It was an accident

7.

The memory faded out once again to be replaced by another. But the world looked different this time, everything appeared brighter, and the sounds were much louder than before.

----------

The spectating nations were puzzled. Germany turned to face Belarus, "Vhy does everysing look different? Is zere something wrong with the rift?"

Belarus did not answer right away, seemingly intrigued by the differences, "What we saw before was her birth, we were seeing things from an outside perspective. Now we are watching her memories as they were through her eyes." 

The nations looked at her, the rift, and then each other, not completely understanding.

Belarus sighed, "We are seeing things through the rift exactly how she sees things and the sounds are coming through as she would hear them. So if she were deaf, no sound would be coming through at all, same for the visual if she were blind, and if her hearing or vision becomes impaired during a memory, so will the visual or sounds that come through to our end."

Sounds of understanding came from the nations as they nodded.

"This... actually explains a lot," Denmark commented and Prussia nodded along. They had always wondered how their friend was able to hear them from several rooms over and navigate in the dark as if it were still light out. They had asked her a few times but each time she either acted as if she didn't know what they were talking about or straight up told them she wasn't sure how she could do those things, she just could. The two of them had suspected that she was using magic to play a little joke on them, but she had always denied it. Now it made sense, it was just how she perceived things, her senses seemed to naturally be super sensitive, even more so than most nations', which they had previously thought was impossible.

----------

This time, Amayeli and Kanata were playing in the woods by themselves. They each looked to be about 4 years older physically, making them 6 and 5 respectively. 

Kanata ran around giggling as his sister chased him. They looked at home in the woods, climbing trees with the swift agility of squirrels and running around with twice the speed and nimbleness of deer. They chased each other up trees and large rocks, even across streams, without ever breaking their stride. 

America didn't bother to run after the tiny apparitions. She realized that, once her past self got a certain distance away, she would somehow glide across the ground. The way the land moved by, gliding under her feet despite her standing still, and how she phased through trees instead of smacking into them, made her feel like she was in a virtual reality simulator. She tried not to focus on her forced movement, however, because of how odd and unbalanced it made her feel. Instead,  she concentrated on the images of her brother and her from the very distant past.

After a few moments, the two children made their way to a huge tree. It looked ancient and was at least two meters in diameter, with a small opening in its base. About twelve feet up the trunk of the tree, it split and then grew back together, creating an elongated opening in its center. Kanata ran by the tree, glancing up at it briefly, but Amayeli stopped her pursuit of  him entirely to stare up curiously at the opening in the tree. 

Noticing his sister had stopped chasing him, Kanata slowed down and called her name. 

"Come look at this," she responded, glancing over at him, "doesn't this look weird to you?" She pointed up at the opening high up in the tree's trunk.

Another glance at the tree showed that there was a strange, purple sheen in the air inside of the gap. Kanata jogged back over to his sister and looked up, "What, you mean the tree? It's a weird way to grow, I guess, but it's not really that strange."