How long had it been?
It was tough to tell. The landscape had changed, but it was still recognizable. The Jora tribe's camp was covered in dirt, but who knows if that was because of time or because of a storm or monster. There were no clocks or calendars. Even the stars looked exactly the same. On my Earth, the night sky can appear to change over a long period of time. The famous north star, for example, changed from Thuban at the time of the building of the pyramids, to Polaris in modern times. The moon and the red star, the two heavenly bodies that dominated the night sky in this world, were of no help either.
The red star looked sickly in comparison to how I remembered it. Its glow was pale and it flickered from time to time. The moon, on the other hand, had a domineering presence. It shone through the rain clouds, making every droplet look like bullets of mercury being fired at the ground. I could only barely make out the sky from our little shelter, but the little I could see was foreboding.
The Immortal of Madness was more powerful than I had assumed. The God of Evil had seemed like a difficult opponent when we were fighting the Oracle and The Terrible, and the Immortal of Desire felt mysterious and majestic. I hadn't even considered the Immortal of Madness at first. If he was tied to the moon, the moon's absence and seeming weakness in the face of the red star gave me the impression the Immortal of Madness was not as powerful as the other immortals.
Even after hearing Starry's story around the Jora tribe's campfire, I'd assumed the Immortal of Madness was somehow weakened by his battle with the God of Evil. Now that he'd sent us who knows how many years into the future, I had to admit, I was wrong.
I had some theories about how he'd sent us into the future. The most likely explanation was some sort of manipulation of gravity. Gravitational time dilation is an effect that science fiction stories have been playing around with for a while. Gravity can 'bend' space-time in such a way that observers at different distances from a large mass may perceive time differently. Someone standing near the mass may feel like only a few moments have passed but someone further away may have experienced years. If the Immortal of Desire could control gravity, or at least this aspect of gravity, then it might explain how he seemed to have sent us into the future.
The rain continued. The night wore on. Noel stayed silent.
"You need to eat," I said as I brought a handful of dried meat to her lips.
Noel pressed her face into her knees. She hadn't eaten all day and barely had any water. I was getting worried. It didn't look like there was any food on the highlands. We might have to scale back down the cliffs to find food on the plains, or we had to try to make good time while crossing the highlands. There had to be a major river or something around here, right? Maybe something that led out to sea?
I wiggled around in the tiny space in our shelter until I was sitting right next to Noel. I leaned over to her side and began to speak.
"Listen, I'm not going to pretend like I know exactly what you're going through; I don't know exactly what you're feeling right now. But I know you're feeling uncertain. I know there's this empty feeling, this hollowness that you can't get around. I know that it's easier to force yourself to not think about anything at all, than it is to think, to feel, to live with that empty feeling.
"I wasn't sad when my mom died. At least, not at first. I was away from home. Out with a friend celebrating my birthday. I'd cut my birthday cake with my mom that morning. I was supposed to meet her again in the evening. We were going to go to this place we liked to go to, to eat and have fun, you know. Celebrate.
"I'd just gotten into college. College is this place we went to back on my Earth, to study and learn. It was the best college too. The best college in the world. A dream come true. Everyone was happy for me, especially my mom. Though she was a little sad, too. I'd have to move out from our house and go live in a college dorm for four years. She said it was going to be my last birthday with her for a while. She wanted to make it special.
"It was only a few years ago, but I can barely remember how I found out. It was my brother. He'd moved out a long time ago. We hadn't spoken to each other for a while, so all I remembered was his voice back when it was sharp, full of confidence, maybe you could call it arrogance. But when I heard his voice that night, I almost didn't recognize it.
"One of his friends passed by a car crash on the road. I don't want to get into explaining what that means, or how it looks like, just, know that it was bad. My brother's friend didn't want to look too hard. But he remembered my mom and… he saw her there.
"My brother wouldn't let me see her face. He said I should remember her the way she looked before, but, I wanted to see her one last time. We fought. He won. It didn't help that there was a part of me that didn't want to win. I didn't want to see my mom's face, frozen forever in her final moments. I didn't want to see it. I didn't want to think about it. I don't want to think about it now.
