Somewhere Someplace

“Are you alright?” Miranda hastily asked as she arrived to Blossom, hunching down.

“No…” Blossom so lowly replied, frank; her back remained against the wall as she sat, eyes cast down and away. “What… What even was that?” She had to ask.

“Oh, well, you know… I thought maybe…he would…leave you alone if I… You know…” Miranda…tried to explain, her voice more…awkward… “Besides, he deserved to know what it’s like when on receiving side… Not so great when it’s happening to you, rightly right?”

Blossom just exhaled… “Yeah… You really are super weird…”

Miranda awkwardly ahemed and promptly extended her hand… “Here, let me…” She helped Blossom back onto her feet.

However, Blossom immediately fell back down, unable to…stand. Her limbs were shaking, her breaths were shivering in kind as her figure remained stiffened… The shock, the terror, the realizations, all of it was…suddenly beginning to hit. Her eyes began to tear up, though she was not crying… “Wow… Gods, Trinity, he… He actually… He actually… He was going to…” Her breaths began to hyperventilate, in and out, as so much was abruptly processed.

“Yeah…” Miranda mellowly spoke as she leaned down and supportively stroked Blossom’s hair. There was nothing she could say, besides allowing Blossom to go through the shock.

Minutes after minutes passed before Blossom’s breaths spontaneously hardened, her eyes lancing straight into Miranda’s own; “Next time…he tries anything like that, I am kicking him in his man-sack!! I don’t care if they…skin me alive! I’ll bite him! I’ll bite him!”

“That’s the spirit…” Miranda, patting, smiled; “Just be careful… Some like it when their prey squirms, while others…” Her eyes drifted down the direction he had fled… “…like it when their prey plays hard to get…”

Blossom’s breaths groaned quite the ugh… “Stupid freak… Why are they all freaks?!” her voice loudened; “ ‘First sign you’ve become a real woman is when a man tries to…’ Fuck, ew! AGH! Why?! Why are things like this?!” Her fingers began to scratch at her hair.

“Wow, you’re becoming very feisty now…” Miranda, eyes returning, casually observed as Blossom began to, rightfully, melt down.

“Hey, hey, Swordstaff, if I am so beneath you, why do you keep thinking about me? Hmm? Sounds like you actually covet me! I mean, if you have all the power, why don’t go try to be a smug little rapist to someone else, like, say the girls you actually wanted! Why me?!” Blossom’s rambling breaths were steaming out with quite the fidgeting fury…all those words she wanted to scream at him; “Gods’ sacred toilet, with how much Fortune loves to fuck me, she might as well put a ring on my finger already!”

“…” Miranda continued staring… “Alrightly, now you are starting to…” She proceeded to flick Blossom’s forehead; “Calm…”

“Ouch!” Blossom flinched back, reactively grasping the flicked spot; “Hey! That was…mean…”

“Calm…” Miranda reiterated; “You really don’t wanna be screaming this stuff loudly, Pinky…”

“Yeah, I know… I’m just very angry…” All things considered, Blossom was rebounding remarkably quickly. With one final sighing exhalation of all the remaining steam, she finally stood herself up, swiping at her attire. “Anyway, I’m fine now… Nothing…happened, so…you can…” Yet she paused… before abruptly gripping Miranda’s sleeve… “Actually I don’t wanna be alone right now” she rapidly said.

“Hm…” Miranda’s eyes evaluated the natural lighting around… It was sundown; night was upon them… “Well… I was already planning to, but… Yeah, now’s fine…” Her eyes returned… “It’s a special day with not many around, so I know the perfect place the two of us can…chat and cool off…” She smiled.

“Oh, nice…” Blossom just said… “Anywhere not here, honestly…”

“Alrightly!” Miranda promptly began to walk, gesturing with her hand; “Come on then!”

However, Blossom’s grip on Miranda’s sleeve tightened, causing a pausing yank…

“Huh? What?” Miranda mumbled as she spun back around, looking…

Blossom’s eyes were more downfaced… “Hey… Uhm… Thanks… Thanks again… For…getting me out of that… You…really are…my best friend…” Her voice was more somber.

Miranda’s own eyes drifted a bit… “I’m…not really the one…you should be thanking, to be honest…” Indeed, it was only by mother’s alerting butterfly that she had arrived when she had.

