Myths From a Dying Underground -- Ar Tonelico fanfiction (OC, 898 words, no warnings)

"One week to live. Please help."

Just by looking at her, you could tell, even without the flimsy paper sign hanging around her neck. She looked like all the other Diquility-starved Reyvateils haunting the mazy back streets of Firefly Alley: too desperate for the life-extender to waste money on food, in these last days they deprived their already failing bodies of nutrients in exchange for one last shot at life. Sallow and sunken-eyed, their lank hair drawing attention to the thinness of their features, they all filtered down, eventually, to this landfill of civilisation, to congregate like shadows in half-lit little corridors and under the awnings of ramshackle shops.

When there were elephants on the land, in the days before the wars, the legend ran that they made their way to agreed resting grounds to die: the elephant graveyards. The catacombs of Firefly Alley, they called this place. The Reyvateil graveyards. It was truer than the myth.

No one seemed to know why they gathered here; there were tourists to be had out on the main streets, while these shallows gathered only the dying and forlorn. Perhaps they knew their place; as there is a time to die, so is there a space, and the thought of contaminating the bright streets with their hopelessness might have upset their sense of beauty. Perhaps it was simply that a creature facing this most transformative of life events seeks to dwell only with others who walk the same path; all else is noise, distraction.

Or perhaps, something greater pulled them here; the touch of an invisible hand from some more noble plane. That was what Ryewa Alancis would believe, later, when she thought of what had occurred among the detritus of Firefly Alley that night.

The Goddesses' messenger, if such it was, moved easily among the shadows; almost blending in, in the dark robes that hung from its near-skeletal figure, yet with an alacrity to its steps that no other here possessed, it was them and was, at the same time, more than they could ever be. It travelled between them like a virus, seeking out hunched forms and trembling bodies with the eyes of a hawk, plucking out from beneath the garbage those who had crawled away to die; and to each one of them it said something murmured too softly to be heard, and it took their palms in its, in a manner wary and covert. Those whom it had visited stayed silent, but their hands were clutched to their breasts, and there was a life in their eyes almost matching that of the fleeting, flitting figure who had, it was evident, come to spread a holy joy among the dying.

Ryewa felt her heart beating faster as she watched the figure criss-cross the catacombs, slowly making its way closer to her. She was so fascinated with each transaction that she had not stopped to count whether it touched everyone: what if it did not come to her? She prayed silently not to be passed over, not to be abandoned by this one last miracle, this futile, yet magnificent, raging of the light against the darkness.

Yet even in her breathless hope she wondered as to the nature of this messenger. They were shadows by necessity; this being was shadow by choice. What would possess someone to dress in such dark raiment, and come down here, amongst the filthy and afflicted, to spread some strange benediction? Maybe it was mad, and its "wisdom" equal madness, that only touched the hearts of her fellows because they too hovered on sanity's brink. Maybe it was cruel, and the cruelty caked in sweetness, such that it could not be detected until it was too late. Yet equally, she wondered, what really was left to lose? --a gamble with bliss, or a certain slow fading; given the option, why not grab at her last chance at happiness? And so she resolved, if the stranger came to her side, to sit peacefully, and not to flinch or scream or run away. None of the others had, but then of course one always thinks oneself more astute than one's peers, and Ryewa had been a canny girl, in life.

And then, before she had the chance to further worry about whether it would come, it was upon her; and what she had not noticed before that she noticed now was that it knelt down to each one, the better to be on eye level with the Reyvateils who were mostly slumped or sprawled out upon the ground. And what she saw beneath the hood twinged at the failing recesses of her memory, but cleverly the woman gave her no time to process this, leaning in against her shoulder and whispering as she pressed something warm and hard into her hands, Look only when you are alone, and tell no one; and I will come again.

And then she was up and moving, and Ryewa tried to say something, but all the words fell out of her mouth and turned to dust; but she turned over the crystal in her hands, carefully, secretly, and she knew that the gratitude reached her eyes, and that would have to be enough.

Of course she wouldn't tell. What was she going to say, anyway?

"Mir saved my life"?

Who would believe that?

She wasn't even sure she did.


From the author: Heavily inspired by the legends reputedly invented by street children, such as the ones described in the now fairly famous article Myths Over Miami. I find these stories fascinating and haunting, and tried to recapture some of that forlorn and mythic atmosphere in this piece.