Tavi: Discovery 11

"What are you doing?" I scream.

"Showing you what happens when the people forget.  You think so highly of your mother, but take away the memories of others to remove her from this world.  Pave the way for the next wave.  No one will have to live in the shadow of her triumphs."

"You can't erase the presence of Thalia from this world.  She is the daughter of elf and demon.  She is wife to the one.  Mother of The Keeper.  She has lived through more times and lives than you could ever imagine!  Her story is one that will not be forgotten by any who've met her!"

The plants within the room start to move once more as my mother collapses to the floor.  The Fade is no longer there so I race quickly to my mother's side.  She's still breathing so I shake her lightly calling out to her.

No response.  I start to panic.  This must be the same fear that my mom felt when I entered time.

"She's okay, she just almost lost herself for a moment." Sophie reassures me.  "You saved her."

Tavi: Discovery 10

"What is your quarrel with me?"

"I am Despair, this world has been blanketed for years in the absence of The Keeper.  My people live blissful lives of ignorance that I cannot allow you to destroy."

"Ignorance is no blissful life," I hear my mother's words from my mouth.  "A world without knowledge and stories is an empty life."

"It's been the life for many.  The One was able to run their lives without them knowing better.  The Angels were able to bring their war here using the blind ignorance of the masses.  People need to be led, not to make their own choices."

"You're wrong.  People need knowledge to make their own decisions.  They aren't pawns and tools for the desires of others but the makers of their own destinies!"

"Ha!  You think that you can overcome me?  That you can overcome the reality of how the world works?  I have seen dragons born and forgotten.  I have seen the world saved and their saviors names lost like dust in the wind.  Time always takes memories away.  Chipping away at the truth until it is completely forgotten."

I hear a crumbling behind me and turn to see my mother beginning to crack like a porcelain doll.

Tavi: Discovery 9

"I'm not lost, I'm right here." I assert.

"You were lost, and now you're.." She loses her words as she stares at my matured body.
"Oh my child, you look so grown now.  You have no clue the panic I felt when your presence was lost from this world."

"How long was I gone?" I ask trying to fain grasp of everything that happened.

"I.. I don't know.  It felt like a moment and forever all at once," my mother says as her eyes begin to water.  "I had never been so afraid in all of my years."

Suddenly my mom is frozen with a tear still upon her cheek.  Even the plants have frozen in their movements.  "Sophie?" I ask.  

"It wasn't me.." She whimpers from behind the door.

I step out into the bedroom and see large silver metal wings on the back of a pale woman dressed in black armaments with fiery hands.  Her flowing silver hair shimmers like starlight as she stares darkly at me.

"You shouldn't exist," she hisses at me.

Tavi: Discovery 8

I pass by mother's old room.  I decide to walk through to her bathroom to examine myself fully in the mirror.  

I have wings.  I mean, obviously I've changed but these wings are definitely new.  It's as though pixels have gathered together to give form to wings on my back.  That totally take the cake over the change in my clothes and my new adult-looking body.  I have wings!

"Don't be mad," Sophie whispers as she peaks around the door frame.

"How long have you been there?"

"For a while.  Are you mad?"

"No, no," I answer shaking my head. "Why would I be mad?"

"Most people get mad when I have an oops," she says softly as she slowly moves into the doorway.

"I'm not mad," I reassure her. 

"I am," my mother says as she steps out from the shadows staring coldly at Sophie.  "What did you do?"

"Uh-oh," Sophie murmurs as she cowers back into the door frame.

"An uh-oh?  You spend years with Katherine's kids with limited 'uh-ohs' but you only spend weeks with my daughter before you lose her?"

Tavi: Discovery 7

The blue digital blocks begin appearing to me again.  I watch as they collect together and start to blend.  Some attach together and begin to take shape while some still float loosely around the form.  I find myself being stated at by a digitized wolf.  Maybe it's my desperation or maybe a deeper connection, but my body instinctively reaches out towards him.  

