Book Three – Interlude – Part Three – A Girl Reborn Within Fire and Blood.

Vali wrapped her hands around Williana’s tiny body and held her in front of her sparkling blue eyes. “I KILLED THEM!! I KILLED THEM ALL! THE WOMEN WHO HELD THEIR HUSBANDS EVEN KNOWING THE PAIN THEY CAUSED ME!!!! THE MEN WHO DID THE DEEDS!!! I EVEN KILLED THE CHILDREN BECAUSE THEY CAME FROM THOSE FUCKING MEN!!!! Why could they live a life free of rape...and I HAD TO SUFFER EVERY DAY!!!! I HAD TO SUFFER EVERY DAY, AND IT WASN'T FAIR!!!!!”

In a rage, Vali threw Williana against the wall. Her tiny body left a nasty, bloody spot as she slid down like a piece of wet meat. But even as Williana's body laid in a growing pile of blood, Vali heard a voice coming right beside her.

“You can’t kill me. I can’t die. But that did hurt, so let’s try not to do that again, okay?” Vali turned her head and saw a familiar fairy dressed in the same kind of robe she had on, but it was a smaller version.

“You know what’s funny?” Vali said. “I never had a chance to wear this robe when I was Vali. That bastard showed it to me when I was five or six, and he said I could only wear it when it was time to produce another priestess. He said my mom wore the one her mom gave her when she carried me for 9 months. I was supposed to continue the tradition and make one for my daughter, but I’ll never get the chance. And maybe that’s a good thing. When--if-- I had a daughter... A baby girl... When her little lungs fought to breathe air… When her little arms flailed around, and her legs kicked at everything…”

Vali took a breath.

“That would’ve been her last moment in this world. I will—I would—bear the pain of killing my own child to prevent her from succumbing to the fucked up life I had to live. But I’m glad that the medicine that bastard gave me prevented me from carrying my rapists' festering seed. Even now, I don’t remember what happened after I killed the man who took my first time. Like I said, I remember stabbing him through the mouth, and I remember killing everyone I saw.

“Yeah, that’s it! The fire spiraled out of control, jumping from my house to the gardens to the other buildings. Everything burned, and everyone died. Those who tried to escape couldn’t go anywhere because the bridge hadn’t been repaired in a while. It was one of the downsides of the village being so self-sufficient that we rarely needed supplies. If we did need them, that bastard would send someone they trusted through a secret exit to travel to a nearby town and get what we needed. But the villagers didn’t know that. And the number of people that close to that bastard man was small enough to count on one hand.

“Some of them tried to leap off the steep edges to escape my wrath, but I wouldn’t let them. I recalled what Carrie taught me before she...I just remembered what she told me. I had the power to summon her spear, marked with my blood, from anywhere. And my hatred was much stronger than my fear of losing it, so I threw it. I remembered laughing like crazy when I summoned it back. Strength left my body, but I had a new way to kill people. If I missed my throw, I could try again. But that’s beside the point.

“I don’t know how much time passed, but by the time I stumbled back to the fountain in front of my house, the pretty blue water running through it had been tainted red by blood. Was it my blood? I don’t know. It could’ve been from anyone I killed when the crowd gathered before they ran away. I looked up at the sky, and the pretty blue was hidden by the thick clouds of smoke. The houses burned, so there was nowhere to sleep. The animals burned to death or stampeded off the edge of the village, so I couldn’t butcher them for meat. The fields where we grew corn and other vegetables were consumed by the flames that couldn’t match my rage.

“I fell to the ground and cried in pain. My hands finally let go of the spear, and I saw large patches of raw and bloody skin from where I had tightly gripped it. My arms and legs and lungs begged me to give them a chance to rest, but I couldn’t. I had one more person to kill. Do you know who it was?”

Williana silently nodded and touched Vali’s pink hair.

