Work Text:
You find yourself back at Paradise, feeling almost like you’re arriving for the first time again.
Your brother stands in front of you, holding a torch. You’re suddenly aware of the weight in your hands; the masks. Without thinking, you hold up the rabbit mask, and your brother takes it. “It’s Time”, he says, before moving out of the way. You proceed. It happens again, with your sister, your uncle, your grandma. You hand them all masks; a pheasant, a boar, a pigeon. You’ve never done this before, but everything seems to make sense right now. In this one moment.
It feels like destiny. Fate.
Finally, you stand before your father. Or rather, he stands before you. “You are ready to meet your destiny,” he says, in a way that makes you wonder if he’s recited these same lines before. They sound so familiar…but your curiosity doesn’t last long. You hold up the deer mask for him to take and he lets you continue.
You pause for a second before going inside the wooden owl structure that encases the well. You take out the black cube, the final cube, and give it to the well. There’s a bright flashing light that comes out of it, and with that, your family arrives. They stand in front of you, looking at you through their masks, outside the owl. And with their bright, burning torches, they swiftly set it on fire.
The smell of the burnt wood quickly becomes the smell of burnt flesh. Everything is burning, you are burning, and when you close your eyes, you see so many things. You hear and feel so many things.
Most importantly, you see Caroline, your mother. And you hear her screams.
Time feels different, like you’re living in the past and the future and the present all at once. Not only that, but you feel like you’re reliving both you and your mother’s memories.
Then suddenly, you’re back in the present again. Feeling like a new person, you open your eyes.
Our time has come, Paradise will rise.