"I didn't feel sad at her funeral. Everything felt like a dream. Unreal. Hazy. Without substance. Like a wisp of smoke that would disappear if you looked at it for too long. I said a few words before they put her in the ground. Words I don't remember. Word's no one else remembered.
"I went home that night, all alone. My brother had been keeping me company, but he had to go back for work and he lived in another city. I was alone in my house. My body moved on its own. I made dinner. Washed the dishes. Did some homework. Went to bed.
"But as the lights went out. The birds fell silent. My heartbeat slowed to a soft, mellow thumping. My eyelids turned to lead. My breath broke up like there was something stuck in my throat and I lay in my bed with an empty head. I shifted around. Feeling uncomfortable but not allowing myself to admit why I felt that way.
"Something fell to the floor. I got out of bed without thinking. A restless fury gripped me. I didn't know what I was angry at, or why, but I stomped around in the dark, going from place to place, until I found a light to turn on. I came back to the bed. There was something on the ground. I picked it up.
"It was a little book. I think I told you about books. They're things you can write a lot of words on. If you write something on it, you can give it to someone else so they can read what you say. People use it to pass along stories. Stories from people who have long since passed.
"This book was nothing special. It was meant for children children. I had been working on translating it into a different language. It was the sort of thing I found helped me get better at other languages, plus it was a fun thing to do.
"I always started with this book, whenever I learned a new language. Not because it told an amazing story or because it was easy to translate, or even because it was a particularly good book. But it was the first book I'd ever had. My first book. Given to me by my mother when I was so small, I'd left bite-marks on the cover.
"The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, a New York classic. Even thinking about that book makes me miss my home. The colors were beautiful, the story short and sweet. I picked it up the night of my mother's funeral and paged through it, not reading any of the words, staring only at the pictures; the bright, bright illustrations.
"Have you seen snow? It's this awful thing that happens in places where it gets too cold. It's like rain but worse. It ruins your clothes, makes you feel awful, and if you lived where I did, it meant you could get wet feet every day for a week or more. Snow is horrible in person. But snow is amazing in memory.
"You don't remember snow murky brown, making muddy, slushy puddles. You remember it whiter than light, softer than air, cleaner, prettier than any flower in the world. Each snow crystal is a work of art. Each clump a wonder, each pile ready for you to jump in. You remember playing around in it. You remember sliding all over it. You never remember getting sick because you forgot to wear thick clothes. You never remember slipping on ice and twisting your ankle. You never remember the worst parts of snow. You only remember the good.
"I read that book again that night. Followed the story of little Peter in his eye-catching red snowsuit. I thought about the mom the way I thought about snow.
"Perfect, divine. Warm, kind. Brilliant and humble. Strong and just. The way she raised me, the way she laughed. The way she held me, the way she tried to help me do what I wanted to do. A whole burst of memories flooded my head. I had been refusing to face them because with them, I was sure, would come the sad ones. The memories that I was dreading, and had been dreading, would fill the empty feeling with sadness and grief.
"But they never came. I spent that whole night sleeping on the ground beside my bed, thinking about all the great memories I had of my mom. I remembered when she taught me how to ride a bike, how to tie my shoelaces, and how to do a whole bunch of other things. The times we watched our favorite movies, or went out to our favorite restaurant.
"I know some of these words don't make any sense to you, Noel, but what I'm trying to say is, I remembered my mom like I remembered snow. Perfect and wondrous. I'm not saying you shouldn't be sad. I'm not saying you need to act a certain way, or forget that you're in grief. But don't stop yourself from remembering your loved ones, just because you're afraid it will make you said.
"I won't make empty promises to you, Noel. If they're out there, somewhere, we'll find them. I promise you, we will try. And if they're gone, I need you to promise me, that you won't keep their memories away because you're afraid of being sad.
"Keep them alive in your memories. Remember them, Noel. Remember them like snow."