“It was me. I was the last person. And what better way to go than dying with the only friend I ever had? I forced my body to breathe in the air it needed, even if it was corrupted by smoke, and I compelled my tired and achy feet to walk up the burning stairs. I stepped over the corpses of that bastard and his two goons, and then I saw Carrie. She wasn’t moving, but the smoke and fire hadn’t yet consumed her. Even though the heat wasn’t bearable, I dropped to the floor and vomited, and I used the last of my strength to crawl myself towards her. The smile on her face had been my only source of comfort. Before I knew it, my hand touched her red hair, my body soaked in her blood, and I closed my eyes. I wanted it to be for the final time, but I’m sure you know that didn’t happen.

“I don’t know how much time passed, but I woke up. The smoke still threatened to devour us, but we didn’t have to worry about the fire. I closed my eyes again, but something hit my face. I went to wipe it away, but it was an envelope. And still, to this day, I don’t know what compelled me to read the letter. But I couldn’t read it. Not with the smoke covering my vision. Using the rest of my strength gained over a small rest,  I tossed the spear out of the window and dragged Carrie out of the house. As if it was a joke by the Gods themselves, the fire came back with a vengeance. The wooden beams in the room fell, sending fire to block my way and destroying the stairs.

“But I wouldn’t give up. Not yet. Something really compelled me to read the letter. I had to read it. I wanted to read it. And I fought against the fire and whatever cruel joke the Gods wanted to play. By the time I stepped through the doorway for the final time, over 80% of my body was burnt black. The hair on my head, ears, and tail had burned away. I couldn’t stop coughing out the smoke festering in my lungs, and I couldn’t see a single thing in front of me. But I forced myself to crack open the envelope underneath that sky clouded by smoke.

“It was from Carrie to her daughter. More accurately, it was from Carrie to her unborn daughter. Even more specifically, it was a letter to a daughter she knew she would never have. I read it. Then, something clicked, and I was born. My name is Vali, the girl who endured everything.”

“Interesting. Then explain to me about the girl the outside me knows as Carrie,” Williana quipped.

The large wall that had Carrie’s painting on it flickered and began to move like a movie. It showed a set of events, very similar, if not outright identical, to the ones Vali explained. Seeing it move in motion rather than simple words proved to be more than Williana could handle, but as a figment of Vali’s imagination who played the role of an inquisitor, she kept her one eye on the moving wall.

“When I—Vali—read the letter, something happened. I became relegated to who you see here. I’m the Vali who had to endure over a decade and a half of endless torture and rape. She—the girl reading the letter—truly...” Vali held a hand out towards the moving wall. The burnt Singi, with large patches of dead skin flaking off, via gravity, finished reading the letter. She turned to face the woman she carried out.

“Mama! You gotta move! Mama! Wake up! Wake up, Mama! Mama, please! Mama—" The sound coming from the girl, who shook an unmoving body over and over again, cut off, and Vali said those fateful words.

“She truly believes herself to be her daughter. The words twisted her mind, and maybe yet, that was the only way for her to survive. It was the single way for her psyche to stay intact. Or maybe I didn’t deserve to be the dominant personality.”

“That doesn’t explain why her name is Carrie or how she survived. And what about the hair color? And the story Carrie told the outside me on the morning of the bank robbery? You haven’t even answered why I’m even here! Or have you?”

“Fine, I’ll answer it all. That girl's name is Carrie because she believes it to be her nickname... She looked so much like the woman she thought was her mom. And even I don’t know why her hair changed color to red. Perhaps the blood seeped into her bald spots and took over the color like how I was relegated to being here? And she survived because Carrie wasn’t dead. Look at the wall.” Vali pointed to the moving wall once again.

Williana watched with a calm eye and a shaky breath when the woman she thought to be dead moved. The smoke dirtied her face, the fire burned and scarred her already flawed body, but her mouth moved. No voice erupted from those charred lips, but a mystical glow enveloped Vali’s—Carrie’s— burnt body. “I may not have been your biological mother, but…I loved you…all..the…same…during our…ti…m…e…tog…eth...er” The words, fractured and broken, sputtered from her damaged vocal cords as the healing light washed away Vali's burnt spots. The spotless skin revealed underneath shimmered and slightly moved as a woman who never had a chance to be a mother passed on to the afterlife.

