Dinner was nice.

  It wasn’t often that Miss Symphonia let me off before dinner, and it was even rarer that she was too busy to even come back to make a meal.

  I took the opportunity to start on dinner earlier that night. I wanted it to be a fun treat for my sister.

  Early into the afternoon, several hours before the sun set, I took her into the kitchen and gently guided her through the process of cutting vegetables, overlaying my hands on top of hers as I showed her how to properly grip a knife.

  While she cut the leeks, onions and celery, I lit a match and started the stove, and then threw large shanks of beef and bone marrow with a bundle of herbs and peppercorns into a large pot over the fire. After throwing in enough water to cover it along with the half of the vegetables my sister had cut, I took the two of us back to the library to read and play for several hours.

  Every hour or so, we’d return to the kitchen, my sister's eyes lighting up in wonder as she jumped up and down to peek inside the pot, amazed by the transformation of the stew after each trip.

  On our first trip back, I extracted everything out and stored all the vegetables away for use in a later meal. I strained the broth to make sure it was clear then let my sister watch as the liquid boiled and reduced while I skimmed off the fat.

  On the second trip, after the broth had concentrated down into a deep, rich colour, I added the remaining vegetables and bone marrow, only leaving it alone for around forty minutes or so that time.

  The third trip back was the final one. I let my sister poke and prod at the vibrant stew of vegetables as I carved away the shanks of beef into smaller chunks and added them back in, cooking them gently until they just started to fall apart.

  It wasn’t my usual style of food – long, involved, requiring constant attention throughout the day – but the pot-au-feu was a nice experience, and it was simple enough to get my sister started on when it came to teaching her to cook.

  Indeed, true to her words, Miss Symphonia never came down to dinner.

  I started getting worried for her after that.

  Even on days when she tasked me with making dinner for the three of us, she would usually come down halfway through the meal, covered in soot and chalk and grumbling as she sat down to eat.

  I separated from my sister not long after dinner, heading off to check on the witch in her workshop.

  She was probably hungry, right?

  I looked back at the dinner table before I left.

  I should probably grab dinner for her along the way.

  After quickly taking a bowl and ladling the stew into it, I set off for the workshop.

  It took a fair bit longer than usual, since I had to make sure I didn’t spill the bowl of hot stew in my hands.

  To pass the time, I would simply glance out of the windows every once in a while, looking out into the view of the night sky from high up on this mountainous home.

  It was nice, far nicer than when we were still crawling through alleys and abandoned houses.

  It would be nice to take my sister out on a deep hike when she got a bit older, and there was a bit more meat on her bones.

  Yeah, that would be great… just forget about the whole ordeal of having died, of the conflict between two lives and identities, and just lose myself in those old memories of nighttime hikes through deep and treacherous valleys, all to find a perfect view of the sky.

  I came to a stop at the familiar double door of the workshop.

  I set the bowl of stew aside on the windowsill and knocked softly.

  “Miss Symphonia?”

  I didn’t get a response.

  I frowned.

  I tried again, knocking louder and speaking louder.

  “Miss Symphonia!?”

  My voice echoed back towards me.

  After a few seconds of unresponsive silence, I pressed my ear to the door.

  Nothing.

  Not the drag of chalk on rough blackboards, not the friction of flipping pages, not the clattering of shoes on stone, or the rapid whirs of operating machinery.

  Had she fallen asleep in her lab?

  That was a new one.

  I sighed in exasperation, preparing myself for the mess I was about to see.

  I pushed the door open.

  “...” I silently swept my eyes across the messy sight.

  She wasn’t inside.

  And the whole workshop was…

  Clean?

  I blinked, rubbing my eyes to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating or anything.

  No, that was right.

  Everything was untouched. The chalkboards were as empty as they were before lunch. The ground was clear, no smudged magic circles scrawled across it. There wasn’t sawdust or metal shavings blown across the back half of the room either.

  I approached her desk.

  It was uncharacteristically rather neat.

  Normally, she had about a half dozen books strewn across it, and that was on top of the several dozen if not hundreds of individual sheets of research papers she had stacked on top of one another at any given time.

  But now, they were all filed neatly away, as if she found herself unable to concentrate on any of her usual work for some reason.

  Instead, all that remained behind was that one book I had seen earlier, the ‘Symphonia Sonata’.

  I touched it warily.

