trans_9 | Remembering Eden

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Remembering Eden

San knew that when people wanted to go to the Sensorium it was for two reasons. The first was to escape the oppressive strangeness of Stacy's body. She could hardly blame them, wanting some memory made reality, some fantastic setting for training or celebration. After all, even she wanted the forest's embrace more and more with every passing day. She wanted to go home.

But the other reason was more direct— people went there to talk to the ship-spirit in what passed for relative privacy. It was true, Stacy could be spoken to, and with, nearly anywhere onboard, but it was somehow almost tradition to do so in those close little rooms of vision and illusion.

San looked on the walls that had not yet been made into anything but what they were, now, and raised her eyes upwards. It seemed like the right direction to look when speaking to Stacy, as if she lived in the sky, so much taller than anything, despite that she was all around San.

"Stacy!" San called, boldly, "I need you!"

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||Yes, San?||

"I've decided," she replied, after a moment of simply staring, startled somehow at Stacy's prompt reply, "I want to remember. I know you can do it."

There's a slight pause between the question and the response.

||You are absolutely certain?||

San hesitated as well, drawing her chin inward. It wasn't he way to submit, to roll over and show her belly, but—

"Yes," she replied, more softly, "I'm not going to hide from it! I have to know."

Ashitaka was going to kill her.

Stacy sets up the Sensorium. It shifts to a black room with a single chair, similar to those in a dentist's office--though without the freaky needles and drills nearby--lit by a soft light.

||Please sit, and try to relax.||

San lay in the chair, but found herself unable to relax. There was something about such a thing that made her edgy. It was vulnerable, exposed and isolationist, all at once. No close, safe den, this, but she tried to do as she was told, and waited for Stacy to begin.

||I am going to inject you with a mild sedative. This is to prevent you from reacting...badly...to the traumatic parts of the memories. You will retain full cognizance and awareness, however. Are you okay with this?||

"I'm ready," She replied, with a steadiness she didn't feel. She had been ready, but with the closing window of denial, like the steel jaws of a beartrap, nervousness ate into her stomach more and more acidly, "It's fine."

||Close your eyes, and I will begin the process. It will take a minute or two to fully take effect, so try to keep your mind as clear as possible during this time.||

There would be a strange, fuzzy feeling in the back of her skull as Stacy began the process of restoring her memory. Slowly but surely, the memory would come to her.

San sees the forest, her forest, looking out over it as she would from a treetop vantage, each tree like a wave in a sea of leaf-scattered green in the wind, salted with the peering, cheerful faces of Kodama in the gray pre-dawn. The white fur of the wolf-brothers below her, and clouds that reflect the coming blue only dimly as yet.

It isn't until she turns at the sound of distant shouts that she notices the places where the fabric of the world twists and tears. The Ohm are already boiling out of their forced entrances like angered termites when San's eyes catch on Ashitaka, riding furiously towards her on the mountain path, Yakul leaping boulders ahead of the wave of many-limbers horror nimbly, like the deer he is.

Then, he stumbles, and falls, throwing Ashitaka to the rocky ground and in an instant they both are swallowed up.

Her throat is raw, burning, aching, and still San can't hear the scream above the rushing blood in her ears and the chitinous battle-calls of the coming strange creatures. The forest is burning, burning away in red and deep-blood scabs of charred wood, the Kodama are already falling, and everywhere rabbits and birds flee past her, but San is too far gone, ignoring the death that clings to her in the smoke and scent and the torn heat in her voice as they finally near. The closest raises a bladed forelimb, one of many, to kill her and San winces away at the sudden brightness that blinds and obscures. For a breathless, eternal moment she sees nothing, then she finds herself on a strange table in a techno-organic room, surrounded by dark figures holding her down as she struggles to kill them, to lash out and kill them, the Ohm, anything! She is injected with something in the confusion, and slips into unconsciousness.

For how long, she never know, San simply stared out into the gray-blackness of the Sensorium's memory-environment, the place Stacy had made for this purpose. The forest was burning behind her eyes and she simply stared at it.

Yakul's legs were breaking and Ashitaka's body was disappearing under the mass of the Ohm and San could do nothing. There were no words in her, no questions. Nothing.

when she could move, San stumbled away silently, still staring, muffled by the encroaching, drug-addled weariness to her bed to stare at the darkness and lick her wounds.

Ashitaka didn't like being away from San, and yet he still managed to find reasons in abundance. Sparring in the sensoriums to keep his mind and body sharp. Long constitutionals through the maw of the ship in the hope that he might remember the layout should war come. Poring over scientific tomes in the media library and discussing subjects still way beyond his comprehension with the various ship spirits. There was always something else to do.

In fact, he wouldn't have been due to come looking for the wolf girl for some hours were it not for the head of the spirit pantheon, this Stacy's cryptic suggestion that his friend might need him. Of course, the words barely crossed his mind before he was running through the ship to her room.

"San?" he stood in the doorway, a panting silhouette peering at the vague lump amid the darkness of San's cabin. Dread and nausea washed over him, "What have you done?"

San closed her eyes against the light Ashitaka brought in with him through the open door. True, it was muffled into near-unrecognizable dimness by the blanket she had all but hidden under, but it was still bright after adjusting so well to the darkness. Ordinarily, she would have stood, or at least made a pretense of getting up, but between the drug-addled lethargy and the shock, San made, at first, no move to answer him.

When she did, it was only to draw back the blanket and look at him with eyes that were shining with tears, "Ashitaka?"

She'd hate herself for the quaver in her voice later, and the way her hand clenched and trembled, but for now she was like a wolf come up with a cracked jaw; pitiful and near-helpless.

He wordlessly, soundlessly pulled the door shut behind them, her tears catching the light one last time before plunging them back into the darkness. He sat beside her and took her in his arms, fingers tenderly kneading the nape of her neck.

There they sat for moments, minutes, perhaps a great many minutes, him huddled around San and rocking her soothingly. With absolute devotion he sat and tenderly pressed his lips to her forehead, then the corner of her eye, her cheek, her nose, and then finally her mouth.

Nose to nose, he whispered, "Tell me what I can do."

"Don't leave me alone," San begged, as softly as he had spoken. She was trembling, hands clenched and crushed between them, but not to resist or push away. It was like being a child again and just wanting to burrow into Moro's fur and hide away from the cold world, but Moro was gone...

Then Ashitaka gave her a kiss, and another, gentle, slow and dreamlike, and when she could see his eyes, her own were wide. Somewhere far away her hands ached from clutching at him. San had to blink, and knew with shame that she was crying.

"The forest I...I had to know— I..." He voice sank, head bowed and for a moment she just breathed him in, needing Ashitaka's strength, "They burned it all away. It's gone....everything is gone."

"Oh, San..." he knew in that moment that he too would have his memory restored. He couldn't let her experience that alone. But not now, not yet at least. For now they would sit and rock quietly in the dark until the hands pressed against him stopped shaking.

Between the drugs and the tension, by the time San managed to calm herself, she was exhausted. Every breath was laid over her like a heavy blanket, and the hot dry tracks her tears had taken felt like inch-thick crusts of salt rather than just lines of dried water. She lay curled against him, sheltered, nearly limp and closed her eyes against a heavy sigh she couldn't stop.

Sleep was so tempting, but for a time it stayed only barely out of reach, leaving San in a dull stupor, content just to lie against Ashitaka and breathe without a thought in her head. Peaceful, the sound of his heartbeat against her ear, and it was that which eventually lulled her to a blessedly dreamless sleep.

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Remembering Eden

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