And before you ponder,

I had nothing to do with this situation

I was caught by as much surprise as she was

Perhaps too much so…

-||-

The night had risen; darkness had overtaken; yet the world remained vivid; life was never more vibrant. The waxing atmosphered moon up high was only slightly more than half ignited, yet it still provided quite the reflective shine. To some more sensitive eyes of especial attention, perhaps even a gentle atmospheric haze surrounding the darkened side could be seen; or perhaps such was a mere illusion of the mind.

Regardless, the stars twinkling up high; that glowing of heart of that milky stream of spiraling cosmic cloud, so gargantuan and wide, out from which this world seemed to be more falling than contained within; that alive and noisy village brightening from afar, the forests and trees even further afar, the sparse mountains even farther, and the rosefield grasslands all surrounding; it all combined to create a sight most glamorous.

Once again, the two were alone together on this balcony or patio of sorts—the highest level of that small yet tall tower located atop this not-as-tall manor-estate—, having just arrived.

Miranda breathed in the cold nightly air as she leaned herself against the railing with arms hugging tight. Blossom, on the other hand, remained more standing behind with eyes astray…

“Ah… Honestly, nothing vanquishes this spot…” Miranda so remarked… “And we have all the time to be here and just…relax and cool…and just…”—she exhaled—“take it all in…”

Indeed, truly, to behold these sorts of sceneries and sights unlike anything typically seen in day-to-day life, to behold these aspects of this world they all called home, were as if reminders that there was beauty to be found within the otherwise rot.

Yet… “Hm…” Blossom merely mumbled out… Indeed, although her eyes were pleased by the sights beheld, her mind nevertheless remained trapped in its own shadow.

Despite the earlier rebound, Blossom’s mood had now…crashed completely… All of that shock, ire, spite, and other such affects experienced in the immediate aftermath of that incident were…extinguished. Left behind was only the crushing weight of reflective contemplations.

And Miranda could already tell without even looking that Blossom seemed, to put it frankly, quite depressed. Her outlined eyes glanced behind, seeing that girl remained standing in place with eyes casting down… “Hmm, still bummed, huh?” she mumbled… Her eyes returned to the world in front… What to do, what to do… She so pondered and wondered, her eyes casting their shine to that atmosphered moon’s own shining light…

Although Blossom absolutely did not want to let that man-boy…affect her so, her mind nevertheless continued to gravitate towards words that had struck her so… “Hey…” she began to abruptly speak, her voice so lowly and just…uncertain… “Are we…really just…stuck to be what we were born to be?”

Miranda flipped her attention around, staring… “Huh?” That was oddly deep of her.

“The Gods, and I mean…all of them…” Blossom so continued… “Trinity, Pantheon, whatever…the New World elves…worship—all of them… The lands of this world are the way the divine ordained them to be; we are all…placed in our roles for reasons… Peasants, nobles, lowborns, highborns…”

“What’s bringing this up?” Miranda inquired…

Blossom’s eyes remained evasively downwards… “Swordstaff… He said that…I will never be, in the end of all things, anything more than…what I was born to be, and that I have become…tainted for defying it…” she recounted…her memory’s own interpretation of his words, at least.

“And you are…taking his maddened rambles seriously?” Miranda thus remarked.

“No… Not really, but…” Blossom’s voice tensed a little… “It’s just… This is what has been…stuck in me, I suppose…” she thus stated, mellowly and lowly; “Maybe that is why…my life has been this… this… I’ve been trying to…defy it ever since…I could… Ignore it and try to pretend that…that… But-but I can’t—I knew this already, I’ve shouted this before, but…” Hollow tears began to drip… “I was… I was condemned the very day I was born… In the eyes of the Gods; the eyes of the world… Everyone and everything… I was born to be what I am and always will be, and… nothing I can…possibly do…will change that…” She was not crying, although her breaths were certainly…shaking.

“Hm…” Miranda’s eyes drifted back to the world in front, towards that waxing moon up high… Although she knew what Blossom was truly referring to, there was nevertheless something within Blossom’s voice and tears that…maybe…Miranda herself could not…help but…resonate with and in a way…not false.

“Maybe…I should just accept it…” Blossom’s silent tears continued to drop… “And stop…fighting… Stop defying… The simple fact that my role…in this life…is to live trapped in fates determined by everyone else besides me… To either…live a constant lie, die before I can even…have my own dreams, or…become a puppet…to something else…” Her voice only became more…not even somber as much as…defeated.