  It was worn, not from age, but heavy use. I could see light marks and scars along its fore-edge, where the witch would have dragged and dug her nails to flip through its pages. The spine and its cover were frayed and weaker at specific points, indicating repeated use of particular pages.

  It was probably invasive of me to open it but…

  At the very least, I should pick it up and return it to her, right?

  It seemed like it was a personal, important item of hers, what with her name on its cover and all.

  I looked around the workshop one final time, seeing if there was anything else left around.

  There was a singular machine in the background that was lit up, giving a low, ominous hum as it operated. The second vial of my blood that was taken from me sat inside of it. I probably didn’t want to get close to that.

  Since there wasn’t much else for me to do or clean up, I took the book in my hands and closed the workshop, stuffing the tome underneath my elbow as I picked the stew back up.

  There were a couple places I could search for her in.

  I carefully navigated through the halls, not having the time to muse vacantly as I was too busy trying not to drop either the book or the food.

  Getting up the stairs was incredibly annoying, by the way.

  Eventually, I found my way to her personal study and bedroom.

  I set everything down carefully and knocked on the door again.

  “Hello, Miss Symphonia, are you there?”

  A few seconds passed.

  Just before I was about to give up, I heard a deep, guttural sigh from deep inside the room.

  “Yeah, girl… come in.”

  She sounded drained.

  I opened the door slowly and picked everything back up.

  Her room was a bit of an odd space, more like a secondary, smaller workshop than a proper recreational working space.

  The walls were filled with shelves that had books and binders lazily crammed into them, a few papers and journals haphazardly sticking out of them, halfway to falling down.

  There was a small workbench besides the bed, strange pieces of clockwork and machinery sitting on it, abandoned in the darkness.

  She wasn’t in the room.

  I looked further out, and there I finally saw her.

  She was sitting outside on the balcony, staring up at the sky as she slouched into her reclining chair.

  Well, it wasn’t ideal, but there was at least a small tea table outside on that balcony, so I could at least place the food down.

  I made my way outside and joined her on the balcony, letting the modest indoor warmth fade as the gentle summer night’s open air washed over me.

  “You didn’t eat dinner tonight, Miss Symphonia.”

  I frowned, placing the bowl of pot-au-feu down on the small table between us.

  My eyes flicked across the table.

  There was a glass and bottle of wine resting on it.

  I hadn’t seen her drinking alcohol before. She didn’t strike me as the kind to do so, either; her sloppiness was one of workaholism, not decadence.

  It seemed our earlier conversation regarding my past had really rattled her.

  “Hm?” She lazily looked over, dull, indifferent eyes tipping towards the table, “Pot-au-feu?”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  I blinked.

  “Is something wrong, Miss Symphonia? Do you not like it?”

  She sighed again, shaking her head tiredly.

  “No, it’s… it’s fine. You have a good head screwed onto your shoulders, kid. Takes a lot of attention and patience to make something like that. A lot of witches wouldn’t be arsed to make something that takes so long, most of ‘em like to live like rats.”

  She snorted, looking back at the moon with a faint bitterness in her eyes.

  “I used to as well, at some point.”

  That wasn’t surprising to me.

  The fact someone like her was able to cook at all, let alone so fancily, struck me as a huge anomaly the moment I got to know her even a tiny bit more.

  “What happened?” I tilted my head.

  She just shrugged, letting her loose robe fall even further down her shoulders.

  “Life.”

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  She reached for the glass and poured herself some more wine.

  “It’s easy to not give a shit about what you eat when you’re young and stupid. You’re full of life, you’re ignorant, you’re privileged and cared for beyond belief.”

  I knew that well.

  I knew it far too well.

  “And then at some point… life just happens to you, in all of its fucked up terror and beauty. You suffer and starve, you feel alone… and then the worst thing of all happens. You start to find something to care about.”

  She flicked her wrist upwards sloppily, letting the entire volume of wine tumble down her gullet.

  “Then suddenly, you can’t afford to be a rat anymore. Life stops being something you just take for granted and becomes something beautiful and precious, something worth relishing and celebrating for every second you survive, something that you have to protect.”

  Her eyes trailed towards me from the corners of her sockets.

  “I’m sure you get that, what with that sister-brain of yours.”

  I felt like that was supposed to be an insult, but instead, I just felt touched.

  “Yeah, I get that.”

  If I hadn’t found my sister, I’d still be stuck on those streets, an unthinking, starving zombie, never able to retain enough consciousness to map out anything in that damned city.