At the same time, a girl who had never known the touch of a mother woke up to a startling and horrifying sight. Instantly, her drowsy blue eyes turned to the woman cradling her. “Mama? Hey, Mama, wake up...” It was a terrified whisper at first, but her voice grew weak and wispy. “Mama! Don’t die on me, Mama! Mama, hey, we need to move! The fire’s gonna get us! Mama!!”

Vali stared with heavy, wet eyes as the girl she used to be pulled and pushed against the burned sleeves in a futile attempt to wake up its owner. “Carrie—the real Carrie—used the last bit of her strength to heal me. You see, Williana, that’s why I’m—we—aren’t dead,” she turned her attention back to the moving wall.

“Mama, I’ll get us out of here! I swear I will!” Carrie forced her words through a clenched mouth and lifted the deceased woman with the greatest of ease. As she walked through the still-burning village, she saw a strange metal hatch. It used to be hidden by the house standing above it, but the wildfire had no allegiances. It didn’t care for friend or foe.

Carrie opened the hatched, and with great difficulty, crawled down the long ladder with her mother figure in tow. Once she descended far enough, it was as if the light entering from the small square hatch above disappeared. With nothing but darkness guiding her the rest of the way down the wooden ladder, Carrie found a source of strength inside the power of words.

“Mama,” Carrie said as she lowered her feet. A sharp, jagged piece of wood broke off and stabbed her foot, but that didn’t stop her. “I’ll bury you someplace pretty. It has to be a place pretty enough for my Mama.” She kept repeating those two sentences over and over as if they were words of power, and they were, to her at least.

Eventually, after saying them over 100 times, Carrie felt the soft dirt between her toes when she expected to feel wood. Sweat dripped down her still-soiled body, taking away some of the filth she was forced to endure.

Vali pointed at the moving wall and spoke. “This is the secret library that connects to the outside. There’s a little door down that hallway. Once I went through there, I was finally free of that oppressive life. But before I did that, I stopped—no, Carrie stopped and looked at that bookshelf lit by a single candle. Remember, I’m Vali, and she’s Carrie. Carrie went to it and looked at the journals she saw placed in them. You can see it yourself, Williana. There were hundreds of them, and each held the memories of the chief in charge at the time. Logically, you would think the very first one belonged to the evil chief, right? You know, the one who started the whole Goddess Verta bullshit?”

“You already know I know the answer. Asking questions is supposed to be my job. But I’ll humor you. Yes, I would think the first journal would be the evil chief’s.”

“Then you’re wrong.” The moving wall froze. Vali walked towards it and touched it with her left hand. It lit aflame and changed color until the image of a Singi and Human stared into Vali’s and Williana’s eyes. The figures were darkened, somewhat, but the pinks of the Singi’s hair, ears, and tail, and the blues of her eyes could be seen. The Human, however, remained blacked and void.

“Those two were the original founders of the village. I know what they looked like because I saw photos of them in their journals, but the Human's photo was damaged. And you know what? I don’t hate them. And I don’t hate the ones who became the chief after them. It’s the damn evil chief I hate the most. But more than that, it’s the sadness I feel. You see, Williana, the founders intended the village to be a safe haven for people and races of all kinds. There used to be Elves, Dwarves, Koena, and Kobold, and they all lived peacefully in this village. And I know from reading the founder’s journal that they loved their wife. They were Human, and she was Singi, but that didn’t stop them. And here’s the kicker! They hated the Gods. They absolutely fucking hated them! I wonder if they had a glimpse of the future, you know.  What if they believed something like this was going to happen?! Maybe that’s why they wrote that warning!”

The wall flickered again until it showed a frayed book battered and warped by time. It was opened on the last page, and there was a single sentence. Vali read it out loud.

“Do not trust the Gods, for they only live for their own amusement.”

“Hold on. If the evil chief created the tunnel, then why was the founder’s journal there?” Williana asked.

