It happened on a simple afternoon.

  It wasn’t long after my first day at Nindo.

  A couple weeks after classes started entering full swing, on one of the weekends I flew back home, I was eating an ordinary lunch with Belle and Luna, just like any other day.

  My garden was doing fine, Luna was excelling in her studies as always, she ruffled my clothes and played with my Nindo uniform, the usual stuff.

  Then, just as I was cleaning up the last scraps of food on my plate, I groaned.

  I had been feeling a dull ache since I sat down at the table, but put the feeling aside, since it didn’t affect my appetite.

  By the end of lunch, however, I couldn’t ignore the uncomfortable feeling in my abdomen anymore.

  I hopped off my seat, intending to rest in my room – a bit disappointing, since I wanted to play with Luna more now that I only got to see her on weekends.

  And that’s when I saw it on the chair.

  A drop of blood.

  My eyes widened, and I blanched.

  I pulled up my skirt, panicking.

  A dark patch stained my underwear.

  “I-I-...” My jaw hung low.

  “Estelle?” Belle raised a lazy eyebrow from across the table, “Everything alright?”

  “I-...” I stuttered, simultaneously somehow both going pale and blushing at the same time.

  “I’m bleeding,” I whispered in embarrassment.

  Belle bristled, her fork and knife freezing as they scraped across a plate.

  Luna blinked cluelessly as she placed her dishes into the sink.

  “Huh, Estelle? Did you get hurt!? Is everything okay!?”

  Belle blanched, quickly jumping up from the table and pushing Luna away.

  “N-no, Luna, everything’s fine. Don’t worry about your sister, it’s just… something that will happen when you get older… just… go to the library for now, okay? I need to talk to your sister, alone.”

  “Huh?” Luna just stumbled away cluelessly, “um, okay, I guess. I’ll see you later!”

  Belle sighed in exasperation as she watched Luna walk away, rubbing her temples as she processed the situation.

  “Hold on a sec, Estelle. I’ll go get something real quick.”

  She trotted off for a minute, before reappearing with a pad of fabric in her hands.

  “Here,” she handed it towards me, “you, uh… you know what to do with this?”

  “Y-yeah,” I nodded shyly.

  “You…” Belle scratched her head awkwardly as she pulled a chair out to sit down, preparing to have a small talk with me, “you know what’s happening to you, right? Or do you need that explained as well?”

  “U-um, n-no…” I shook my head skittishly, “I-… I know. I-it’s my… period,” I squeaked out the last word.

  Belle let out a massive sigh of relief.

  “Oh, thank Sol. I was really not prepared to give someone ‘the talk’...”

  She chuckled wryly, before reaching out to pat me on my head.

  “You’ve always been rather smart for your age. Thank Sol that I can delay having that embarrassing chat for another few years until your sister grows up.”

  I chuckled awkwardly alongside her, trying to find any way to escape the embarrassing situation.

  “Wow, I’m…” Belle grimaced, “I’m really less prepared for the whole ‘raising teenagers and kids in puberty’ thing than I thought… not that I thought about it at all, really.”

  She sighed heavily.

  “Strange, here we are… already been four years, huh? You’re already off in Nindo, in your teen years, only coming home on the weekends… gonna be lonely when Luna finally goes off with you. Well, I guess I’ll have the workshop to myself, that’ll be good I guess.”

  I remembered that young man who always kept running off to somewhere else, the cowardice always staining his tongue, always looking for an excuse, a reason to divert the blame.

  I couldn’t let my parents worry over me again. I couldn’t just keep running and being weak again. That fear had lingered over me enough for one lifetime. I couldn’t let it be two.

  I would be there for them – for her – this time. I would say those simple, frivolous words to her every chance I could get, I would not let her care go unappreciated.

  “Don’t worry,” I smiled reassuringly, “I’ll always come to visit. Even after graduating, I’ll always remember to come home and visit Arden whenever I can. You don’t have to worry about being alone.”

  Belle looked at me silently, before letting out a lonely chuckle, smiling fondly in thanks.

  “Appreciate it, kid.”

  She got up from her chair, looking down at me with a wistful gaze.

  “Look at you, so much taller now. I remember when you were just a scrawny nine year old… thought you were just seven years old or so when I first picked you up. Now you’re having your first period. I’m gonna blink, and before I know it, I’m gonna have to be fighting off boys and girls trying to hold your hand and date you. Won’t be long before you start turning heads everywhere you go.”

  I blushed and squirmed, looking away.