“Hm” Miranda so mumbled out, her arm resting upon the railing as her hand pressed against her cheek…as if bored yet not truly, eyes remaining cast at the shining moon… “Puppet, huh…” she murmured… Indeed, Miranda was starting to feel…rather different, as if becoming one with the depressive atmosphere taking hold. “Do you like stories?” she abruptly asked.

“Huh?” Blossom’s depressive eyes finally looked up at her, a little confused… “Oh… I… I suppose? I don’t know…” She did not know if she liked anything right now.

“Oh, well… I like stories. I love them, actually…” Miranda thus spoke; “Stories, after all, are what bind everyone and everything together… From our lives…to our histories and fantasies… This whole world is really just…a giant fabrication of stories made real…”

“I see…” Blossom just barely replied, her eyes returning down…

Yet… “Do you want to hear a story?” Miranda so asked.

“Huh?” Blossom’s eyes, again, sprung to her, again quite confused… “I… Uhm… I… pSure?”

“Once upon a time long-long ago, two survivors of two different kinds with two souls of two…opposing types…were stranded somewhere someplace. But their souls, you see, were contradictions in a fundamental way…irreconcilable; enemies perpetual. So, the two survivors relentlessly fought and fought without pause, until one day…both finally struck each other… But in doing so, the two souls realized…that, in the end, they were both…exactly the same; none had ever come for them; they were both abandoned and forgotten… And in their final moments, the two exhausted souls became one…” Miranda thus narrated.

“That’s…sweet… I suppose…” Blossom mellowly remarked…

“However…” There was no sweetness to be found in Miranda’s voice, her eyes remained fixed at that moon up high; “Because these two souls were contradictions irreconcilable, the new soul born from them…was…unstable; it was unable to sustain its existence and began to…rapidly erode, but learnt to sustain itself the only way it knew how… Either by…corroding everything else around to be more like it…or…” Her voice paused… “by devouring others…”

“That’s…bleak…” Blossom was now even more…depressed.

“And it makes you wonder…” Miranda continued on, her voice mellow, hollow, and…low… “Whether or not this soul and those born with its touch… have to wake up every single day of their lives…wondering… Is this…everything they were born to be? Controlled…as if a puppet to their own rotting souls’…hunger for survival…” Her voice lacked any of its charm… “Not that I care, though. I am me; I exist; that is all.”

“Are… Are you…alright, Miranda?” Blossom, indeed, had noticed… She was worried… “S..sorry if…I…” She hoped…she had not made Miranda depressed too…

Yet Miranda sighed, gently giving her head a light shake; “Sorry, I just kinda…went way over, didn’t I?” Her voice flipped back, seemingly, her posture relaxing… “Sorry, that’s just a…story my mother told me to…explain the reason for what I am and why I am, I guess…”

“…what you are?” Blossom tilted her head…

“…metaphorically, Pinky.” Miranda gave quite the plain stare; “My mother also said I had more in common with goblins than most elves, but…”

“You’re…not a goblin, obviously… Rightly, yeah…” Blossom…was a little embarrassed… However, now feeling somewhat reassured… “Hmm…” she began to ponder… “So… I suppose… Is the underlying moral of this metaphoric story…that we are, in the end of things, puppets to the Gods’ determinations? That…we are puppets to the souls our creators gave us, even if those souls are…rotting?”

Miranda actually turned and looked… “Wow… You read more into that than I ever did…” She was a little surprised, frankly… “Sure, why not…” she sighed, just rolling with it… “Though, I’d say…the ‘moral’ is less about souls and more that…” Her eyes returned to the world behind, figure leaning against the railing; “Slaves are shackled to their masters, peasants to their lords, their lords to their kings, kings to their crown… And some…are unlucky enough to be puppets of…their own…rotting souls…” she thus remarked; “Everyone’s a puppet to something, and there is…nothing wrong with that…”

“Hmm…” Yet Blossom’s depressive eyes drifted astray… “But I don’t…want to be a puppet; I want to be…free… Free from my blood’s curse… Free from wills not my own… Free from Fortune and Fate’s determinations…” she lowly spoke.

“Hm…” Miranda, again, so mumbled, her eyes finding themselves upon that moon once again… Truly, her mood was unlike anything prior, and only became more so. “Fate’s determination, huh?” She wandered within her mind’s shadow…

“You’ve heard the rumors…rightly?” Blossom abruptly brought up… “That the Gods intervened in the razing of Humbleberry…”

“Yep, obviously…” Miranda was the one who started them, after all.

