?” Alfred asked, breaking me out of my mental ranting. His arms were crossed and his eyebrow raised at me. I hadn’t even realised I’d grown silent after reaching the end of the page.
“I apologise, I won’t get distracted again,” I said before quickly turning over to the next page. There was another illustration of those ducks.
“It’s fine, but try to stay focused.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I opened my mouth, about to continue reading aloud when Davis’ voice suddenly boomed down the corridor.
“Alfred!”
“Coming!” he yelled back before sighing loudly and slumping back in his chair. “Great, looks like the boss needs me. Just keep reading until I come back.”
I nodded as I watched him stand and walk into the corridor. It was a wonder why Alfred even agreed to teach me literacy in the first place, especially considering his initial reluctance to be my mentor. But since I’d become a permanent staff member, he’d continue supervising me closely. I couldn’t understand what caused his sudden shift in attitude.
But, I brushed off those thoughts and turned back to the book. I began to read the words quietly underneath my breath since Alfred had been insistent that I read everything out loud.
“The ugly duckling flew over a farmhouse when-”
The front door abruptly opened, making me pause my reading. I looked up to see a young woman, with the brightest hair I’d ever seen, walking through. It reminded me of Francesca’s red hair, but this woman instead wore her orange hair in pigtails. It made her appear younger.
In her hands, she held a large bouquet formed from various species of flowers that all shared the same white hue. Her features all had soft edges, but as her round eyes scanned the room before landing on me, those features contorted into a harsh scowl. She looked me up and down with a mix of confusion and suspicion.
“Who are you?”
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