By the time Jean let us off from our duties it had gotten dark outside. I immediately went to my room. I feel like I used up all my energy for the year with today. How can Emma handle it? Last I saw her she seemed like she was even more energetic than she had been before.

I thought about those ruins, and that dream as I walked back upstairs. Was there something there to help me? Did those ruins hold the key to remembering who I was? I had been thinking about both my dream and those ruins connected to my it ever since I’d finished. Opening the door into my room, the first thing I looked over to was my bed, where a woman in red plumage lay. Her eyes blinked slowly open as I entered the room and the small woman stretched herself awake.

“Should I tell her?” It felt like something that I should keep to myself but at the same time what kind of problems would I get myself into if Rosary found out that I had disappeared. The last thing I needed was for there to be drama once I got back.

“Assuming you make it back.”

A voice whispered from nowhere in particular. Was that the same voice from before? This one seemed insidious like evil intent had been laced into it’s very being. The thought of it burned in my chest. What was going on? Why were there voices in my head?

“How was working?” A sleepy voice asked cutely. The thoughts about the voice were swept away; Rosary instead took up my attention. “Absolutely terrible,” So terrible in fact that I had to hide myself near the end, a moment of high strung anxiety, anxiety that reminded me once again of how little I enjoyed my interactions with people, people who always seemed to look at me with a judgmental almost pitying way as if their brief presence in my life was a salve to the mediocrity of my life. Fuck them. Of course, I didn’t say any of that out loud, as doing so could open a whole new can of worms, one which I refused to open.

Rosary looked at me with a curious, almost child-like look her dazzling eyes inspecting me as if I were a rare specimen and she a bored cat let into the scientist's lab unwittingly. “Why was it so terrible?” She asked, her face alight in interest, probably because it was much more interesting than her recent experience. “Reasons,” I responded, in an attempt to try to avoid the subject, a feeble attempt I know, but I wasn’t really well versed in making conversations go my way.

She gave me a pouty look, her little face going into an exaggerated frown, a frown probably meant to make me feel bad enough to relent and tell her. Instead, all I could think of was how adorable it made her look. Walking to my bed I sat down for a moment next to her trying not to too obviously enjoy her sinfully well-proportioned body with my eyes, which was hard, why do women look so damn good naked? “I just don’t do well with people,” I mumbled.

“Neither do I,” she responded, a voice both cheerful and thoughtful, “I never got along well with my sisters or even those of our clique.” Her voice faltered, cracking a little as if talking about her past reminded her of painful memories that ought to stay buried, deep underground, so deep that they could never again be found. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t curious about her past circumstances, and once again I remembered how she had been treated when we had first met, alone, with what had seemed like not a friend in sight and yet she had been so warm, so friendly, she had treated me with open warmth as if in sheer defiance of the cold that she herself had been treated to. Before she could say any more, I gently patted her head, the feel of her hair both course and smooth like hair and yet also like a feather, as if the two were one and the same. She was so warm, it almost felt like she should have a fever, but she was always this warm, apparently her body producing more heat than that of the normal human. “You don’t need to say anything else.”

She nodded, and I took the moment of quiet to peek out the window, the murky darkness thoroughly engulfed the streets. I once again thought of those ruins, something just kept drawing me to them, like the lone fish who swam too deep, lost in the darkness of the ocean, lost and searching for some hint of direction, only to find a light in the distance, a light that very well and probably could be my demise, and yet a light that I still felt I needed to swim towards.

“Rosary, there’s something I need to see in the city.” I worded it carefully, unsure about what kind of reaction I would get. “It’s something that I need to see before I sleep, hell I don’t think I can sleep until I see it.” She looked at me; she seemed to be a little confused, her head slightly cocking. “What?” She asked.

I explained to her the dreams I had had in further detail, the dream which had originally led me to this very city, as well as the dream of the ruins, the one where the fate of that girl named Clair and hell even my own fate seemed to be a mystery still. I told her of how the very ruins I had entered in the latter dream was here in this very city. She seemed to show some worry, near the end of the explanation but didn’t say anything until I finished.

“I don’t think those ruins are safe,” she paused, as if gathering her thoughts, remembering something, something that seemed to terrify her, her body shaking a little, was it from the description of that creature? I thought back to that fish who had swum too far down, of that light in the distance. Was that light safety? Or was that light a vicious monster that was trying to swallow me once I got closer? That inner voice chuckled, a dark, inhuman chuckle that most definitely was not mine, but the question then became what was it that plagued at my mind?

“I think that regardless of how safe it is I still need to go,” I responded back to her; it wasn’t courage but rather desperation that fueled that answer. It felt so wrong to have things missing from my memory. She stopped shaking, eyes of hazel and green staring up at me with an intensity that seemed ready to fight whatever it was that had just moments ago frightened her. “I’m going with you then.” She responded, her words fierce and without an inch of room to budge. I could tell without saying anything more, it would be useless to try to convince her to do otherwise. Though to be honest, it was a little comforting to know that she wanted to be there with me. “Fine,” I responded trying to sound defeated but inwardly happy.