Blossom felt a little encouraged… “If they’re true, if the Gods really did put a stop to that slaughter, then… And I know…the Gods aren’t benevolent, but it shows that…they can…”

“I don’t believe them, though” yet Miranda paradoxically stated.

Blossom paused, staring… “You… You don’t?”

“Nope.” Miranda was blunt.

“…oh…” Blossom’s depressive eyes fell downwards astray… To be honest, she was perhaps…wanting reaffirmation for her hopes that they were true… Now she felt dumb for even hoping; for even believing…

“The Gods only ever dragged mortals into their affairs, never the inverse… They never bothered before…” Miranda continued… “After all, the Gods just watched as Rainbow wiped Graillight off the map… Killing and raping every last man, women, and child, enslaving the leftovers… The Gods watched as aliens did the same to Tinkleberry… Never mind the atrocities of this war and all others before…” Her voice was significantly more personal, her hands gripping the railing tightly… “The Gods, Trinity, Great Spirits, even…Night Mother herself… All of them…could just…watch…a girl’s entire world burn around her, hearing her begs and cries…calling out their names… And do absolutely nothing…”

Blossom…could feel…silent pain in each word.

Miranda’s sight detached from the moon up high and turned around, her purplish-magenta eyes piercing into Blossom’s own as if they were brighter and…emptier, colder than the coldest nights; “So, what makes you think the divine would give a shit about random villages nobody has ever heard of?”

Blossom was pierced with a wave of goosebumps and shivers, as if nebulous dread struck her very soul; she had no response.

“That’s what most don’t get… They complain ‘Fortune this’, ‘Fortune that’, as if they are actually significant enough to even warrant that attention… When…the reality is, Fortune does not happen the slightest shit for any of us. Fortune can’t even be a bitch, because to be a bitch…is to care enough to be one… And the Gods just do not care; it’s not even their purpose to do anything whatsoever, besides…” Miranda was so stating yet…stopped herself from finishing, having realized…her mouth was flowing faster than her mind…

However, nevertheless… “The Demon-King” Blossom immediately mentioned, her eyes focused… “You say that the Gods don’t care and…don’t do anything, but… They did something about him. Through their combined powers, the Hero was born and was granted the means to slay…”

Although Blossom was the one who had initiated this reflection of gods and such… The Gods being neither benevolent nor malevolent, but rather…completely and utterly apathetic; that they did absolutely nothing whatsoever; there was something about this fundamental notion that filled her with a…bleakness indescribable. She had to contest it.

“Hm. Demon-Kings, huh?” Yet Miranda so muttered… She yet again turned herself around and leaned against the railing, eyes casting to the moon… “You know how that cycle went, rightly? You seem to…”

“Obviously, yeah…” Blossom’s eyes drifted somewhat… “Every now and so, a Demon-King would invade the thousand realms of man and bring about atrocious destruction, an invasion foretelling the birth of the Hero who must come of age and be found… The Hero’s destiny is to go on their great journey with their chosen companions and slay the Great Tyrant in a final battle, after which the Hero ascends to join the others who came before…” she recounted almost verbatim.

“Yeah, largely, that’s how it went…” Miranda just remarked; “But isn’t it a little weird how, despite having all the power to stop things themselves, the Gods made the Hero instead? The birth of whom was only foretold by the Demon-Kings’ invasions? That all the thousand realms always had to endure…sixteen years of unrelenting horror and death, waiting for the Hero to come of age without even being told who or where; that almost every Hero had the same origin—always that sole survivor whose divine powers awoke during a demonic raid on their humble village…”

“I… I don’t…know…” Blossom was starting to feel…unpleasant.

Yet Miranda continued; “And isn’t it a little weird that after the Great Tyrant…is slayed, both the Fallen Crown and the Hero just kind of…disappear? That there’s always a Demon-King and a Hero… And why is it that the cycle was only considered ‘broken’…when the Maddened King was not slain by the Hero never found?”

“What… What are you…insinuating?” Blossom needed to ask, having become deeply uncomfortable.

