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SPOILER ALERTS: This short story contains some implications to events yet to happen in the storyline.
Paradisio - An Author's Fantasy Side-story
Serenity, that's what my parents named me. Well, okay, not my biological parents, but my adoptive parents. I hated my name for five months, and I hated my parents for even longer, until they died, and I realized how much I missed them. For the past two years I've wandered the streets of Rome, wondering what to do and where to go, all the while accompanied by my foster sister, Grace, who is closer to me than anyone I've ever known.
We are alone, completely and totally isolated from everyone else in the world, with no family and no friends. Or, I should say, we were. Last week, I saw a news story on BBC (the only channel I can watch, I've never gotten fluent enough in Italian to watch the local news) about a home video taken in Prague, with a fiery-haired girl somehow conjuring up fire and throwing it at others. I didn't believe the story, but somehow, I recognized the girl.
So Grace and I decided to go to Prague - or rather, I decided to go to Prague, and Grace decided to stay with me - to find her. I needed to figure out why I recognized her, when I could never remember meeting her. And we found her, too. Our second day in Prague, we found her in a pub, Andel's, which is apparently Czech for Angel's. She was sitting at a table with two other people, a boy who I can't for the life of me remember, and a girl with straight, white hair down past her shoulders.
I sat with Grace at a table near theirs, and worked up the courage to turn around and walk over to them, to talk to the redhead from the news. Apparently, she had recognized me, too, because before I even opened my mouth she asked, "Do I know you?" I found it a bit odd, I was going to ask her the same thing. I stumbled over my words and made a complete fool of myself, as always, but I managed to tell her that I recognized her from the news.
It took her all of ten minutes to decide to meet with me again. Which is why I'm writing this journal. I'm supposed to meet with her today, in Andel's, just to talk. About what, I have no idea. Grace is staying here, in our cheap little motel room, and I'm getting ready to go. I'm nervous, scared, and excited. God I hope this goes well.
~Serenity~
* * * * * *
Serenity sighed, closing her laptop and glancing over to where Grace sat, silent as she so often was, on the edge of the single bed in the motel room. Giving her a fake smile, Serenity stood and said, "Wish me luck." Grace nodded, and that was enough.
As she walked out of the room, Serenity faltered, unsure if she could really go through with the meeting. Aria - the girl with the fiery red hair - seemed innocent enough in person, but there was so much about her that was still unknown. Walking down the stairs slowly, Serenity found her mind wandering to the worst case scenarios; was Aria a part of her parents' murder? No, she couldn't be - she looked about the same age as Grace, who was even younger than Serenity was. Was she some psychopath who would snap at her and use that fire-thing Serenity had seen her use on BBC? She seemed normal enough when they had first met, but was that just a facade?
Unsure of herself and a bit afraid for Grace if something happened, Serenity stepped out of the motel, ignoring the catcalls from the motel's owner. Serenity was in no way beautiful - she kept herself looking nice, but that was completely subjective - and she had been a bit taken aback the first time she met the motel owner, when he came onto her stronger than anyone she had met before. Grimacing lightly as she remembered how she had almost fallen for the middle-aged man's tactics, she turned down the street and toward the metro, boarding the train heading toward the Andel station. The ride was short, but lasted for what seemed like an eternity, Serenity second-guessing herself the entire time.
As she stepped off of the metro and started up the stairs to get to the street, she wondered how Grace - a girl who was almost entirely reliant on Serenity to give her what she needed - would survive alone, if something did, in fact, go wrong. She turned to go back, to give up on the meeting, and stopped short as she nearly ran into Grace, who was climbing the steps close behind her. "W-what are you doing here?" she asked, surprised and confused.
"I wanted to come," Grace said simply. She rarely spoke - and when she did, it was direct and terse.
Sighing, Serenity nodded. She should have expected that Grace might follow her, as the two were almost never apart. "Come on, then." She turned back to the sunlight streaming down into the metro station, collecting herself and stepping out onto the sidewalk. As she oriented herself back into this barely-familiar environment, Serenity caught sight of the pub, starting toward it with more confidence than she really felt. She glanced around as she reached the intersection that separated her from the building, pausing slightly as she saw someone with long, straight white hair, but by the time she could focus her gaze the girl was gone.
A bit unnerved, she crossed the street, Grace following her closely, and strode into the pub, immediately repulsed by the smell of cigarette smoke as she looked around for the fiery red hair that belonged to Aria.
Suddenly, from behind Serenity and Grace, a voice the former recognized as Aria's called, "Hey, Serenity!" As the two turned to face the corner table that Aria was sitting at, she added, "I didn't think you were coming."
"O-of course I came!" Serenity said, trying to sound nonchalant and stopping herself to recollect and stop her nervous stutter. Smiling lightly, she sat in the booth across from Aria, Grace sitting next to her without a word and brushing the table off lightly. "So... how are you?"
