Gabrielle opened her eyes and felt the cold wind slowly caress her fingertips. The world once again felt unreal, distant and ethereal around her, but somehow to an even worse degree than before: when she looked around herself, she couldn’t distinguish the shapes of trees or rocks, much less the figures of the elves around her. The forest around her had disappeared completely, leaving a confusing mess of mixing colour and noise. The way she usually perceived everything, now realized completely before her eyes.

Was she dead? Was she dreaming? She had never truly questioned herself about it, for her dreams were usually dull and devoid of any colour: just scenes of herself walking around town or laying down on the muddy floor, no real “situation” or “story” to them. Distinguishing dreams from reality was easy like that, but now…

That freezing breeze pushed her onwards, growing impatient with the girl’s hesitation. Gabi apologized under her breath, unsure to whom or why, and simply started to walk; something told her in low whispers that things would make more sense if she moved. And surprisingly, they did! For as soon as she took her first steps, the misshaped pool of colours that swirled around her started to take form. The darker tones of black and blue colours rose to form the skies like bubbles to the surface of a raging sea; meanwhile, the more vibrant colours like greens, purples and yellows sank down to form the lushious earth beneath her toes.

It was night and there were no stars in the sky, that much was very easy to understand. But the things on the ground still remained as confusing as before: She saw a floor of dirt and grass patches, with oozing colours rising to become something akin to trees, some even going taller and bigger, like the distorted shade of buildings! They were not solid enough to really know what they represented, and for some reason Gabi did not mind this at all. They felt unimportant to her, and to the whispering voice that urged her to focus upwards anyways.

To look to the skies.

There were no stars, no Sun nor Moon and yet, the sky felt warm. Gabi raised a single hand towards it for a moment, feeling that if she tried hard enough, maybe she could reach the clouds covering it all and clear the skies. The ether itself felt so close to her fingertips, warmer the more she tried to reach it, to the point where it even started to hurt her skin. It was like trying to put her hand in a crackling fire, but there were no marks on her sickly skin.

Gabrielle was so close to the eternal sky, her fingers burning more and more until finally, she managed to touch those blazing clouds— and they screamed. All of them screamed at once, agonizing, suffering, trembling! Gabrielle was pushed down on her back as the firmament itself felt a “tantrum” coming from deep within. The screams of this miserable sky sounded discordant, confusing and barely able to contain the intensity of its emotion; but its voice was not a voice, for it was not human: it felt more like a noise. Like many, many trumpets—a myriad of trumpets going on at once.

A voice deep within Gabrielle was interrogating her, asking what was going on… but Gabi never really knew how to describe things, words eluded her all the time. She took a deep breath this time, and simply said the first things that came to mind.

“Something is giving birth.”

Where did that even come from? Although, now that she said it outloud, this feeling of shaking, overwhelming tension that radiated from the skies, along with the pain and the panic, were similar to when she spied on the girls helping in the town’s farm, when that huge pig was having piglets. Is that what childbirth is like? The spasms felt painful, there was blood everywhere, some of the girls fainted… Was the sky giving birth?

No. Something in her knew that was not the case, it was certain to the girl that it was not the sky’s child who was being born, and yet the sky itself suffered for it. Did that make sense? That voice in her mind did not know what to say, even if it was being particularly intelligent and meditative at that moment.

Lines of white and green serpentined among the clouds covering the starless night sky, like cracks in a piece of filthy glass. It was breaking! And for some reason this made Gabrielle feel relieved? Almost happy even, as sparks of white fell from those cracks and washed over her like the warm rain calming her fears. The voice asked if those were tears.

But Gabi shook her head. As the sky finally quelled its screams, clarity came to the girl’s mind: Those were not tears, they were angels.

It made no sense and yet Gabrielle was convinced of it. They were angels, each and every spark of white was another angel falling, and they all were as happy as she was. The voice inside of her felt uncharacteristically supportive of this motion though, inviting her to close her eyes for a moment and just feel this moment, cherish it, study it. She had all the time in the world to understand this feeling. And this only made the sensations stronger, pushing from her heart and out of her eyes.

Tears? She was crying again, but it was different. Her body was not rejecting the emotion, and in fact it actually felt kind of… good! In a terrible sort of way. Her throat was sore and tight, her eyes itched and the tears felt sticky and gross, but something in her felt glad she was crying. It felt right. as if out of all the times in her entire life, this was the time to cry.

But everything stopped all of a sudden. Her tears, her emotion, the Angels falling from the cracks in the sky? All gone in but an instant, the mixture of warm rain and cold winds disappearing and leaving Gabrielle oddly dry and uncomfortable in its absence. It then evolved into something warmer, then into something hot and painful, burning inside of her flesh. The girl felt her body ache in such a familiar way she immediately knew what was happening, and yet that voice inside asked what was this, as if it was the very first time.

That pain spread through her in waves that forced her body to shake and spasm, making her joints crack and throb as she tried her best to stop all motion, saliva building up on her mouth, foaming a little on her lips: it was the same as those nights when Father took her, every time before she failed to ascend. And it hurt more than ever before.

The voice tried to calm her, to get the girl to stop tensing and distance herself from the feeling, but Gabrielle simply couldn’t. She had to endure it, to take it all, to make sure to get it right this time.

All voices grew more and more distant, as the skies began to tremble in fear once again, the cracks went from green and white to a darker purple, and the floor cracked under the pressure of mysterious forces. Mustering all her strength, Gabrielle forced her head in place for long enough to see right in front of her eyes: a hole in the shape of a man was opening on the very ground and spreading, wider and wider, threatening to swallow the skies above, the world around it, and even Gabi herself.

