Rising Shards

I of course rushed to Oka and told her everything right away, making us late for our next class. She was immensely supportive and could sense I was still a bit keyed up from it all.

“I’ll do whatever I can for you,” Oka said. “If you need me with, I’ll be there. If you want me outside the door, I’ll guard it. I’m not sure what door I’ll be waiting outside, but yeah! I’m glad you have some time though…”

“Me too.” I said. “I’m still. This is a lot.”

“Yeah…” Oka said. “Take it easy then, alright? We’re all still healing, and you just got another set of weirdness rained down upon you. So if you just need gentle time too, I’m here for you.”

I almost cried at her warmth.

“I think I need that a lot right now,” I said.

After class, I discussed it with my friends at dinner.

“This isn’t normal, right? Like this is kind of wild?” I asked.

“Zeta, are you kinda…sheltered?” Marmalade asked.

“I…! What do you mean?” I asked.

“Have you not seen that one show, uh,” Marmalade said. “Cani Void Investigations? That has like ten thousand seasons.”

“I haven’t.”

“I mean, you haven’t even seen Blocktritus either so…” Marmalade said.

“What do either have to do with a detective asking for my help to see my family’s history?” I asked.

“Because that’s the plot of like most of the episodes of CVI,” Marmalade said.

“Yeah, I think it’s pretty normal,” Kalei said. “Normal for Cani, at least. Go back in the void and see your family’s history, it’s like a scrapbook. But for Cani.”

I got the sense Kalei had no idea what Marmalade was talking about but wanted to impress her by agreeing, which would be sweet if it wasn’t at my expense.

“But Tik Moonheart’s like super famous, which is super cool!” Oka said.

“Eh,” Kalei said, tapping on her phone. “Her Friendliest fan page only has 124 followers. So probably not that famous.”

“Famous enough to have her own exhibit in LE!” I said.

“Wow, an exhibit.” Kalei said.

“Are you jealous?” Oka asked.

“Why would I be jealous?” Kalei asked.

This suddenly felt like the time I wrote to the Tower of Hate and Love crew and got a form letter back. I proudly brought it to school but this jerk in my class explained form letters to me then crumpled up the letter.

“Do you all think I should do this?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t decide right away,” Oka said.

“Right,” Lillia said. “And if you aren’t able to juggle this and classes, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“I think I could? Maybe? It’s kind of just like…helping out with research. I think.” I wrote down some questions in the journal Tik gave me.

“Speaking of classes, how is everyone doing with finals?” Lillia asked. It was less an inquiry and more a threat to get in shape if we were behind. Lillia had taken it upon herself to help all of us with classes. As far as I knew none of us were doing particularly badly, but Lillia was determined for us to do better. I think trying to help Ko out with her finals was bringing the inner teacher out in Lillia.

I was suddenly glad I had finals to take my mind off of Tik’s request.

Once we had all updated on our classes to Lillia’s satisfaction, she brought up her progress on our video project. She had pieced together our test footage, and pitched some ideas our way for where she was at with the script. Lillia was taking a lot on at once with the project, and we had some debate on her writing and directing, but her screenwriting was very impressive.

Overall, I was still reeling from the news, but with my girlfriend, friends, classes, hobbies…it felt like life was carrying on as ever, which was comforting.

* * *

“I’m admittedly a bit biased,” Dr. Diast said.

“How come?” I asked. I chatted with Diast after her class to see what she thought about the Tik Moonheart business a few days after hearing about it. I didn’t feel as distant, but after my past void situations, I didn’t want to rush this and wanted to check in with people I trusted.

“I’ve been mentor plenty of times to situations fairly similar to this. Memory trials are usually what ends up getting used, but they’re not great for finding rock solid info since they’re so heavily based on the subject’s subconscious mind. It’s usually not a Pyre Cani with such vast memory rebuilding powers,” Diast said. “And not usually one I’m a fan of. My bias comes from me loving the reports from the River and Lyric agency.”

“Did any of their stuff mention that they knew my parents?” I asked.

“That was a shocker, I’ll admit,” Diast said. “But again, I’ve seen some coincidences and connections that sound way more outlandish. Tik and company are pretty cagey about their early years.”

“And that’s when they met my parents according to Tik,” I said. “Isn’t this all kinda pretty suspicious? I’m trying to avoid getting pulled into a trap again.”

“On paper, yeah,” Diast said. “I think, knowing what I do about them, that if they were pulling something over on you it’d be a pretty big betrayal of what they stand for. Putting my bias aside, it’s not impossible. And it’s good you’re looking out for it. If you see anything suspect, let one of us know right away.”

“Alright,” I said. “Tik said I have until next semester to decide what I want to do here.”

“Plenty of time,” Diast said. “Also let me know if any of this gets too stressful to the point that it’s affecting classes this close to finals week.”

“I get the feeling you brought up finals because you wanna talk about them next.” I said.

“Am I that obvious?” Diast asked.