  “Well you know where to find me if you need anything, right?”

  I nodded quietly.

  “Alright, go head up to your room then… take a good, long rest.”

  I watched as she walked away, thinking about her words.

  A long time had passed, hadn’t it?

  I looked at the person in the mirror.

  A thirteen year-old girl, just starting puberty, stared back at me.

  Bumps were starting to form on her chest, her thighs started to fill out with flesh.

  Wavy, golden hair, braided to the sides to keep it out of her eyes and ears.

  Lavender eyes that sparkled in the spring daylight.

  A short white witch’s robe covered her body, completed by a white jacket draped over her shoulders, its sleeves hanging emptily.

  I blinked.

  The image did not change.

  No matter how long I waited, I never saw the image of that scrappy young man, always carrying way too many bags on his shoulders as he hopped out into foreign lands.

  That boy was no longer among the living.

  There was only me now.

  ‘Estelle Symphonia’.

  I was someone else, somewhere else.

  But…

  I didn’t feel lost.

  This was home.

  This was who I was now.

  It didn’t hurt anymore when I thought about the past.

  I barely even thought about it at all anymore.

  I raised my hand to my face and pulled on my cheek.

  The girl in the mirror replicated my actions.

  I had wondered what this day would have felt like for a long, long time.

  What would I feel like when I finally had to face it; the fact that I had well and truly properly died.

  What would it mean to finally admit that I was just a girl now, that I couldn’t be that young man anymore, that I was truly by myself in another world with no way of going back to Earth?

  I never wanted to think about it in the past.

  There was always something else to worry about, some other pain I had to deal with first.

  I had always been scared that admitting the truth of what had happened to me would break me, that it would cause me hurt unlike any other pain I had ever felt before. That it would shatter my world and my soul and throw my entire worldview into the cold and cruel indifferent void of the universe.

  But it just… didn’t hurt.

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  Not anymore.

  Earth just wasn’t home anymore.

  Manusyara was.

  This place, high up in the Yrd’ll Mountains, this was my home now.

  Luna was my everything.

  I didn’t have to constantly long for what could have been, pondering on what could have happened if that little boy in that hospital room got to meet his little sister.

  I had a little sister now.

  I didn’t have to keep running and running, endlessly afraid of admitting that what had happened was just an unfortunate accident, a cold reality of biology and unlucky circumstances, I didn’t have to keep looking for some greater entity to take the blame away, or to bestow me with some greater destiny or purpose in life while I scoured every unknown corner of the world.

  I was just…

  Alive.

  That was it.

  The only thing that hurt was the fact that it didn’t hurt.

  It was all over now.

  I could put it all behind me, and just focus on the future.

  On becoming a witch, on developing my magic, on making sure Belle wasn’t lonely. I had dreams and aspirations now – proper ones, not just empty yearnings for dreams to fill the void inside me.

  I had friends again. Setsuna, Kagura, Hayate. We fought and studied together. We chatted endlessly into the night. Well, all of us besides Setsuna, anyways.

  There-...

  I looked at the girl’s sad eyes in the mirror.

  A long time had passed.

  There was only one thing left to do now.

  I slowly trudged out of the room and made my way to Belle’s door.

  I knocked on it.

  “Hey, Mother?”

  “Hm, Estelle?”

  She opened the door and looked at me with concern.

  “Everything alright?”

  “I just… wanted to ask about something,” I looked down.

  Belle grimaced.

  “Uh, I’m not as prepared as I would like to be to talk about puberty but, uh… sure, fire away.”

  “N-no, i-it’s not anything about that. I just…” I trailed off.

  We stood in awkward silence for a bit.

  Belle’s face softened, catching the faint trail of sorrow that lingered as my words faded.

  “I’m always here if you need anything,” she patted my head reassuringly.

  “I…” I tried to find the courage for my favour, “do you know of anywhere in the Yrd’ll Mountains that’s alone? Just… somewhere solitary, hidden preferably. Maybe with a good view of everything around us, like the sun.”

  “I can think of a couple places.”

  “A-and also, four pieces of wood, about… this long,” I held my hands in front of me, roughly just a bit wider than my shoulders.

  “Alright…” Belle smiled softly with a sad glint in her eyes, catching onto what I wanted to do, “I’ll meet you outside, just let me grab everything and we’ll head on our way.”

  I waited out the front door, looking listlessly at the world beneath me, at the trees that endlessly trailed down the mountain.

  And then I looked further down.