Miranda glanced, noticing… She went quiet, eyes returning to the world ahead, reassessing… “You know how it went, rightly? The Legendary Age of Smiles—”

“Whence all the thousand realms received their names from the Child who wore the Crown of Smiles, during which there was no greed, war, malus, or evil; only permanent peace, friendship, love, and harmony between all things…” Blossom immediately completed; “Of course, everyone knows it—we’ve all heard it over and over…”

“Then you must know how it ended…” Miranda thus remarked, her voice shifting… “One day the Child who wore the Crown of Smiles realized something about the world… They ventured out to discover and hopefully find… But when the Child returned from their journey, the Crown had changed… Left in their path was a trail of broken smiles and mangled dreams; left in that trail was a path of bleeding flames and spawning misery; as a tide of madness washed through the thousand realms…”

“The Crown was corrupted; the Child was maddened… An age of darkness during which once friendly beasts were twisted into monsters, the harmony between the races shattering as the falling Crown bled malus and corruption into hearts… The Great Collapse…” Blossom recounted…

“And the dawn of our contemporary era, which many say is ending too if it hasn’t already…” Miranda thus finished; “But yeah, that was one of the accounts, at least…” she remarked; “Still, leaves many questions, doesn’t it?”

“…yeah, it does…” Blossom began to think… “One I’ve heard that…struck my heart the most was… If the Crown of Smiles was carried by mankind’s hearts, was it the Crown of Smiles that corrupted the hearts of man, or…the hearts of man that ultimately corrupted the Crown and sent the Child into madness? Was it we who fell first…”

Miranda turned and looked, a little surprised… “…the ‘Great Terrible Question Mankind Refuses to Answer’, I am surprised you know of it—it’s not really a mans thing…”

“I was taught well, I suppose…” Blossom was…well-tutored, a fact she preferred to be more…humble about.

“Yeah, that’s obvious, princess…” Miranda frankly remarked… “But, anyway,” she refocused, “that’s…definitely a question, but…” She once again turned and gazed at the moon… “Isn’t it a bit weird how… The moral of the legend defining our era is that…the Child of Legends’ final journey was one to discover the truth of what they had realized, only to return corrupted and maddened with the desire to burn everything asunder… As if a forewarning that…one should not seek that truth; the truth of our world… By implication that…”

“It was discovering the truth of the world that corrupted the Crown… Hmm…” Blossom, deducing Miranda’s flow, so pondered; “If so, then… What truth was discovered that made the Crown…fall to madness; that made the Child want to destroy the world…”

Miranda again looked… “Yeah, something like that…” She was a little impressed, frankly.

Blossom was more of a thinker than she herself liked to admit, seemingly.

Nevertheless, once again Miranda turned and returned her eyes to that moon up high… “Though, back to…what you brought up before… About Gods and determination” she shifted, circling all the way back; “I wouldn’t say that each and every one of our lives have predetermined fates planned and outlined… But…the grand trajectory of this whole world, meanwhile… The transition of eras and the shifts of the change’s winds… All the defining events that have happened and are happening…” Her eyes drifted to the stars themselves; “What if I told you… All of it was determined eons ago, before anyone or anything was even born; well before creation itself…”

“…is this another metaphoric tale?” Blossom wondered aloud…

Miranda sighed; “Yeah, sure…” Once again, she just rolled with it; “And it means that the Gods don’t do what we believed they did, despite being exactly what we thought they were; that even the very Gods themselves are puppets to something much bigger…”

“Hmm…” Blossom pondered in mind, before caressing her head’s temple… “Oh, my head is aching from this talk…” she sighed; “But…I feel a little…better now, for some reason…”

“That’s because you’re no longer thinking about the things that were making you miserable, Pinky…” Miranda plainly remarked, her voice’s tone certainly changing.

Indeed, they both felt this…discussion had outlived its utility.

Miranda gestured; “Now come on already, stop meandering behind and actually…stand with me…”

“…oh, rightly, yeah… sorry… I just…” Blossom…had just kind of became complacent with her standing position, but… Nevertheless, she finally approached the railing, resting her arms upon it as she stood next to Miranda, eyes gazing out.

“There we go, now this is a friendship moment…” Miranda let out as she too gazed out in kind, breathing in and out that nightly air as she relaxed and tried to reset the mood…

Blossom herself stared into the distance, focusing more on that village afar whose lights shined even this far, sounds of ritual rite and festive delight being carried by the winds. Unlike before, she was not too bothered by the celebrative joy afar. A warmth was emerging as she took in this moment; she felt…relaxed and comforted and maybe…

Indeed, just a little happy.