Bethany collided with the dusty ground she had left from less than 12 hours before, a lifetime ago. The collision knocked the air out of her, and she lay there for a while her breath catching in her throat as she came to terms with quite how close she had come to dying. Her vision was once more blocked by a screen, but she dismissed it by instinct, running on autopilot in her stress. She choked out a cry as she looked around. It was night by this point, and nobody was around. However even the stars in the sky weren’t providing her with the safety she normally associated with them. In that moment looking up just reminded her of the void of the rifts. The very thing she had not treated with enough severity until it was almost the final thing she ever encountered.

She pulled herself up and tried to wipe the tears that were streaming down her cheeks. She turned to her house and pushed her way into her house barrelling straight through to her room. There she flopped down on the bed and did her best to keep her tears silent. She hadn’t cried like that since Mandy betrayed her. Despite how exhausted she was she couldn’t sleep. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the timer once again; saw how low it had gotten and how foolish she had been to fly so close to the sun. And for what? Just because some weird ghostly being said she would level up and be more skilled with a staff. She didn’t even feel different, she felt like it was a big joke that had almost cost her the ultimate price. Her life.

It was the early hours of the morning before she finally got off and even then, she only managed a couple of hours of sleep before waking again. That morning her mother, Susanna, had come in and had tried to get her to get up. She’d not seemed at all like herself when she’d first come to check on Bethany. She more floated in than walked and didn’t knock and wait for permission, something she had enforced religiously previously. She hadn’t even spoken for a good while after coming in. Instead, she sat on Bethany’s bed and gently stroked her head as Bethany cried. Much like Bethany, Susanna found herself crying as she saw how broken her daughter looked to be. However, unlike Bethany she had taken her lessons to heart and so cried silently, as she comforted her daughter.

Several times each day Susanna would reappear and gently whisper to Bethany trying to coax her out of bed, a far cry from the usual snippy comments Bethany would get if she wasn’t getting up in the morning. Still Bethany wouldn’t leave the comforts of her blanket and the protection from the world she ascribed to it. Susanna would kiss her lightly on the spot under the duvet that was roughly her forehead and would leave again, often leaving behind a meal or drink for Bethany.

Bethany knew something was different when Susanna visited the third morning after she’d come home. While she still seemed night and day away from how she had been pre-Trial she was slightly back to her own ways getting snippy at Bethany as she explained about the upcoming meeting and the mandatory nature of it. Bethany couldn’t exactly hide from the world forever and if a mandatory meeting where she might get some answers wasn’t motivation enough nothing would be.

It wasn’t like she would be able to get out of the meeting anyway and crawled out of bed, leaving her room, and actually looking at her mother for the first time. Focusing on her mother caused a weird tingling in Bethany’s eyes and when she blinked to get it out of her eyes something new appeared above her mother’s head, [Susanna Oakfenny, 0]. Bethany blinked again and it was gone. Much like her status screen, she found she could will it in and out of existence. This shocked Bethany, she hadn’t expected the screens to appear in this the ‘real world’. If she found that shocking, she was even more shocked when Susanna, seeing her properly for the first time, let out a little ‘oh shit’ and dropped her broom to the floor.

Susanna quickly caught herself and, leaving the broom there grabbed a hanky from the small bowl of water it sat in. Then much softer than ever before she started to dab at Bethany’s face washing away the dusty streaks left by her constant crying.

“Bethany sit up straight while I clean your face. Today is going to be hard for you. Really fucking hard. To be honest nobody will be looking at how you are presenting yourself but that makes it all the more important. Go put on your best outfit. Not your smartest one but the one that makes you feel most powerful because you are going to need it. You’re really going to need it.”

Bethany was still feeling thrown by how caring her mother was being. It wasn’t like she’d become somebody else; she was clearly the same woman. Just softer, less sharp, and prickly. This was certainly the most understanding she could ever remember her mother ever being. Further she swore a second time. That took the number of times she’d heard her mother swear to a grand total of twice. Ladies didn’t swear, as Susanna often told Bethany, especially ladies who wanted to be respected by their peers. Maybe what her mother had experienced had shaken her up much like Bethany’s had.

She took her mother’s words at their face value, her mother had never steered her wrong before, regardless of the tack she did it with. She picked an old red dress, slightly faded from use and showing clear signs of having been extended. But it made Bethany feel good. She removed the two plaits her hair was currently in and brushed out the ginger hair until it was smooth and lay flat against her back, ending just below her shoulder blades. She put on her small broach she had purchased from a travelling merchant a year or so before. It was a small five-pointed star. She never normally wore it out but again it gave her strength.

Ready to go, she went and met her mother, who hadn’t herself made such an effort. Her mother grabbed her hand and, holding her close, set the two of them off towards the meeting square. The two of them walked heads held high and chins out ready to face whatever it was that had gotten Susanna so worried.