That night, a Dryad left a small candle beside the bed and disappeared. Gentle light spread calmly inside the nest, and even the shadows of the drawing on the wall swayed softly.
I sat on the bed and slowly regulated my breathing. My body was tired but sleep didn’t come easily. What remained in my head was the sensation of charcoal, the faceless form that line had created, and Levia’s words.
‘It’s okay. Until you think you’re finished, I’ll watch over you.’
Those words didn’t bind me, but didn’t make me free either. It simply meant he would wait. Until I decided.
But the problem was, I was already beginning to decide.
That resolve was quietly growing inside me even without being spoken. Like roots. Not deep but clearly, like a sprout pushing through the soil even if small.
Before falling asleep, I looked at the drawing I’d made last.
That faceless form still didn’t avoid my gaze. Just by the fact of being there, it seemed to say something.
I slowly closed my eyes. Today no memories surfaced. No dreams appeared either. I just fell asleep. Quietly, engraving one very small thing in my heart.
I can’t stay here long.
And tomorrow, I would be able to say that to myself a little more clearly.
***
That day felt somehow unfamiliar from morning. The sun rose from the east the same as usual, and the teacup the Dryads had left held the same fragrance as before. But some invisible page was turning inside me. My fingertips trembled sensitively, and my gaze wouldn’t fix.
I walked toward the forest while avoiding the drawing propped against the wall. When I stepped outside the nest, Levia was waiting for me in the middle of the forest.
He examined my face carefully for a moment, then approached.
“You seemed to have a hard time yesterday… Are you okay today?”
“…I think I’m okay, now.”
“Don’t worry too much. Bad dreams will fly far, far away.”
That voice held sincere concern. Levia held out that large ‘lump of dew’ to me, and I carefully received and drank it.
How strange. Even though I think it’s just water, it’s definitely more than cool—it’s cold yet I feel warmth. The embrace that followed was the same. I felt something inexplicable. Something wondrous.
He held me like that and patted my back briefly before letting go. Then his eyes soon sparkled.
“So… how much did you remember? Your name? What were you? Did you remember everything now?”
Those innocent questions shook something inside me. My fingertips began to stiffen numbly.
Word by word pulled up the sensations that had been quiet all night.
But suddenly, a scene surfaced.
In a way that could only be described as precisely ‘surfacing.’
It was red. Crimson cloth lay spread on the floor, and on it rested a black dagger. On the hilt was a familiar pattern. A crest where lion and star, and blade crossed.
I’d seen it before. Sometime. Definitely.
My vision spun. The dagger was a symbol. It was an order. An instruction handed down as decision, not words—that someone must be executed. I had a memory of receiving that dagger. And of me nodding toward that dagger.
My breathing became labored. Even closing my eyes, the dagger didn’t disappear. It seemed engraved as sensation rather than consciousness. Something carved inside me was finally breaking through the surface.
“Elion!”
I flinched at the voice heard from behind. It was a familiar sound.
“Does it hurt? Why suddenly? What should I do?”
“I’m, I’m fine.”
“No, this is strange. You’re not fine. What do I do about this?”
I don’t know what state of mind I was in. As if possessed by something, I crawled toward the drawing I’d stopped drawing, the one I absolutely couldn’t complete and had thrown aside. And immediately began drawing haphazardly.
I knew Levia was saying something, but I had no presence of mind to listen.
Only after finishing the drawing did I realize my fingertips were trembling. I couldn’t tell what I’d drawn. But I’d definitely drawn it, and my hand had moved familiarly.
The pattern in the drawing was so abstract its meaning was indiscernible, but it depicted a form clearer than anything I’d drawn so far. It could almost be seen as something torn from my head and crumpled up.
“Goodness! What’s happening? Is it because of memories? Could it be mental collapse because of that…? No, but… I definitely shared energy and nourished your body….”
Only after regulating my breathing somewhat did Levia’s clamorous noise finally start to pound in my ears.
“Really, I’m fine. Really.”
I don’t know what he was trying to do, but I stopped him first. I didn’t know what Levia was trying to do, but I felt it might be dangerous. Even knowing it was an act he intended to do for my sake.
After my repeated restraint, Levia, who’d been flustered not knowing what to do, finally gave up. And as he was lifting me up when I seemed about to melt away, he saw the drawing and stopped abruptly. What? When I barely raised my head, Levia looked at the drawing with a strange expression and said.
“This, do you want it?”
Levia sat quietly beside me examining the drawing, making his previous fuss seem pointless. Without a word, for a long time.
“Wait just a moment. I have this.”
Then he got up. I didn’t follow him and stayed sitting in that place. My gaze remained fixed on the drawing. The sense of strangeness had already become familiar, and now it was pulling me.
Levia returned after a long while. In his hand was an old box. Tree bark clung to it in jagged clumps, shaped as if it had grown directly from roots. The surface was quietly covered with thin moss and dust, and it smelled of time—impossible to know who had last opened it when.