  Down to Arden, then across to Tenmai. Then up at the gargantuan figure of the Hinanhoro. And somewhere out there, even further out, was the Infinite Dark. And across there was the Eastern Continent, still unnamed by the people of this land.

  And across from there, on the other side of the world, was Litanus, where I had first opened my eyes to this place.

  That was where I had met my sister.

  I looked west, beyond Arden, beyond the plains. I took in the sight of the kingdom of Sangferrus.

  Somewhere beyond those plains and hills was the Citadel of Magi, where Belle had grown up.

  All of the places and names that I was saying… it was strange to think they weren’t nonsense. If anyone from Earth listened to me talk about where I’d been – underneath the spiritual, almost divine shelter of the Hinanhoro’s leaves, among the impossible mana-based energy generators of Arden – they’d all just think I was insane.

  I never got to show that person who used to be my best friend back then those photos of France, did I?

  I wouldn’t get to show him this place either.

  I hope he was still having fun playing those games of his.

  Before long, Belle joined me outside, and we made our way across the mountains.

  It was a lonely, solemn hike.

  Neither of us said anything to each other, the implicit understanding of what was about to happen clouding the air with melancholy.

  We descended down, at first. We trekked through the massive sprawl of twisting trees and forests, hopping across rocky chasms, before coming out the other side to an unfamiliar rocky view.

  We climbed across precarious, deadly cliff faces, and slowly, the mountain that I had come to call home, ‘Vertandhi’, named after the middle child of the sister goddesses, disappeared from view, and we found ourselves on the mountain belonging to the eponymous ‘Yrd’, to whom the so-called ‘Well’ belonged.

  It was a much different place, much gentler. Rivers wound and streamed gently, clear water running down, waving at us as we passed them by, ascending to reach their source.

  The air was much fresher, the mana much more warm and welcoming.

  There were small crevices down which the water flowed, which we climbed into to follow to the wellspring's source. The water sung to us, washing away the lingering doubts, consoling us and our troubled pasts as it brushed by our feet and soothed the aching muscles.

  I could understand why the ancient people of this land referred to it as a ‘wellspring of fate’, even going so far as to think it divine in nature. It certainly felt like a miracle of nature.

  And still, we climbed even further up.

  The water streamed through a cave, a river flowing from its mouth, the trees bending around it, forming small bowing crowds on either side, welcoming us as precious guests.

  We went through the cave, through the damp, yet strangely comfortable darkness, able to see nothing but the distant light on the other side.

  We reached its end.

  Light streamed in from above, frothing water jumping into the cave’s depths from above.

  Up there, still a full day’s climb up, would be Yrd’s peak, the source of this magical spring.

  We simply passed it by, coming out to a small alcove beyond the cave’s end where the evening sun peeked through. Water turned to rocks as we ascended just a tiny bit more. Then rocks turned to dirt, and dirt to grass, the river flowing far out behind us.

  “Alright, we’re here.”

  We crawled through the small crevices and cracks, and on the other side of that lonely, hidden alcove in that cave, far off the beaten path that led to the mountain’s peak, was a small grassy cliff face, looking down upon the world.

  Trees peeked up from below, and shadowed us from above, but none of them covered the view of the vast, vast world in front of me. We were alone on this small perch of rocks and grass, hidden behind that cramped cave.

  I stepped out and looked at Manusyara, as the world glowed a soft, tired yellow as the sun descended from the sky.

  It was a beautiful place.

  “Alright, kid, all yours.”

  She handed me the wooden beams.

  I brushed over them with my hands.

  “You cut out the slot already…”

  I blinked.

  On two of the beams, down the middle, a large rectangular section of the wood was carved away, just wide enough for it to fit snugly when pressed perpendicularly against the other beams of wood.

  I guess I was a bit easy to read, after all.

  I pressed the pieces of wood together, forming small crosses about the size of my torso.

  I brought my hand to where the pieces of wood joined, and with a small application of Earth magic, bound the pieces together.

  I went out to the cliff’s edge, and gave one more look down at the world.

  This was a good place to see Manusyara from.

  Mother and Father would have appreciated it.

  I stuck the pieces of wood into the ground, softly manipulating the dirt and grass with my mana to keep the two crosses in place, getting them into a comfortable position that would last through many years and decades, through storms and rain and droughts, where they would get to be together forever, looking down at this strange new world.

  I felt my eyes wet themselves.

  I chuckled.

  In the end, it seemed it still did hurt just a bit.

  I sat in front of the crosses and knelt in deference.