He doesn't shy away from me, but makes his way towards me.  The minute my hand touches the soft blue of his fur, he bursts back into the various blocks of blue filling the space.  As the blocks fall, I can see the familiar walls of the old home.  The whole of my body aches.  I feel as though I has been gone for years and only a moment all at once.  I was everywhere and I had been nowhere.  I had been alone while being surrounded.  It was a truly terrifying experience.

I begin to look for Sophie when it becomes clear that my body wasn't aching, it had changed.  I no longer look like the child who left her mother's house in a dusty pair of jeans this morning.  The electric blue pleats at the end of this dress barely come to my knees but the black petticoat just touches them as the rest of my leg is covered by the blackness of the heeled boots.  I expect with their heel to cause me discomfort when standing but there is no discomfort to my legs when I stand.  

I move lightly through the halls calling Sophie's name.  The voice coming from my mouth now sounding like my mother's instead of mine.  Father did always say I was more like her.  

Tavi: Discovery 6

"Me?  Why me?"

"Well, if I'm going to be The Keeper some day then I'll need to know more stories."

"My stories work differently than the ones you tell," the hall begins to spot with blue blocks; some tiny, some large, some only an outline, while others full of the vibrant blue. "They don't happen in a single flow of time.  It could start in the present, move to the past, conclude in the future, while all going on at the same time."

The blocks shatter around me filling my ears with their crystal-like sounds, reality seems to shatter with the crystals.  I'm so panicked that my body aches, my stomach churns.

I try looking around to find something familiar, something to return to.  I'm left staring at nothing and everything all at once.  The silence is overwhelming.  I open my mouth to speak but the silence eats my words. 

I curl into myself in an attempt to comfort myself.  I wish my mother were here with me.  Anyone here with me.

I used to treasure my time alone, away from everyone and everything. The more I hang in the null, the more I ache for people.  I want to see someone, anyone.  I see them all around me and they aren't there at the same time.  I want to see places, anywhere.  My surroundings change environment to environment while being empty nothing simultaneously. 

I can't even begin to fathom escaping this place.  I want an answer but see nothing.  Is there something here but I just don't understand it well enough to know it?  What will I do if I can't escape here?  

Tavi: Discovery 5

I returned again in one week's time.  I'm practically bursting at the seams as I race to my private haven, now shared by the company of a friend.  We spend hours together as I weave my mother's tales as she brings them life in shadows on the wall and translucent figures like the ones I saw when we first met.  After months of play, Sophie is the first to talk today.
"What will you do when you grow up?" She asks solemnly, her hair straightening into red color as she speaks.
"I haven't given that much though," I answer honestly.  "I guess a keeper of some sort.  Keeper of stories; truths and legends."
"Will you outgrow me?"
"No," I say without pause. "You'll always be my friend.  Won't you?"
"Of course," her hair returns to brown as she smiles.  "When do you plan on becoming keeper?"
This question leads me to pause for quite some time.
"I don't really know," I answer after some time.  "I guess when it is meant to happen, I'll know then."
"So what story will the keeper weave for me today?" she asks with a beaming smile.

"How about you tell me a story today?

Tavi: Discovery 4

After I returned home, I discussed the day's events with my mother over supper.  Her eyebrows moved into a questioning look when I mentioned the ghost-like figures of the girls sliding through our old home.  Both eyebrows raised at the mention of Sophie's name causing me to pause my divulging.
"Did I do something wrong?" I ask cautiously.
"Not at all pet," she says softly.  "Just not someone that I was expecting to hear about from you."
"Is she bad?"
"I'll let you decide what you think about her," mother says with a sigh.  "I always found her to be a bit.. chaotic for my taste.  To say that I don't want you to see her would only push you towards lying and deceit to spend time with her behind me.  You're 187 years old, all I ask is that you be honest with me and tell me what happens.  Don't be surprised if I sometimes reach out mentally for a check on you when you're with her.  Besides, if Katherine would let her children around her then I suppose I could as well."
"Alright mother," I murmur, lost in the thoughts of what my mom could possibly mean about Sophie.