“I don’t know. When Carrie took a look at the second journal she found—the one belonging to the evil chief—he wrote that he found the library while trying to tunnel a secret exit. I imagine the founders built it for a reason. Again, I suspected they knew someone was going to find the area. If it’s a warning, then I hope they didn’t count on their far descendants to be responsible. Or maybe they did. I don’t know. I just know I feel sorry for them.

“Regardless of that... After Carrie flipped through a few of them, she picked up her ‘mom’ and walked towards the exit. When she opened the metal door and withstood its noisy creaks and clanks from a lack of care, two things happened. One: Carrie saw a beautiful sight full of whimsical greens and an unfiltered blue. The air smelled different, it tasted different, everything was different from the horrible life she had led. Two: a final fear prevented her from moving. Do you know what fear was?”

Williana remained quiet and stared at the wall while fluttering her wings. She flew away from Vali and hovered in mid-air. The image on it flipped from an open book to Vali herself. She turned around from the wall and stared into Williana’s one eye.

“I was that fear. I made that fear. I sent that fear through our body. It wasn’t fair! I lived through the pain! I did! I did! I did! She didn’t! She’s the lucky one! She doesn’t know what I experienced! SHE JUST DOESN’T FUCKING KNOW, AND NOW SHE CAN LIVE THE LIFE I FUCKING WANTED!!!!! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I FUCKING DID, WILLIANA?!?!!!”

“…”

Vali stomped over to Williana and shouted in her fairy face. “I gave her a back story. I made Carrie into the girl she became. You know that story she told you on the day of the bank robbery? Everything but the killing of the four guards was fake. She only believes her past happened. It never did. She thinks she’s been involved with women before. That never happened because I won’t allow it. I won’t let anyone get close to her!!!

“That’s why I created that harsh outer personality that wards off anyone who wants to be close. That’s why I gave Carrie an innocent, loving, and caring inner personality. And that’s why I gave her the disgusting quirk of tasting and licking blood! Because it’s a sickening act that I like! She can’t have it easy because I didn’t! She needs to suffer a little bit too!!!! That’s why I created a bad past for her to believe in!!!” Williana’s lavender hair flew back from the harsh screech directed at her.

“Vali, shut up!” Williana shouted, raising her fairy vocal cords and stretching them out. “You’re acting like a brat! It’s not her fault that Carrie is the dominant personality! You and I both know that if you wanted to, you could assume direct control and banish her!! But you don’t! You’re scared of getting hurt again! But you can’t sit here and whine about it while intentionally making her life difficult!!!”

“I KNOW THAT!!! That’s why… That’s why… That’s why I lied about her past. I didn’t make it bad. You wanna know what she believed happened? Do you want to know the falsified past of a girl named Carrie?”

“…”

“Fine. Here it is. Carrie was born to a happy family. Her mother and father were old when they had her, but they loved her a lot. When she was of age, her father trained her with a spear. When she was old enough to be considered an adult, her mother and father peacefully passed away in their sleep. Before her mother died, she gave Vali the nickname Carrie. That’s why her ID says Vali, the name she was born with, and not Carrie. After packing up her supplies and burying her parents, she left their house for the final time with a tearful smile on her face. Her manufactured childhood shouldn't have allowed her to grow such a personality, and it didn’t. I forced that on her. In her falsified past, there was never a chance for her to enjoy the act of drinking blood. It was something I made her take on to scare people away.

"Now, do you want to know what really happened?!?! The girl you see found a simple spot and abandoned the original Carrie a few steps after walking outside! She then wandered naked through the woods until she found someone to kill! She murdered an innocent family, stole their money and clothes, and went to live her own life at the expense of a mother, a father, and two daughters!

