Post by nora on Jan 5, 2013 18:07:02 GMT -5
Five hundred years was time enough to get used to anything, though she would never have guessed before that one could get used to being dead. She knew she was dead because what else could she be? She remembered clearly the last moments of her life, saving Snow and falling to her death. She had spent so long floating on a sea of black, deaf, blind, mute. She couldn't even feel herself. Maybe there wasn't a 'herself' left to feel. It made sense that her body wouldn't really be around. As far as she knew, her body was lying somewhere at the bottom of Hanging Edge, crushed beneath piles of rubble.
Hanging Edge...Sometimes she wished she could forget the horrible hours leading up to her death. All those people, terrified and being driven straight to hell. Adults, children, her own son. She knew that not everyone had survived that day, even if she hadn't seen it. She was a realist and the Sanctum had been so intent on getting rid of them, there was no way that every one of the innocent people there had managed to survive.
She used to console herself with day dreams of some miracle swooping in and stopping the fighting but she'd stopped doing that after maybe a century. Even when there was nothing to do but day dream she couldn't bring herself to stay locked in a fantasy for all of time. It hurt too much whenever she remembered that the fantasy was impossible. She had always trusted the Fal'Cie and they had let her and every other inhabitant of Cocoon down.
She knew little about what had happened after death; Being dead wasn't very conducive to information gathering. Still, she knew that Hope was alive. She didn't understand how but she could feel it, deep in her bones, that her son was okay. Not long after she'd died, when she was still unsure if she was dead or just dreaming, a terrible sensation had crept over her and she had known that her son was in peril. The feeling had turned to an icy calm after that and she had been afraid that he had also died but...no. It wasn't quite right for that. Not moments later and suddenly she knew that he was okay again.
The strange connection that let her monitor her son was the only thing that kept her tethered to the living realm. She had long suspected that the part of her that was still self aware would have disappeared without that connection and she wondered why it was there. There were no stories saying that the dead kept ties to the living, though granted it wasn't as though the dead had the chance to tell stories. In five hundred years she had yet to come up with a plausible reason for why the connection might exist.
She was still trying to puzzle out why the connection was still even there. Five hundred years and Hope hadn't died? Maybe she'd gotten the time wrong. It was easy to lose track here, in the middle of nothingness, and it wasn't as if she had a watch or calender. Maybe it had only been five days and she'd imagined the sensation of immense amounts of time passing.
A clammy feeling washed over her and she tensed in alarm. Something was...wrong. She couldn't tell what it was or whether it was with Hope, but something felt unnatural. She forced herself to go through the motions for sitting up, something she hadn't done in a long time. Whatever it was that was happening, she knew, deep down in the part of her that always knew how Hope was, that she had to stop it. Maybe she couldn't do it alone but she had to do something or that feeling devour the world. Her consciousness fought to claw its way out of the darkness. Something was wrong and she had to protect her son. The darkness hit back and, for the first time, it wasn't just a sense of black as she passed out.
Ten years after she sensed the danger, five hundred and ten years after she plummeted to her death and somewhere in the middle of a city she'd never seen before, Nora Estheim opened her eyes and breathed once more.
Hanging Edge...Sometimes she wished she could forget the horrible hours leading up to her death. All those people, terrified and being driven straight to hell. Adults, children, her own son. She knew that not everyone had survived that day, even if she hadn't seen it. She was a realist and the Sanctum had been so intent on getting rid of them, there was no way that every one of the innocent people there had managed to survive.
She used to console herself with day dreams of some miracle swooping in and stopping the fighting but she'd stopped doing that after maybe a century. Even when there was nothing to do but day dream she couldn't bring herself to stay locked in a fantasy for all of time. It hurt too much whenever she remembered that the fantasy was impossible. She had always trusted the Fal'Cie and they had let her and every other inhabitant of Cocoon down.
She knew little about what had happened after death; Being dead wasn't very conducive to information gathering. Still, she knew that Hope was alive. She didn't understand how but she could feel it, deep in her bones, that her son was okay. Not long after she'd died, when she was still unsure if she was dead or just dreaming, a terrible sensation had crept over her and she had known that her son was in peril. The feeling had turned to an icy calm after that and she had been afraid that he had also died but...no. It wasn't quite right for that. Not moments later and suddenly she knew that he was okay again.
The strange connection that let her monitor her son was the only thing that kept her tethered to the living realm. She had long suspected that the part of her that was still self aware would have disappeared without that connection and she wondered why it was there. There were no stories saying that the dead kept ties to the living, though granted it wasn't as though the dead had the chance to tell stories. In five hundred years she had yet to come up with a plausible reason for why the connection might exist.
She was still trying to puzzle out why the connection was still even there. Five hundred years and Hope hadn't died? Maybe she'd gotten the time wrong. It was easy to lose track here, in the middle of nothingness, and it wasn't as if she had a watch or calender. Maybe it had only been five days and she'd imagined the sensation of immense amounts of time passing.
A clammy feeling washed over her and she tensed in alarm. Something was...wrong. She couldn't tell what it was or whether it was with Hope, but something felt unnatural. She forced herself to go through the motions for sitting up, something she hadn't done in a long time. Whatever it was that was happening, she knew, deep down in the part of her that always knew how Hope was, that she had to stop it. Maybe she couldn't do it alone but she had to do something or that feeling devour the world. Her consciousness fought to claw its way out of the darkness. Something was wrong and she had to protect her son. The darkness hit back and, for the first time, it wasn't just a sense of black as she passed out.
Ten years after she sensed the danger, five hundred and ten years after she plummeted to her death and somewhere in the middle of a city she'd never seen before, Nora Estheim opened her eyes and breathed once more.