  Her life was the only thing that kept me going, that kept me awake enough to bring me focus.

  “Ever think about what life would have been like if it never happened?”

  “...”

  Her words drew me into a thoughtful, melancholic silence.

  There were any multitude of things that ‘it’ could have meant.

  She could have meant what I would have done if I never found my sister.

  She could have meant if I ever thought about what would have happened if I never lost my parents.

  She could have even been possibly talking about an earlier point in time, about what might have happened if I never lost that ignorance.

  But none of the specifics mattered.

  “Yes,” I simply stated, my voice flat, “more than I’d like to admit. All the time, really.”

  Because the answer for all of them was the same.

  No matter how much I wanted to ignore them, to focus on nothing but my little sister’s livelihood, the ghost of the past would not let go of me, and every night, I would find myself haunted by its lurking presence.

  What would life have been like if that little boy managed to hold his little sister in his arms? How would he have grown up? Maybe he’d be happy. He definitely wouldn’t struggle so much with his parents growing up, and there wouldn’t be a need for him to run away so desperately.

  He’d be proud of everything he was and would be, certain of his place in life. He would greet his parents with love every day and visit them whenever he could.

  Maybe he’d even grow up to become like my best friend; spending time on the internet and getting to fall in love with videogames. What else was he going to do if he didn’t need to keep running away overseas?

  All it took was a singular, tiny change, and everything would have been different. That was all it would have taken to toss away the creeping dread of existence.

  Maybe if I just had a few more days, everything would have worked out fine. If I just got checked at a damn doctor before I came back from France, I wouldn’t have had to get hit by that car.

  I would have sat down with my parents, hugged them, laughed about how silly my troubles all were, and eaten dinner with them, and we’d all go back to simpler, happier times.

  Maybe if I never found my sister, I just… would have been able to let all of this go. Just let the madness of starvation take over me and eat away at all my troubles until nothing was left.

  At least then I wouldn’t have to constantly be pulled by the past, by all of my troubles and my baggage. I could just forget about the memories of my past life and just live as someone entirely new.

  But in the end, none of that had happened.

  That little boy never met his sister. That young man never repaid his parents’ love. That nameless girl never looked away from the little girl in trouble.

  And so here I was, a miserable pile of walking shame and guilt, ever-wandering, ever-yearning.

  “You too, hm?”

  Miss Symphonia smiled bitterly.

  I sighed, awkwardly reaching for the book I tucked under my elbow and handing it off to her.

  “You left this inside the workshop, Miss Symphonia.”

  She looked over it slowly, something complicated flickering behind her yellow eyes.

  “Did I now?” she drawled, gingerly taking it from my hands.

  She pulled it into her lap and just stared at the cover for a moment, thumbing over the words on it.

  ‘Symphonia Sonata’.

  “What kind of book is it?” In the end, I couldn’t help but be curious.

  A nostalgic smile crossed the woman’s face.

  “A grimoire.”

  “Grimoire?” I repeated back at her, finding the words familiar. “Didn’t you say those were for mages with weak mana supply? I thought you said you weren’t like them.”

  She just shrugged as she pulled open the worn pages with practiced delicacy.

  “Nowadays, sure. Mages with less mana capacity use them just as high-maintenance arcane foci, engraving spells for easy access and all that nonsense. But, historically, they used to be of much more importance for every mage under the sun and moon.”

  She sighed in wistful recollection.

  “They used to be the most important possession a witch or wizard could possibly have, an inseparable part of their soul… sometimes that was even literal. A few folks would turn themselves into undead, using their grimoires as their binding chain to our realm.”

  She chuckled in amusement at the prospect.

  “They were everything to a spellcaster. Not just a repository of spells you could access; it was the place where all of your knowledge and research was stored. It was where you wrote down every passing thought and idea you ever had, etched into the pages where they would become engraved into the eternity of history and literature.”

  Delicate fingers gingerly turned the book page by page.

  A soft smile grew on her face as she read the writings of her younger self.

  “Every day and night, every hope, every dream, every nightmare, all of your wishes and ambitions, every single achievement you’ve ever accomplished, the legacy you wished to leave behind… all of it would be stored in here…”

  I couldn’t make out what was in the book’s pages from where I sat across from her, but I could see bits and pieces as the pages flips.

  Sketches testing ideas for new runic sequences, half-baked ideas for pieces of machinery, even bits and pieces of wondrous paintings of people and scenery.

