Here I Am

1

She came to awareness of herself slowly.

Her first active memory was of worn down walls, stained ceilings, pudgey hands, and a head of blond with whisker markings crying right beside her.

... Who...? I... know you...

And then she returned to the mental fog she had been living in for the past year or so.

Between her second and third years, she started waking up more and more. Every time she was herself, it felt like she was coming out of a dream. It was disorienting to say the least. She was never sure which was the dream- her moments of clarity or the long weeks her head was full of cotton or empty.

Around the same time, she started having dreams. Dreams of a world far from the screaming children and the strange buzzing that surrounded her, with technology far surpassing what she'd seen so far. Of a sibling, of a mother, of a father and aunts and uncles and cousins. Of pets, of stories, of art. Not all of the dreams were pretty or happy, but a decent portion of them were. Enough to make her more curious and excited about the next one than scared or worried.

And then she started dreaming about him.

Of a blond boy who'd shake the stars- who'd tame beasts and bring light to the darkness. She dreamed of pain and suffering and death and blood, dreamed rotten roots. She usually remembered those dreams- thoughts she never expected starting to surface whenever she idily mused or stared out of a window. Thoughts that didn't make any sort of sense, that left her wondering if they were someone else's thoughts and feelings.

Within the next year, she had a hypothesis on what was happening. On why she knew the names of some of the people on the streets, why she knew the boy she played with wasn't alone in his own body. About a dead clan and the island they died defending, an almost-dead clan whose last known member was drunk and gambling her life away, a clan that would soon be nearly exterminated. About a trio of orphans who deserved so much better, but would pave the way for destruction in the hope of peace.

One night, she dreamt of her death.

... She didn't get much sleep that week, her own death mixing with faces and names she used to know and her painful dreams to create a nightmare just for her.

She finally found why the name she introduced herself as was different from what the matrons in the orphanage called her- why she had chosen a name that started with 'N'.

One day, she and her blond friend were hanging out by the swing. She remembered that swing, too. She remembered the heartbreaking music that played whenever the shadows on the swing lengthened in memory. In another life, it was a symbol of loneliness and pain for her friend.

But not in this one, if she had any sort of say in their fates.

(She didn't let herself linger on some of her thoughts. On the 'what if's. Especially when she realized she might have left the brightest light in her life behind out of fear and hesitation if she'd always remembered.)

She turned to her companion, blinking shadows out of her eyes. "I know things I shouldn't." He looked at her with a smile and a tilted head.

"What kinds of things, Nagi-chan?"

"... I know the Nara clan makes medicine. And that the deer in their forest will kill any tresspassers," she hummed as she leaned her head back against the tree. "I know that you look a lot like your dad but act like your mom. I know a lot I can't tell you if I want to live. I know a lot about death. And... I know all the people that want to help you, but can't even help themselves. And I know you'll forgive them for it, despite how much pain you're in."