The girl felt fear overpower her pain, the need to survive was suddenly much more important than Ascension, as she forced her still trembling, aching body to crawl away from this hole and the red lights that creeped from deep within. Was it fire? Was it Hell? It did not feel like either of those things to her. It grew with the hole, from the hole, and out of the hole: a red Sun, shapeless yet somehow reminiscent of the head of a snake, or maybe a lion, or both.

Gabrielle’s thoughts grew erratic, the colours forming the world now desperately mixing back into chaos. She couldn’t put words in phrases anymore, paralysed by the pain and the panic. The voice mumbled something, but she couldn’t understand a thing it said: her senses were being destroyed by the light of this Sun, and its piercing, unholy stench…

Before the Red rose so high that she could see it touch the skies, and all this disgusting light covered her whole, Gabi muttered a single word that she had never heard before.

“Demiurge.”

—

Adella was now staring at the girl who rested on her lap, her hand still holding Gabi’s as firmly as she could. What had started as something relatively light and relaxing had taken a turn that the elf simply didn’t know how to process! The analysis of dreams and visions was, as many other forms of magic were, a lost art by this point, and even if Adella could perfectly recall her old days as a Stargazer, making sense of it all would take much more time than she really had.

This girl’s vision was charged with references and context unique to human culture: from the concept of Angels to the shapeshifting Red Sun, Adella could not simply identify those kinds of symbols from memory, and honestly she barely even knew what they were by the girl’s very own words.

Taking a deep breath, the old elf caressed Gabrielle’s hand softly, as she looked towards her broken caravan. By this point, the others had finally managed to fix the wheels and were now packing all back on the carts. She couldn’t simply ask them to wait another day to work through these riddles, no matter how thankful they were to this child.

She felt guilt stabbing her heart, as her eyes went back to the unconscious Gabrielle. This was supposed to give her answers, to make the way clearer for a confused, fearful little girl— but now it was all much more cloudy and threatening. What was this girl’s path heading towards? Had Adella been predestined to show this to her all along? Did she do the right thing?

Mother Moon in the skies… is this what we have been running from all along?

There was something else that particularly worried the elder. Narrowing her eyes, she carefully lifted one of the girl’s arms and gently uncovered it, moving the sleeve out of the way. It still felt stiff, cold and hurting, suffering through a sort of pain that Adella simply could not comprehend. Under the cloth, she saw bruises and rashes among other marks of daily abuse, things that she honestly expected with a girl this quiet and spacey… but she also saw the stigmata.

Swollen and almost purple in places, the skin around the spot on Gabrielle’s elbow looked burnt and itchy, a wound that probably took quite a bit of time before closing. Had she been stabbed? The mark was so perfectly round it almost felt as if a thick nail had been thrusted into her flesh; and from there, red marks spread on her skin like roots twisting and turning. But there was something even more concerning to the elf.

The marks were already disappearing, right in front of her eyes, receding towards the healed wound. They probably had been doing so this entire time, impossibly fast by any metric.

“Sweet Mother Moon, what is this…?”

Adella stared at it for so long, that she didn’t even notice when Gabrielle opened her eyes. The girl slowly pulled her arm away from the woman, as if asking for permission to take it back, spooking the elf enough to make her jump. Gabi sat up, looking at her own arm for a moment and then covering it once again, not giving it much thought. She then stared at the elf.

There was no real indignation in those eyes, just… an odd sense of confusion. Gabrielle was still struggling to understand, to put names to things and get her feet on the ground. The world was back to its more “real” self but, at the same time, how could she really tell? Had all those feelings been but a dream? Then why couldn’t she shake them off her memory?

After understanding the situation a bit better, and feeling the relief of not being in trouble, Adella took the initiative and spoke up.

“How do you feel? Can you remember your vision?”

Gabi blinked. Adella called it a vision, so it had been a dream after all! She was now back in reality, right in the middle of the forest after helping the demihumans with their tool issue. Memory had returned to its regular sequentiality— and yet, that “vision” still felt engraved in her mind.

So she nodded. Yes, she couldn’t really forget it anymore.

“Good… I am very sorry, Gabrielle, but I cannot really understand what the Gods tried to tell you.” The old elf bowed her head. “I have failed as a guide… but I hope that you can at least try to understand the allegory.”

“I am not good with hard thoughts.” Admitted the little girl, barely understanding what an allegory even was. “But I know a person who knows a lot of things. I can always ask her.”

Adella was unsure to say the least, but seeing that the daft little girl at least had some idea of what to do took a lot of weight from her shoulders.

“Do that, Gabrielle. Whatever this vision means, it is clearly urgent… Tonight, changes will arrive one way or the other. It is wise to prepare for it.”

Gabrielle couldn’t really understand it, or express it, but she felt some strange anxiety mounting once again on her shoulders. That fear from before, fear of a terrifying punishment hanging above them, suddenly felt much more justified.

Things kept getting more and more complicated, way too fast for her to even try to comprehend— and as the elves in the cart began to call for her and Adella to say their goodbyes, the young redhead couldn’t help but feel more and more inadequate.

Of all the people in Jericho, she had to be the worst person to entrust with such important information, and she knew it. Had Saint Martha felt this same way? Fearful, inadequate and scared?

Well, there was someone who understood these sorts of things anyways, someone who usually humored Gabrielle’s questions despite her grumpy demeanor.

Sister Arianna usually told her to only ask important questions, and this had to be the first time Gabi was sure it would be worthy of the nun’s time.