  “They’re valuable things, you know? Most of the most valuable and expensive artifacts in history are ancient grimoires held by legendary witches and wizards. Treasure hunters and archaeologists are constantly locked in arms races to find tombs and disarm traps for a shot at finding a new grimoire. Witches and wizards throw their entire life savings away for a chance at even just a solitary page of their idol’s grimoire.”

  She stopped flicking through the pages, her hands coming to rest on a singular page.

  Her fingers traced over its contents.

  “Nowadays, though, no one really carries them anymore. Only the blindly ambitious – those who are young and cocky and sure their names will go down in history – and the old-fashioned and nostalgic willingly etch every thought of theirs into the pages of a flimsy book.”

  I carefully looked her up and down, trying to assess what kind of person she was.

  “Which one are you?”

  She chuckled in a small bit of self-deprecation.

  “Well, I guess I’m a bit of both. An idiot with dreams that are far too large, and an old-fashioned, sentimental hag.”

  Her hands moved to grip either side of the book, stretching it out and flattening the spread of pages in front of her.

  She pulled her hands away from herself, holding the book far out, towards the sky.

  I saw what she was looking at.

  It was a beautiful, double page spread. A large painting of a beautiful landscape that covered every inch of the paper.

  It was a view of the night sky.

  Stars swirled and shone, bright yellows and whites sparking through the deep void, illuminating clouds of dust and gas that painted the lifeless ink of space with vivid blues and purples, creating a glittering world of stardust and nebulas.

  Trees encircled the small, curved world beneath the view, tapering off as they fell down a mountainous cliff.

  And there, at the very bottom of the illustration, upon that tiny rocky cliff, there sat two tiny figures holding hands, separated by the fold of the spine.

  One of the figures had midnight black hair.

  The other had a messy cut of sandy platinum blonde.

  A fond, loving smile rose on Miss Symphonia’s face as she thumbed over the blonde figure.

  “The memory of people you once knew… your parents, the person you used to be…”

  A weak chuckle left her softening lips, rumbling with tones of resignation and longing.

  “The people who loved you, the people you loved…”

  She looked over at me, a weak, wobbly smile on her face.

  “Even after all the pain, and all the mistakes… even though nothing is left behind of them but the painful memories and nights of tears… you can’t help but carry that bit of them with you, holding those old dreams and desires, the last little bit of their love, close to your chest. In the end, it’s hard to regret it all, isn’t it? They become a part of your dreams, a part of the reason you now live. And no matter how much you might want them all back, you can’t help but find more happiness in chasing that future without them. It becomes the only way to live up to that love.”

  I let my eyes drop to the floor.

  In the end, even though I dreamt of things that could have changed or been fixed – dreams I could have fulfilled, misunderstandings I could have fixed, reunions that would have reconciled everything that went wrong – I was still glad that I was here, where I was in the present.

  Perhaps I never got to meet my little sister, but I was glad that little bit of pain let me eventually see all the beauty the world had to offer, that it let me meet all the kindest strangers I’d ever known. Without those ephemeral meetings, I would never have known and appreciated the kindness and goodness of people.

  Perhaps I grew distant from my parents, but I would still be eternally grateful for the loving care they showered upon me.

  No matter how much it hurt, no matter how much I didn’t want to let go of that past, no matter how much it paradoxically refused to leave me, I was still happy to be looking to the future.

  “I feel like I already know the answer, but… what is it that you dream of? That old love, those old dreams and memories, where do they carry you when you think of the future?”

  The answer to that one was simple, wasn’t it?

  I didn’t have to think about it for even a second.

  “My sister.”

  I hope she grew up well.

  There would be nothing that would bring me more joy than seeing her become a good adult.

  Miss Symphonia just giggled at my response.

  “Of course it is, kid.”

  She closed the book in her hands, shutting the lid of those old, youthful dreams of hers.

  With those bright yellows eyes of hers, glowing underneath the light of the full moon, trapped in the present, she looked up to the sky.

  “I used to dream of the moon and the stars.”

  She smiled, closing her eyes as she untethered herself from that present moment.

  “I still do, I guess. I wonder what it must be like up there. How does the world look from the moon? Is it the same as it looks to us? Or is there something else? Something greater? Maybe something lesser? Maybe it’s just a pale blue dot, maybe it all seems so tiny and fleeting from up there, like a marble that will just roll away underneath the carpet.”

  She opened her eyes, holding her hand up to the sky, pinching the vision of the moon between her fingers.