  I guess it was finally time.

  “Hey, Mother, hey, Father…” my voice trembled, “it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  The two unmarked graves solemnly stared me back, the yellow rays of light streaming from behind them painting two warm shadows that gently caressed my shoulders and hugged me with their phantom limbs.

  “I’m sorry… for not coming home to you two,” I sniffled, feeling my vision blur, “I’m sorry, we couldn’t eat dinner together. I couldn’t surprise Dad with hot pot, I couldn’t drink Mum’s tea again. I never got to care for you two after all I put you through.”

  My lips wobbled.

  “I-...” I choked, feeling myself lose the strength to speak, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. For running away all the time. For always trying to find an excuse. For never looking you two in the eye. I’m sorry, for all of it. I-... I-... I’m sorry… I’m sorry I-I couldn’t say-...”

  My throat ached.

  I felt my tongue slip.

  I hiccuped.

  I felt the weight of it all strangle me.

  I would never get to go back to their loving arms again.

  I could never see their smiles again.

  I would never see their hair turn fully white.

  I could never hear my mother’s broken English, I could never practice my Mandarin for her.

  I couldn’t ask them about their histories, about those forgotten stories that would now die with them, never to be passed onto the children of the next generation.

  Those tragedies, those tales, those tears and regrets, those ancient hopes and dreams, all the pain, all the suffering, all the quaint beauty amongst the hardship and their eventual salvation, they would all be lost now.

  Lost because I never found the strength to just say those stupid, simple, frivolous words.

  And no matter what, I could never go back now.

  That was not my life anymore, they were not my regrets to fix anymore.

  I felt a warm hand place itself on my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered to me.

  I let out an ugly sob, something within me being imbued with the strength to make noise again, however choked it might have been.

  Tears fell onto the floor, wetting the lonely grass.

  “I-I love you, Mum. I love you, Dad.”

  I wailed out into the open, with no one to hear me but those two ghosts and the woman behind me.

  Wretched cries echoed across the solitary mountain, disappearing into the void.

  I wiped away my tears, looking at the marks of remembrance with blurry vision.

  I sniffled and sobbed, but tried my best to hold it all back and smile anyways.

  “Y-you don’t-...” my words slipped as my shoulders lurched as another sob broke through, “you don’t have to worry about me, anymore. You don’t need to tell me to eat more, or to sleep more, or to study well. You don’t need to keep telling me about how much there is out there in the world that’s beautiful, you don’t need to tell me to keep on dreaming and yearning, I-... I get it now, I really, really get it.”

  I tried to chuckle.

  “I get what it means to be hungry, I get what it means to be starving. I’ve gone out and seen the world and all the beauty it has to offer. I see it all now, like the two of you did, how precious all of it is, every passing second we spent in the world together. This child, th-this stupid child… they’ve finally learnt their lesson. They’ve finally received your care.”

  I bowed my head down.

  “I-I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m coming back home. I-I have a little sister now. Her name’s Luna, you would have loved her. I’m going to school again. I-I know you two will struggle to believe it, but I’m even having periods now. I-I have my own life to live now, away from you two, my own dreams and goals.”

  My shoulders shook.

  I bowed even further down, bending my back until my head touched the grass.

  Soft blades of green pitied me, sorrowfully caressing me with a touch of empathy.

  “This unfilial, pitiful child… they’ll be departing from your home now, and finding their own path in life. Thank you, for everything up until now. I won’t ever forget your care. Thank you, Mum. Thank you, Dad. I-I love you two.”

  I sniffled, wiping away the last of the tears.

  I brought my head up and got back on my knees.

  “I hope you two can enjoy this view together. This is my new home.”

  I stared out into the horizon with a smile.

  Belle wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to her, staring at the two unmarked graves solemnly, before lowering her head in silent respect.

  I held her hand tightly with my own.

  It was warm.

  “Let’s go home, Mother.”

  Oh, hey, a short one today. Finally. Well, relatively.

  Since this one’s nice and simple, I don’t really know where else to put this bit, but we’re not going to be going through every episode of ‘The Moon and the Stars’. Part 2 of the event (Episodes 5-8) is entirely focused on the present with Luna and Cadena, and most of Part 3 (Episodes 9, 10 and half of 12) are dedicated to the final battle against the Seventh Legion.

  We’re already about halfway or more done with the ‘backstory’ part of the ‘flashback’. When we’re done with Episode 3, things will start to ramp up pretty heavily with 4 and 11.