"Fine, fine," Aria said, a bit bored. She had a way of making even the most awkward conversations - like the one Serenity was starting - seem perfectly normal. If anyone around the room were to be listening in, they might think the girls had known each other for years. "All right," she interjected suddenly, "where do I know you from?"
For the lighthearted, easygoing girl she came across as, Aria was extremely direct, and again Serenity found herself stumbling over her words as she tried to explain herself. "Well, you see - I mean, I don't really know how to..." As her voice trailed off her face grew a bright red, to the point where her cheeks were the same color as Aria's hair. Glancing down in embarrassment, she waited for Aria to pick the conversation up.
"We saw you on the news," Grace said simply, breaking the silence, glancing to Serenity calmly as she stared at her, a bit dumbfounded. "It's true."
"Y-yeah," Serenity stammered, a bit stunned. Grace speaking was already a rarity; Grace speaking twice in such a short timespan was nearly nonexistant. Recovering from her shock, Serenity continued, "We saw a video on BBC with you in it... and I recognized you, I don't know..."
Aria held up her hand to stop Serenity's ramblings, looking her dead in the eye. "Wait, let me get this straight. You and Grace came to Prague, from Rome, on the off chance that you would run into me?" When the girl nodded, Aria could only blink and say, "Wow."
A bit embarrassed by how desparate her story had made her seem, Serenity bit her lip and looked down at the table, playing with a coaster absently as she felt Aria's eyes on the back of her head. She had no idea where to go from here. Aria had arranged the meet, and the decision to come to Prague in the first place had been based mainly around the question of whether Aria would recognize Serenity. "Well," she finally stammered, putting the coaster down and looking up at the redhead, "what now?"
"...I don't know," Aria answered. "I guess... tell me about yourself? Maybe we'll be able to figure out how we know each other."
Serenity sighed and nodded. "All right... where should I start? When we moved to Rome?"
A look of confusion crossed Aria's face at that. "Wait, you didn't live in Rome your entire life? I thought you did..."
"No," Serenity said, simply. "I moved here with my adoptive parents when I was... fifteen?"
"Adoptive parents?" Aria asked, interested. "When were you adopted, and where did you live before that? Did you move around a lot? And what-"
Serenity cut off Aria off quickly, smiling a bit and stammering, "Can I just answer one at a time?"
Blushing lightly, Aria nodded. "Yeah, sorry, I'm just... excited, I guess."
Serenity nodded and straightened herself up in her seat. "Okay, well, I was adopted when I was five, and I was actually originally from Toronto, Canada. My parents - my adoptive parents - decided to change my name from Kathryn to Serenity, because they thought it would help me become a better person... Actually, they did that with all of their foster children. Grace was almost a year old when they adopted her, and we had a brother, too."
"A brother?" Aria asked.
"Yeah," Serenity said, nodding, "Justice. He died a few years after I was adopted, he was really sick..."
Frowning a bit sadly, Aria nodded. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"We weren't really close," Serenity admitted, sighing. "But anyway... Yes, we moved around a lot. Our parents were private tutors, and they could never really find work anywhere. We moved all over the United States, and eventually, we moved to Rome. Our dad got a solid job with one family who wanted their children to learn English, and our mom had gotten a job at one of the universities, so we moved into an apartment - a real apartment, and not a cheap room that we would rent when we moved from city to city."
"Well I'm glad you finally got to settle in," Aria said, sounding sincere despite the fact that her mind was focused only on trying to link their life with hers somehow. "What about you and Grace, what did you two do?"
"What do you mean?" Serenity asked, a bit confused and distracted as her eyes constantly shifted over to the table next to them, where a group of soccer fans were enjoying a hearty Czech meal.
Following Serenity's line of sight, Aria saw the food and smiled. "Are you hungry? We can always order something to eat."
"N-no, no," Serenity said quickly, blushing lightly and looking down at the coaster she was still fidgeting with. "It's okay. We don't have any money to pay for the food with, anyway..."
Aria nodded dismissively at first, but as realization dawned on her she stopped and asked, curiously, "When was the last time you ate, anyway?"
After a moment of awkward silence, Grace answered for the two, "The day before yesterday."
"What?" Aria nearly shouted, shocked by the response. "What do you mean, day before yesterday? Did you sleep all day or something?"
Serenity looked down, embarrassed, and said softly, "Well, we ran out of money coming up here and buying train tickets to get around..."
Almost ignoring the two, Aria called over a waiter and asked for him to bring over menus for Serenity and Grace. "Get whatever you want," she said as the waiter hustled off, meeting each of their eyes individually. "Everything is on me tonight."