Tavi: Discovery 3

I keep looking to where they went.  Did I really see that?  Was that even real?  I snap myself back around as my ears catch the sound of someone crying.  I cautiously make my way further down the hallway and the sobbing sounds louder.  I turn the hall to see a girl with long brown hair and emerald eyes sadly staring at the hall.  She looks the same age that I do, but I know I'm older than eight and the sadness of her eyes shows age beyond an eight year old.
"What're you doing here?" She asks as though I'm the one intruding on her space.
I simply turn my head to a nearby vine and give it a loving stroke.  I turn back to her to see if she understood my gesture.
"So you've been taking care of the plants," she says cheerfully, rocking on the balls of her feet.
I cock my head in question.
"Oh, I used to spend my fair share of time here.  Sometimes I come back when I feel nostalgic," she drifts off staring back to the hall.
"Why that wall?" I whisper.  "Nothing's ever been there."
"Before you there was," she says with a chuckle.  "Behind this wall was a room.  This room was full of games, tea parties, hide and seek.  Childhood friends and adventure."
"What about the other girls?" I ask quietly.
"That was just a memory pulled from these walls.  Something to comfort me as my old friends have moved on and grown."
"I'm sorry."
"It's alright. Say, what's your name?"
"Tavi."
"I'm Sophie," she smiles brightly at me as she extends a hand out toward me. "Mind if I hang out with you?"
The smile is contagious and I find myself returning her grin as I place my hand in her's.

Tavi: Discovery 2

My mother was responsible for most of my education.  My father tried to teach me some of his knowledge once.  We were in his workshop as he tried teaching me how he builds, tinkers, and creates when my eyes.  Father suspected something like an EMP was released from me halting all nanite activity within our home then.  Father moved his workshop elsewhere and mother refused to let me work my hand at it again.
Sometimes, when I can escape from mother's lessons, I go back to that abandoned home in the mountains by the lake.  I've helped my mother's garden grow since they abandoned this place in the mountains.  Flowers, vines, roots, and leaves adorn the walls and floors of every room in their vibrant glory.  I can barely see the food replicator in the kitchen or the door reaching "that damned idiot Moore" as my parents always called him.
I've always been more in tune with the  plants and earth than mother's stories or daddy's electronics.  Maybe it's because of the elven within me.  Maybe it's because of druidic magick that flows in my veins.  Maybe it is both, but this is where I really come alive.
I start to make my way down the hall running my fingers along vines and leaves, noting what needs each plant has and tending to them when I pause at the sound of giggling.  I freeze at the sound.  I haven't heard such childish laughter since I was eight.  I see these translucent twin girls sliding on ice coming towards me.  I'm frozen, I can't move, I just stare in awe at these two girls joyously coming towards me.  Without even a breeze, they pass through my body and continue down the hallway until their laughter fades like a forgotten dream.

Tavi: Discovery 1

I remember all of mother's stories.  She filled me with many of them.
Fact.
Fiction.
Some tails of fact sounding so fantastical that it was hard to believe it wasn't fiction.

Take the story of my birth.  Born the night of both a blue moon and lunar eclipse.  My father was running himself ragged trying to make mother comfortable as a dragon midwife helped ease my entry.  My birth was blessed by a Great Shadow as his mistress changed the placenta covering my body to soft rose petals.

My mother always swore this to be true.  I've seen some of the people she's told me stories about.  Never together, but I have come across them.  I cannot imagine them having accomplished what she swears as fact.
You would think in looking at me that I would be prone to believing such fantastical things.  I'm somewhat of a fantastical thing myself.  The bright blue of my electronic eyes pierce out from underneath my brown hair no matter how I try to let it fall to cover them.  I try not to speak so as not to let my forked tongue slip out and shock my conversation partner.  Mother has tried covering my insecurity with illusion but it never holds for long on me.