NOVEL NEXT Chapter Eighty Five
Hey! You’re a freaking Spirit! Shouldn’t you be able to do something more than just freaking asking her to stop?! How is that all that being my literal creator amounts to?!
[It’s already quite a feat that I’m able to speak to you now as I am. I’ve tried to reach out to you plenty of times in the past, but Cythia would always block it.]
…Huh? Wait, you did? But then how come I didn’t hear a single peep from you until now? It’s been like a year and a half already!
[As I said, Cythia blocked all of my attempts to interfere. I wished to keep my agreement with her, so I let her have her way and simply resigned myself to quietly enjoying your antics. But now that I’ve seen all the destruction and death that Cythia is raining down upon the lands and the people that I once held so dear… I believe that it is time to finally step forward and speak to you, even if it goes against her wishes.]
Oh, okay… Well at least that solves a little bit of the riddle of everything, I guess… But hey! That’s still not really all that helpful! I mean, I’m thankful for you telling me about all this stuff and showing me mom’s past and all that, but unless you have any other cool tricks up your sleeves, I don’t think any of it’s gonna be good enough!!!
[No… I can’t say that I do. In the end, the only hope to stop Cythia is you, the one pure part of her heart that is left. She’s already proven that she’s unwilling to listen to what I have to say to her, but perhaps she’d be willing to listen to a reflection of herself.]
…Hmph. Where did the whole ‘No you’re a different person than her, Mellily!’ talk go, huh? Guess I’m only someone else until you need me to talk some sense into her, is that it? Ugh, how annoying…
Look, you’re putting all these hopes into me or whatever, but mom’s already told me that she doesn’t like me, alright?! Or at least she made it pretty apparent that she thought I was a big stupid idiot when she pushed me away to this place and took over, so I highly doubt she’d be willing to listen to me! I’d have better chances of just pushing her away like she did to me and taking over than possibly getting her to believe anything I say! Why don’t you teach me how to do that instead, okay?!
[Hmm, well… It pains me to say it, but I don’t think that’s going to be possible. I made a deal with Cythia, you see, and the rights to that body specifically belong to her. Even if you also inhabit it, she simply has higher permissions for it than you do.]
…Permissions? What am I, a computer?
Alright then, so you’re saying there’s no way I can just wrestle the rights back from her, fine! But if I’m just trapped in here anyways, then how the heck were you wanting me to talk with her in the first place?! What, is she able to hear us in here or something?
[I may have made a deal with her, but this body you both inhabit is still of my creation. It’s my child. I should at least have the ability to put my child into time out for a short while, shouldn’t I?]
Whaaat? Hey wait, but that doesn’t make any sense! Didn’t you say that you can’t force us to do anything? What happened to all that junk about only being able to make requests?
[Mmm, it’s true, I don’t have the ability to force the body to do anything. But as a Spirit, I do have enough power to pull Cythia’s consciousness away for a short while to have a little chat with her. It won’t stop her body from channeling power into the Ankh tree, so we can’t use it as a stalling tactic, but at the very least it will allow the two of you a few moments to have a little chat together.]
Huh. That’s… interesting. Damn, I guess that really means this is the only thing we can do, huh? Ugh, I’m not ready, I’m not ready! I don’t have a single clue about what to say to her!
[The most persuasive thing you can do is to be honest with her. If it were you you were trying to convince, then what would you say to yourself?]
But it’s not me! It’s a way more high strung, vengeful, hateful person than me! Weren't you the one who said we weren’t the same person?!
[Perhaps you’re not her, but what you are
is the heart that she once threw away. What could appeal to someone more than their heart?]
Is… Is that true? Oh gosh, it kinda sounds like it would be, right? I mean, I guess it’s true that I’m made up of the parts of her that she thought were useless… So I guess maybe if I can convince her that it’s not so useless after all…?
[That’s the spirit. Alright, prepare yourself, I’m pulling the two of you into a separate space.]
Ahhh okay okay, I’m ready! No, maybe I’m not ready, but I doubt I’ll get more ready than this, and maybe I’d only freak myself out more if I had more time to think about it anyways, so okay! I’m doing it!!!