"Oh, no, we really can't," Serenity started, trying to be polite despite her mouth beginning to water and her hands flipping through the menu to the Entrees section. "I wouldn't want to impose..."
"Don't be silly," Aria said, shaking her head. "You came all this way to find me, and spent all of your money doing it. I'm not going to let you starve."
* * * * * *
After her second beer, Serenity had begun to forget that Aria was paying for her food and drink, and by the time she had motioned to the bartender for her fourth beer, she was under the belief it was all free. Meanwhile, Grace - a naturally slow eater - was just finishing her surprisingly large plate of svickova, a Czech dish of pork medallions and bread dumplings covered in a dark gravy, garnished with a lemon slice and cranberries. Aria watched Serenity's drinking with some dismay, not because of the gradually rising cost - her relations with Princess Breeze made money a nonfactor - but because of the girl's gradually diminishing capacity to think straight. "Here, why don't we make a deal," she offered as she took the beer the waiter had just brought over. "For every question you answer of mine, you get one cup of beer. Deal?"
"Sure," Serenity said, her voice surprisingly lucid despite her body language suggesting that she had already reached her limit. "Bring it on."
Sighing lightly, Aria nodded. "Okay then, tell me... Did your parents really not leave you any money when they died?"
Serenity shook her head, closing her eyes as she thought back.
When our parents died, I was twenty-three, and Grace was twenty; neither of us knew more Italian than we had needed to to order food or ask for directions - we had only moved to Rome a year before our parents died, so we were only just getting used to everything, really. We still had the apartment, at least for the next two months, with the money our parents had left behind. I thought I might be able to get a job before that time was up, to support the two of us... Grace, well, she really never had to deal with all of the responsibilities I had to - she was Mom and Dad's favorite, and that's one of the reasons I hated them - so I was the one who had to go find work. But where we lived, there was no one looking for an English-only speaking employee, and we ended up losing the apartment.
We still had plenty of money to buy food and rent a cheap hotel, mind you, we just... had no idea really how to do that. We lived on the streets for a few weeks before we finally found a cheap room for rent near the Colosseum, in a spot right around where all the tourists came. The landlady hated us when we first got there, because we could never talk to her in Italian - she called us "worse than the American trash we get here, you're Italians who should have never become Italian." To a point, she was right, too...
Aria cut Serenity off there - her storytelling was going nowhere, and as interesting as it was to hear about her hardships, she was more curious about how she possibly recognized a girl who - to her knowledge - had never even heard of Aethon, the kingdom she had lived in all her life. Pouring her a glass of beer, she sighed and shook her head, trying to think of some possible connection she could make between them. "So... I assume you two didn't do much traveling since you got to Rome?"
Serenity shook her head, setting down her already half-empty glass to be topped off. "No," she said. "Couldn't afford it."
Rolling her eyes slightly as she topped off the glass, Aria fell silent for a long moment, brooding. "Well, I don't know, tell me about a memory that you remember really well - anything. It might help."
"All right," Serenity said, nodding as she pulled her glass back and took a swig. "Let's see..."
Almost five months after our parents died, I finally realized why everyone hated the tourists. I was browsing in the supermarket closest to our apartment for some cheap food - anything, really, as long as we could pretend it was a meal. And in walks this American family, a mom and pop with a little, chubby seven-year-old who ran down the aisles like a bull in a china shop. You can always tell the American families - most of them don't care how much damage their kids do, half of the time they just ignore the kids while they shop on their own.
So this kid turns down the aisle I'm in, and for some unknown reason decides he wants to grab a bottle of wine off of the shelf. Needless to say, it falls and breaks, and the little kid shoots away like a damn bullet before anyone can even see that he was in the aisle. The shop's owner looks at me - right at me, because my pants and shoes are now covered in red wine - and starts telling me off in Italian, like I'm the one who really did it.
And the moment I start saying that it was the little kid, and not me, his parents explode. And I mean explode. Now they're yelling in English that I'm lying, even though the fat little kid's got wine all over his shoes and shorts, too, I'm yelling in English that it wasn't me and that the parents should have just taken better watch over their kid, and the shopkeeper started yelling at all of us to get out of his store.
Aria stopped Serenity, groaning lightly. The girl was starting to lose focus with all the beer she was drinking. "Is there a point to all this?" she asked, getting a bit impatient.
"Of course there is," Serenity said, taking another gulp of her beer and placing the glass back on the table a little less softly than before. "Americans do a miserable job keeping their kids under control."
"No, no, I mean... is there any way this might help us figure out how we know each other?"
"I don't think so, you just asked me if I-" Serenity stopped suddenly, as a single memory, long-forgotten, came back to her in vivid detail. "Hey, I remember where I saw you before!" she said suddenly, nearly knocking over her beer. Excitedly, she adjusted herself in her seat and leaned forward, recounting the memory as best she could.