“Long, long ago humans left this as an offering.”
He said.
“I didn’t know what meaning it had. So I just left it. I didn’t use it for anything, but the carving on top was pretty so I didn’t throw it away. Then I saw your drawing and remembered. Doesn’t it look similar?”
I didn’t answer. I just received that box.
The outside was very light, but the weight resting in my hand was strangely heavy. When I carefully opened the lid, inside was a piece of wood the size of a palm. A roughly carved pattern. Lines composed of intersecting curves and angles like a ritual symbol. And at its center was a form that matched exactly what I’d just drawn.
My breath stopped.
Not my eyes, but my skin remembered first. My fingertips trembled, and dizziness surged from behind my forehead. The world wasn’t slowing down, the air wasn’t getting heavier. A gap opened in my existence.
There were people. Firm voices, rapidly moving footsteps, friction of iron. Before my eyes was a battlefield. Flags and spearheads, mud, horse hooves. I received someone’s order. No, I was giving orders. Wearing armor, riding a horse, leading dozens at the vanguard of the charge.
And in the midst of it, one man fell. Someone beside me. A comrade who was clumsy at smiling. He rushed in following my order and fell struck by an arrow. He died with his neck twisted, unable to even look at me.
The moment that vigorous pulse stopped was vivid. I froze in place. Someone grabbed me. Even in that moment no one blamed me. That it wasn’t my fault, that it was common on battlefields, that he went embracing his own fate.
But I know. I had killed him.
I took a step back. I’d returned to reality. But I couldn’t breathe. I knelt. My shoulders trembled. The memory was no longer fragments. It connected, poured out, crushed me.
“Elion.”
Levia called me. Only then did I know. That that name was my name.
I was a noble. A bastard. Not acknowledged, a being born to fight. Everyone moderately expected me and moderately abandoned me. And I, within that, took someone’s life. The people I tried to protect, I couldn’t protect.
I gasped for breath and lowered my head. Words wouldn’t come out. But my lips trembled and flowed out lowly.
“…I remembered.”
At those single words, a cold sensation spread from head to toe. I had merely been postponing reality.
At my words Levia made a strange expression. It seemed like a dazed face, and also seemed happy. Perhaps it might look sad. It was a face difficult to define.
“Somehow, it’s very difficult but simple. So memories could be revived with something like this?”
“…Are you, disappointed?”
“No, I thought it was a bit dangerous. Of course that’s not because of you.”
Levia seemed to regulate his breathing for a moment, then spoke in a sunken voice.
“I worried what if our children also simply revive their memories like this.”
Levia, who’d shown an anxious expression for just a moment, shook his head as if shaking something off. And helped me up as I lay sprawled.
“So? What were you? What did you like? You were a princess after all, right?”
While examining me worriedly, Levia couldn’t hide his excited voice. I don’t know what he’d been expecting so much. I suddenly became afraid of his expectation itself.
I looked at the box once more. An offering humans had left long ago. Something buried without knowing its meaning. And now, what I’d unconsciously drawn.
“…I’m sorry. Just, just…. I’ll rest, for a moment.”
That pattern brought me back. To the place of memories I’d fled from.
***
Morning was no different from yesterday. Everything repeated as if proving all was tranquil.
For the first time, I pleaded with Levia. To let me be alone. To not ask anything. Levia looked at me for a long while with a complicated expression, then said he understood.
No one blamed me.
Yet I was suffocating. The wind, the teacup, the sunlight—nothing was different from usual, but nothing was the same. The edges of objects trembled faintly and looked only dry as if they’d lost color. Something moved soundlessly inside me.
I unconsciously picked up the colored ink on the desk then immediately withdrew my hand. My fingertips trembled. I thought I could draw like usual, but the current me couldn’t do even that properly. The hand trying to choose a color fumbled emptily, and my heart pounded loudly inside my chest.
I accidentally knocked over a cup while trying to pour water. Water spread over the table, and the cloth became soaked in an instant. It was a simple mistake, but at that moment I felt as if I’d put myself in the wrong place. Like something that shouldn’t be here. I got up from my seat.
I slowly walked outside the nest. Trees and roots, moss and sunlight—everything seemed to accept me as I was, but I couldn’t place myself within it. It didn’t take even a day for familiarity to turn into alienation.
The forest before my eyes was the same, but I had changed.
Standing in the forest regulating my breathing, I suddenly recalled a scene from before coming here. A scene I’d once had no memory of surged up like sensation.
A battlefield mixed with mud and blood. Corpses fallen beneath flags. The sound of pursuers’ horse hooves. And me fleeing into the forest, passing over my fallen comrade’s corpse.
I survived. Pursued, injured, nearly breathless, I came to the boundary of this forest. There was no set path, no place to flee. I simply stepped forward to survive, and eventually reached this deep place. Near Levia’s nest, nearly dying.
