Her vision was blinded by bright lights and walls as white as the clouds of summer skies. Her pupils were fogged by the remnants of lost memories, her thoughts scattered with the time she spent out of her own body. Her limbs are weak, her head is whirling, and her touch is numb. She blinks several times to fight against the weight of her unconscious rest, trying not to cease the breaths she's been lucky enough to be given. She tilts her head to the side, turning away from the bright lights of a hospital ceiling and meeting eyes with a person who sits at the side of the bed.
"Oh my god," she whispers to herself. With a quick study of each corner in the room, it is evident that there isn't anyone else in the room. She reaches out to hug the resting patient carefully, trying not to hurt her right when she awakens and sits back down with a warm smile. "I can't believe this is really happening."
"What's happening?" The patient blinks hard several times, her body frozen in numbness. The woman cheers to herself ecstatically.
"Chloe, my god, you don't remember? The doctors said you were dead-- that you weren't going to wake up," the woman sniffles. The woman's cries tell the patient that she means something to her. "You were working at your job in the security company, and there was an annual party that you attended. The tower was pushed in by the riots, and they infiltrated it until it crumbled-- oh god, it was horrid. Of all the things that this world has encountered, I'd never seen something so… deadly."
The patient shakes her head, still trying to wake up after such a long, unintentional rest.
"What?" She asks, confused.
"I know, it all happened at once. Everyone watched it as it happened on the news, and all that remained was a mountain of debris. It was strange, too, because just before the tower fell, hundreds of rioters left the building with foxes at their sides. Like, real foxes, from the forests. I'd never seen so many together before," the woman continues.
"Lady, I have no idea what you're talking about," the patient starts to regain her consciousness, her victory leading to an impulse of a response. Her hands start to move, her fingers tracing the edges of the bed, and her body shifts as it tries to move.
"I'm so glad you're okay," the woman breaks down with rivers forming above her smile, "They had found you in the debris with another woman-- you two were holding onto each other when the tower fell. You were on the higher floors of the tower, which means there wasn't as much to crush you. I suppose luck came in to save you when the debris built a room around you. You were enclosed, but you weren't hit," the woman explains. The patient's eyes dilate as her focus is regathered. "I'm sorry to say, though, that your friend didn't make it. If I'm honest, I don't know how you did, but am I so happy that you have."
"I get it, that's sweet, but who the hell even are you?" The patient stares the woman dead in her teary eyes. She recoils, her smile fading as she realizes the side effects of the coma.
"You don't--" the woman pauses. "You don't remember me?"
The patient shakes her head.
"It's your mother, baby. It's me," the woman sniffles, lowering herself to hold the patient's hand. "What do you remember?"
"You're not my mother," the patient says with a clear, stern voice.
"Chloe--"
"My name isn't Chloe."
The woman holds the patient's hand tighter. She looks into the eyes of her daughter, searching desperately for her to recognize her mother, but finds something new deep in the ink of her pupils.
"Your eyes aren't hazel anymore," her mother whispers.
"What are you talking about?" the patient asks. The woman releases her daughter's hand and searches around the room. She opens a drawer, her hand brushing the tools inside with little care for their purposes. She finds a rectangle mirror hidden in the stashes of papers and grips it tightly. She returns to her daughter and turns the mirror to face the patient weakly. The patient stares at herself, looking into her own eyes to see the color of a crimson swirl in her irises. She drops her jaw softly, not recognizing herself as she used to, and shivers visibly.
"Oh no," the patient whispers, staring at her feet and pushing her back up against the pillow where her head rested.
"You seem a bit more conscious now," the woman says optimistically, "Are you sure you don't recognize me? It's your mother."
The patient looks up to the woman, her soft eyes watching the tears roll from her face in terror. She freezes as she realizes what is happening, her memories confronting her violently as she remembers her last breaths again.
"My mother is Autumn," the patient says. The woman freezes.
"You're scaring me," she laughs out of fear, "This must be a side effect the doctors didn't tell me about."
"The doctors told you that your daughter would be dead," the patient says, tears forming in remorse. "They were right. I am not your daughter."
"Chloe," the woman cries. The patient lifts her back, regaining the strength she lost and grips the sheets of the bed to pull them off of her.
"My name is Genesis," the patient says, crawling off of the bed. The woman watches her in defeat, her nightmares coming back after a single moment of peace. "I am the only daughter of Autumn, and you look nothing like that terrorist who opened the gates of hell for its throne."
The woman is frozen in trauma. Genesis walks up to her and holds her hands, feeling the woman's cold skin as it tenses.
"This isn't funny," the woman cries. Genesis gives her another remorseful stare, and the woman cries harder. "Where's my daughter?"
"She won't die in vain," Genesis assures. "I can promise you that. Autumn and I are no longer on graceful terms."
"I don't understand," the woman shakes, "What are you?"
Genesis watches the woman silently, trying to think of an answer that would make sense to someone who is basked in a world of panic. She finds no response and instead continues to assure the woman of a truth she has yet to fulfill.
"I'm not like you," Genesis whispers. The woman falls to rest her head on Genesis's shoulders, her heart racing as she searches for answers. Genesis lightly pets the woman's hair. Her daughter has just been replaced by a creature made from the smoke of that tower. Her body outside of the one she hosts is nothing more than a cloud of dust and roaming energy. Her afterlife has stolen the body of a woman she never knew, and now she must carry the burden of dread from those who loved Chloe before. It almost seems heavier than the tower that brought Chloe her final moments. She hugs the woman who was once a mother, but now looks at her daughter as a stranger. "I'm so sorry."
"You're a creation of Autumn," the woman bites. "How could you ever feel remorse?"
Genesis releases the woman and watches her pour rivers from her eyes in silence. There's no explaining how her daughter no longer lives in her own skull and that something else has come in to replace her. She looks down to her feet again, unsure of how to act when someone nearby feels such horrors, and aware that she is the culprit of the woman's daughter forever released to rest with the stars above.
"I'll never know how you feel," Genesis cries with the woman, "I've never met your daughter. I'm sure she was so good to you."
"I can't believe this," the woman falls back into her seat, her head barely being held up by her shaking hands.
"I'm sure you made her proud," Genesis lowers with the woman. "You were the best mother you could've been to her, I already know that. You were by her bedside until her last breath left her lips."
"She's gone," the woman shivers. Genesis holds her again.
"She's safe, and she's happy. She's no longer in pain. She's free from the world and all of the judgment it carries, dancing with the dust of galaxies as she keeps the universe from shifting out of balance. I know she'll be remembering you every graceful step she takes," Genesis tries to comfort the woman.
The woman nods.
"Your relationship with her is strong, and I've long desired something like that. I always wished that my mother and I had that kind of connection," Genesis says.
The woman looks at Genesis, the tears slowing down as she studies her daughter's face. "Yeah?"
"Yes. The kind of connection that you have is the one that connects constellations," Genesis whispers, assuring the woman that the soul of her daughter rests in tranquility. Her body may have been stolen by a wraith birthed for malice, but the shining reminder of her existence will keep the earth in orbit as it carries the sun in its gravity. "Your daughter is here for you, just no longer how you see her."
"What do I see now?" The woman stares at Genesis as her irises drown in a glossed ocean. "What has bled into the mind that held her?"
Genesis stares back.
"The one who is going to make sure that she and everyone else who died in that tower are avenged," she promises. The woman sniffles, broken with the structure of marble that held strong with the fate of humanity hanging as jewels from its frozen chandeliers.
"You're going to find the one who made it fall?"
"No," Genesis deepens her crimson stare into the desolated gaze of the mother, "I'm going to end the one who built it."