“She has no home. She has no family. Everything about her is just a fucking lie! She doesn’t even have friends because I won’t allow just anyone to become close to her! They have to earn her trust and look past her violent outlook on life!! They have to love her! That's why I guided her to a life of sin and murder, and that's why I directed her to join the Mafia whenever we found out about it! I thought that was the perfect place for her! She would be safe there... As long as she kept up that horrible outer personality, no one would want to be with her... She'd be safe...and her heart wouldn't ever be broken! They were only a means to an end, and--"

“And now you know why. You finally have the answer to your question. That’s why you summoned me here, isn't it? You never knew love. That’s why you couldn’t see the answer. Yes, I broke through that barrier because I love her. I feel in love with her because I want to shoulder her pain,” Williana said. Her fairy-like body glowed with a lavender light. It filled up the room, drowning everything in pure light, but it didn’t stop. It grew until the pressure she emitted blew away the cramped museums and broke the walls, both visible and invisible.

And yet...it didn’t stop. It continued to grow for hours, days, months. It didn’t stop when it felt like a year passed, and when a decade passed, it showed no signs of stopping.

But it did stop. And when it did, the light shrunk instantly, leveling everything inside with a powerful explosion. Vali was at the center of it all, yet she stood tall and embraced whatever happened.

When the light faded away, she saw Williana, but she didn't have the fairy-sized body anymore. Her one blue eye stared ahead without a hint of fear.

“I know it's hard, but do you believe me now? That girl—that red-haired, red-eared, red-tailed Singi with a mouth like alcohol, a touch like a lover, and an insatiable lust for blood, is the girl I fell in love with. Vali, you don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to worry about her. I know you did the things you did because you don’t want her to be hurt like you were, but you have to let her be free. Let her live for you. And you don’t have to subject yourself to enduring your trauma every night. You've already suffered enough..."

Vali held out a hand and took Williana’s fingers. Like a child gripping something for the first time, she held on with uneven pressure. “I can’t force her to live through that! Williana, I…I…” She crumbled into a babbling mess of snot dripping down her nose and water flowing from her eyes.

Williana bent down with her, embracing Vali in a touch she never had a chance to feel when she was alive. It was warm and soft, and she felt the love she needed and wanted.

“Protect her from the memories if you must, but she won’t grow as a person unless you let her face them. But it doesn’t have to be all at once. A little bit at a time is alright. And if you really don’t want to face those horrifying things, then don’t.

“At the same time, you don’t have to suffer through a repeat of what happened to you. I know you think of it as your punishment, but no one wants to punish you.

“You’re her, and she’s you. You know what’s best for her, and she knows what’s best for you. You’re one and the same, and you’re one and different,” Williana whispered. She felt two arms grip her waist and a head burrow deep into her chest. The wails erupting from the poor girl filled the lavender-lit void around them.

And it continued until the area around them shook.

“Carrie’s waking up, Vali. It’s time for you to sleep,” Williana said.

For the first time in a long time, Vali wasn’t afraid. She stared up at Williana's face and buried her head into her neck. Williana responded by looking down and placing an affectionate kiss on her pink hair.

“Vali, Carrie has the outside me, and you have me. I’m always in your heart. Don’t try to face everything alone, okay? I’m only a simple wish away. If you still want to suffer through your past while Carrie is asleep, then all you have to do is call me, okay?” Suddenly, Vali’s arms held nothing, and she looked up with crying eyes. Williana was the only person who had broken through Vali's defenses... She was the sole girl who Vali wanted to trust with Carrie, and she had disappeared like sugar dissolving in water.

“WAIT FOR ME!” Vali shouted.

Then the tortured girl ceased to exist while Carrie was awake. When she laid her head down to rest, Vali reappeared from the void. But unlike before, the abyss wasn’t black. No, it had a pure and comforting lavender hue to it.

“Hey, Williana!” Vali shouted. The white robe she never had a chance to wear adorned her body. Moving slightly to the left, Vali watched as the space beside her became distorted. A second later, she smiled when she saw a girl with a single eye. The lavender hair covering her head danced around slightly as the energy creating her dispersed.

“What did I say? I said you only had to call out,” Williana whispered. She held out her hand and gently gripped Vali’s soft and weathered fingers.

It was going to be a long night of enduring the painful memories—a process that acted as her self-inflicted punishment— but Vali wasn’t afraid. She had someone who could share the burden, fear, and pain she felt. She wouldn’t ever be alone again. Not anymore.