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The Eternal Library
I last darkened its grand doors almost two decades ago, when two middle-aged women formed their friendship—maybe something more—over months of grueling challenges that could have become an ever-lasting testament to their teamwork, battled one another. Their comradery shattered like an antique vase, and the bullet that broke it? The woman whose selfish desire to explore had dragged her away from her new son and husband, hungry to devour all the knowledge of the realms by herself and keep it from the rest of the world.
She was supposed to leave with me that day, I had held her small figure in my arms before she escaped.
She was cunning, another quality apart from the teamwork that assisted her and her assistant throughout the trials.
I visited many times, each time stopped by the library from doing what I had to. Today, though, would be different. Before me, now, was the child she left behind, running forward seeking solace from a more recent betrayal to restoring what could have been of their familial bond.
At first, she cradled the boy towering over her. He himself was petite; he'd gotten it from her after all. She hummed melody I've heard mother sing to their dying children with a heavy heart at my arrival. She lifted his head from her shoulder, strands of her strawberry-red hair soaked by tears and her thumb wiping away more from her freckled cheek. Apart from his ebony black hair with a single teal streak, he was an immaculate carbon copy of her. She placatingly cooed his name as he chittered on about absolutely everything he could: his father, his friends, the trials, everything that could serve as a stepping stone to bonding with his lost mother.
The mother grabbed her abandoned son's hand, exclaiming requests to help her. They set off, running through the spacious aisles, laughing like children trying to find the right book so they can replicate their sweet moment in coming days.
Flipping through reserves of timeless information, the duo quickly learned they'd have to preserve the moment instead. The mother begged her child to keep searching, please, desperation filled in her voice to save her from me.
The hurt child pursed his lips, gears turning in his head, trying to find a way to fulfill his mother's heartfelt plea. He looked back in the direction of the entrance, a painful reminder washing over him before his expression sobered. The vessel whispered a cold tone to the spirit.
On the other side of the door, the assistant and her assistant stood. Prior to this mission, the two were closer like a mother and a son, the lack of proper communication at her end eroding their bond. She still had the mark at the edge of her jaw from my last visit to this location. She'd reached out for me, her heart seemingly empty to herself. She offered to take the other's place with me. I refused. Her heart would find something else soon enough, no matter how much she'd deny even having a heart.
Everyone has a heart, no matter how repressed.
The lanky blond next to her cried out the raven's name, sobbing a pathetic apology. With rapt attention paid to the scenario, he rapped his knuckles on the rigid barrier alienating him from the heartbroken.
"Varian!"
He kept shrieking over and over, his agony tearing open old wounds in my heart I sport from gathering souls deeply lost and melded into one another, but while my heart keeps on, theirs must halt. The look of hope shining from his glasses when the barrier flickered off was almost pitiful, though he understood that quickly when the object of his silent obsession waltzed in a pattern that didn't suit him well.
"Varian?"
The begging turned into questioning, the short boy's eager eyes overwhelmed by the shadows of a rekindled parental bond.
"VARIAN!"
Then he shrieked yet again, the child's soul standing next to me, watching his mother puppeteer his figure.
"I—I don't understand."
He whispered to me, my grand presence startling him.
"Are you?"
He missed the third word of his query, but the first two were more than enough.
"I'm here."
I confirmed to him, trying to placate the soul, for which I avoided spelling out what I am. I wasn't here for him tonight.
"Stay close to your form."
The advice should serve him well, and it did.
"HUGO!"
Varian mouthed, glancing my way before giving his mother's spirit a strong shove. The other—Hugo—looked up hopefully when his foe-turned-friend-turned-adornment-turned-foe stopped throwing magical beams from his palms. The boy's mother remained within the library's mystical barrier, and remained close, but far away from my grasp.
I took a step away, standing by the mother's associate and her son's band of friends, letting close friends share a moment.
I honestly can't comprehend what must have played out between the venerable bookshelves, but after two decades of doing anything and everything to evade her fate with me, Ulla Ruddiger passed on.