It was a few months after my parents died, and Grace and I were already almost out of money. We had tried a few different options already, but nothing was really working. No one wanted to hire me to work in their shops - I barely knew enough Italian to ask for the weather, let alone interact with customers - and besides, I was always horribly late to my interviews, normally because either the metro was on strike or because I just left the apartment too late. Either way, I could never land a job for more than a few days.
I even tried some less... moral ways of getting money. Living in Rome, we were used to the drunk tourists, and I used to avoid them, but... there was one night I was in a pub - I went to this pub every night, and the owner never told me he was joining the itinerary of those stupid "pub crawls" - and that's where I got the idea to try to find a drunk college boy, flirt with him a bit, and try to get him to give me some of his money... And it worked for a while, too. That is, until the people running the crawls started looking for me - me specifically, too, I saw one of the staff guys with a picture of me in his hand.
So, as far as I was concerned, we were out of options. And I couldn't let Grace starve, or myself, so I got, well, desperate. I went to the Pantheon, which is probably the best tourist destination for the locals... and I walked into one shop that sold knives and other weapons. I was looking at one switchblade, and I was seriously considering robbing people to get money, when someone - you - walked up next to me and smiled and told me "Watch out, you could really hurt someone with those things."
Aria sat back slowly, frowning a bit. "That's really the only way I recognize you?" she asked, a bit skeptical. "That seems... unlikely."
"Why is that?" Serenity responded, a bit shocked.
"Well, first off, I've never been to Rome." Aria waited for that statement to sink in, but in Serenity's buzzed state it was just going over her head. Sighing, she pulled the bottle of beer away and continued, "Second... why would I walk up to a random stranger, in a country that doesn't speak English as their main language, and just start light conversation in English?"
Serenity was more focused on finding her now missing bottle of beer than she was on Serenity's questions, and ignored her as she glanced up and down the table. "Did they take my beer away?" she asked, frowning a bit, her cheeks growing red.
With a sigh, Grace picked up the conversation. "So you're saying we met sometime before that, then?"
"I don't see any other options," Aria said, thinking back. "Other than trips to a castle near my home, I've never been very far away from home..."
"A castle?" Grace asked, suddenly interested. "I love ca-" She was cut off suddenly by the sound of shattering glass near her. Spinning to look toward the noise, she saw Serenity staring vacantly at the top half of a glass bottle, her shirt and pants both soaked with beer. Silently, Grace reached out and took the glass from Serenity, putting it back down on the table and ushering the drenched girl out of her seat. "I'll be right back," she said softly, to Aria, and led Serenity off to the bathroom.
Almost before the door to the girl's bathroom had closed, a white-haired woman sat down next to Aria, glancing at the mess on the table and smirking lightly, amused. "Did you like my shot?" she asked.
"You missed with the first pebble," Aria answered quickly, not looking over to her. "Hit me in the back of the head."
"Ryan distracted me," the white-haired girl said, dismissively.
Chuckling lightly, Aria looked over to the girl and winked. "He does do that a lot to you, princess." Feeling that they would not have much time to talk before the others returned, Aria jumped quickly into recounting what she had learned. "There's not really much I can think of to link us," she admitted, sighing. "Unless they ever lived in Aethon, or something like that..."
The white-haired princess sat silently for a moment, nodding slowly as she tried to figure out some sort of connection between Serenity and Aria. "You said her parents were teachers?" she asked, glancing over to Aria before returning her attention to watching the bathroom door, ready to leave at the slightest sign of movement.
"Yeah," Aria said, "she-" The door to the bathroom opened, and the princess immediately stood and left, leaving Serenity to finish her sentence to no one. As Grace sat Serenity down, Aria turned back to them and smiled. "Better now?"
Grace sighed. "She doesn't normally get drunk. I'm sorry you had to see her like this."
"Not a problem," Aria said airily, waving her hand and waiting for Grace to seat herself before picking up the previous conversation. "Do you mind if I ask you a bit more about your parents?" she asked.
With a shrug, Grace looked over to Serenity and groaned silently. She would have to do the talking now, for as much as she was against it. "Ask away."
Aria nodded, leaning forward on her elbows and resting her chin on her hands. "Do you happen to have any pictures of them on you?" She watched as Grace nodded silently, reaching a hand into Serenity's pants pocket and taking out a small, nearly empty money clip. "And do you two need any money? You look like you-"
"We're fine," Grace said, her voice soft. "Here." She handed a small photograph to Aria, her eyes shooting back and forth between it and Aria's face, not wanting the picture to leave her sight and interested in the redhead's response.
Aria's eyes lit up as she looked over the photograph, a smile starting to grow on her face. "Oh, I think I've got an idea of where we met before..."
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