  “I wonder what it’s like to travel amongst the stars. To be flying through the depths of that void, beholding all the vast terrors of the universe. Why do the stars taunt us so? Shining so brightly, so prettily, beckoning us to admire them from our tiny homes?”

  Her fingers spread outwards, brushing across the endless sea of stars, moving through them like grains of sand.

  “What is out there, beyond the petty seas and mountains of Manusyara? Is there ever an end to the stars? Will their endless depth and distance terrify me? Or will it just inspire me further? Perhaps there’s more people like me, living on distant stars surrounding suns like our own, dreaming and yearning for the same thing as me.”

  Her hand continued sweeping across the sky, as if she was imagining gathering all the stardust in her view into a singular place.

  “Their vast histories and civilisations… etched into the stardust we admire at night… maybe we seem the same to them, just as distant, fleeting and tiny as they do to us. There’s no way to ever know, is there? All we can do is just laugh about it, give the idea some passing, pitying thoughts, and go about the rest of our days, living out our lives on this shallow, tiny world of ours.”

  She laughed, a bit of genuine fondness creeping into her expression.

  Her hand slowed down until it came still.

  “Well, unless you’re an idiot like me. Then you never stop thinking about it. Then you never stop dreaming about it. Until the stupid idea takes over everything you know.”

  And slowly, very slowly, she closed her hand, bundling into it as many stars as she could grasp.

  “I want to hold it all in my hand some day, the light of those distant, beautiful stars. I want to stand on the moon and look down on this beautiful, tiny world of ours. Even if the answer is that we’re nothing more than a passing speck of sand, all of our grand histories and accomplishments amounting to nothing, I want to stand upon those endless rocks on that moon, and ponder the significance we have in all of this.”

  Holding that starlight in her hands, she brought her hand down from the boundless vastness of the universe.

  And she held it out in front of me, all those dreams and hopes, her knuckles grazing my forehead.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I add just one more memory to the pile. Let my silly dreams and hopes be feasted upon by the endless pile of mounting regrets. In return… I’ll let you do the same for me. I’ll let the memory of you and your sister be absorbed into the fabric of the pages of the ‘Symphonia Sonata’, and I’ll carry those pointless sentiments with me until the very end of my dream.”

  She chuckled weakly.

  “Would you let me burden you with a name?”

  I stared into her earnest, hopeful eyes.

  My hands wrapped around the extended wrist reassuringly.

  She had given me and my sister a place to stay.

  She had brought her from the brink of death, and given my dream another chance at life. It was her efforts that salvaged that pitiful hope of mine.

  She was the miracle that kept this endless pile of painful memories alive and walking, looking forward to the next day, hopeful that the next one would be the one to finally bring her peace.

  I owed her everything.

  “I would be honoured,” I stated simply, smiling.

  It would be my honour to be taken with her on her silly dreams.

  It would be my honour to become another hope of hers, something to carry with her for as long as she lived.

  In hindsight, she had already become that for me a long time ago. She had become that to me the moment she swore to save my sister’s life.

  I did not think that this would be the price I would have to pay back then.

  This was hardly even a price at all.

  It was quite the opposite.

  It was nothing but charity.

  Phantom stardust bundled tightly within her grip, Miss Symphonia’s fingers tensed.

  And then she flicked my forehead.

  As she usually did, in that signature rough, sloppy, but secretly gentle and caring manner.

  “Estelle. Your name from now on is Estelle. And your sister will be Luna.”

  Her eyes grew misty, as decades of memories piled into her.

  “Take care of those names, okay? They mean a lot to me.”

  I closed my eyes and nodded.

  “I will.”

  I promise, Belle Symphonia, I will.

  For the sake of everyone who ever cared for me, for the sake of the person I used to be.

  I’ll carry this new name, this new identity and life well.

  Even if it hurts, even if my mind strays and even as I dream of going back to those days, I’ll grit my teeth and push on, I promise.

  Sorry, mother. Sorry, father.

  I hope you don’t miss me too much.

  Your unfilial son will try his best to be happy now. It’s the least he could do for you.

  From now on, I am Estelle, Luna’s older sister.

  Estelle thinks she caught whatever the ‘health scare’ mentioned in the prologue was, and that was what caused her to get hit by the car, but it’s meant to be ambiguous whether or not it actually was sickness or the call of something ‘greater’.

  every 'Episode' will be 4 parts long though.