Come at me mom!
It’s time the two of us have a little chat!
~~~
This new space that I got pulled to was a lot less dreary than the one inside of my own mind or body or whatever, I guess. It was bright at least, and I could somehow clearly define the space, like I was really in a room. And hey! I even have a body in here! Geez, I was really missing having some kind of form to move around in! Hello tentacles! Hello roots! Ah, and my camellia flower is even here too! How niiiiice~!
As I marveled over being able to see my pretty little body again, mom, looking like she did in her human form, suddenly materialized into the room. She looked confused for a second, like she didn’t know what was happening, but then when she saw me standing across from her, I guess she quickly got the picture.
“Oh… So it’s you. How did you manage to pull this kind of trick on me? I was sure I locked you away.”
Haha… Well, at least she seems willing to talk to me, even if she’s acting all bitchy like this. Guess I should take that as a good sign.
=Um, hi mom, it’s nice to get to talk to you-=
“I’m not your mother.”
=...Alright… Okay, then, um… It’s nice to talk to you… Cythia?=
“...I can’t say the same. Look, I don’t have time for this; Let me out of here.”
=N-no no, wait!=
I reached out for mom on instinct, who’d turned and looked like she was going to walk away out of this space somehow, and she easily swatted my approaching tendrils away while shooting me a glare like she hated me. If looks could kill, there’d be one less pretty plant wandering around, I can tell you that!
Ah screw it, I hate this! I hate this! This stupid war of nerves bullshit! Let me just get to the point already!
=C-Cythia, what you’re doing right now is wrong! You can’t keep growing that nuke tree anymore!=
“Pffft. Wow. So that’s what this is all about.”
Mom’s pretty face twisted cruelly. She crossed her arms like I’d seen her do a bunch of times back when she was still just Lily, and spoke to me in a condescending tone.
“Alright then, tell me: What should I be doing, huh? Should I be holding their hands and letting the invaders go free? Oh, or maybe I should waste my time eating crabs, or hunting down eggs. Hey, I know, maybe if we grew a bunch of pretty flowers and trees for the Spirit of the Wind’s Avatar then he won’t be so mad about his people being killed off, and he’ll let us go! Doesn’t that sound like a great
idea, you idiot?”
…Okay, first of all, that was very harsh! But yeah, alright, I can accept that, she’s definitely got some points about me. And I have to admit, I don’t really have a plan for how I’m gonna handle things. But you know what-!
=Even if I don’t have a better plan right now, what you’re doing is still definitely wrong!=
“...Haah… Christ, I don’t know why I ever expected you to get it. I’m just wasting my time talking to an idiot, aren’t I?”
Ugh! Whyyy??? Why do you keep hitting me where it hurts, mom?! You of all people should know that I don’t like looking stupid!!!
=Yeah? Yeah?! Well, I may be an idiot, b-but even an idiot knows that nuking the place that you love just to keep it away from other people is completely moronic, you moron!=
“Ghkk, what?!”
Mom’s face froze up in a hilariously surprised and indignant looking expression.
“What in the fuck did you just say to me?!”
Oh. Oh, I get it now.
Is that how it is…?
You know what, I think the Forest Spirit might have been completely right.
Maybe we’re not the same person, and maybe we have different thoughts about things…
But at least I still know how to press my own buttons!!!
=You heard me; I called you a moron, you moron!=
“Grrr… You… You shut your mouth, you idiot!”
=Moron moron, you’re a moron!=
“Shut that stupid mouth before I make you!”
=I won’t shut it until you stop acting like a moron~!=
And as mom started chasing me around this small mental room that we were trapped in together, I couldn’t help but think that maybe connecting with her wasn’t gonna be as hard to do as I thought, you know?
_____
AN: Just posted chapter 100 on my patreon and ko-fi! What a goal, I'm pretty proud of how much of this thing I've managed to write so far, lol
My links, if you're interested ;P
- patreon.com/user?u=63286737
- ko-fi.com/a5centcyborg