Chapter 96: Chapter 96: There is a secret that we have forgotten. It hides in the night

Dusty particulate floats through the air as Hinnei stands upstairs by himself in the attic, looking around the old room.

 

He had spent his childhood up here, sometimes just hiding away from the busy, loud world below and then, other times, just because it was where his family was. This space has always been comfortable and safe. The sensation of secure coziness is only aided by the ceilings that are lower than he remembers them being, as well as the walls, which are closer in than he recalls.

 

His mother, a woman who wasn’t his biological mother and his father, a man who wasn’t his biological father, had spent their days living together here with a child that wasn’t either of theirs, raising it, feeding it, teaching it.

 

— Until it killed them one day.

 

Hineni rubs his forehead.

 

To this day, he still doesn’t really understand what had happened back then on that day in his childhood.

 

Did he just grow into his magic suddenly and it had gone awry at the worst place and time possible? Ash-magic is one of the more powerful sorts. Mistakes are easy to make with such a tool. Or did something else happen? Something that provoked him to act, like he had seen in the ‘memory’ of a life he had spent with the frog-god, Nekyia.

 

- Perhaps it was something else entirely?

 

The problem is that all of these theories and ideas come together with the age-distorted memories of his childhood and the revelations of his current life and it results in it all just being… a mess.

 

His memory of that day is a mess.

 

His memory of the days before it and after it are just a mess.

 

He knows that he killed his parents. But he doesn’t know why.

 

He knows that he was raised in an orphanage after that, before returning here. But he doesn’t really remember all too much about that phase. It was just quiet, wasn’t it?

 

Hineni’s eyes wander around the room. He doesn’t really know why he’s up here. It’s just… he felt a need to look. It’s the middle of the night and the others are asleep or downstairs and he simply feels the need to… look.

 

So he looks.

 

Hineni looks at the door-handle to the bedroom upstairs, which needs to be jiggled and he thinks about his first life. He was a child then.

 

He pulls the door open and looks inside at the empty, dark room. In his second life, he was alone; an orphan.

 

The man exhales, looking down and letting his breath run over the fabric of his half-unbuttoned shirt. It smells like owl. In his third life he had belonged to the owl-god.

 

In his forth, the frog-god.

 

Now, Hineni finds himself in his fifth life, aphoristically speaking, as the husband-to-be of the five-letter creature. He has gone through an incredible process of transformation over this past half year; far more than is possible for most in such a short time-span. Sometimes he just wanders off by himself to think about it.

 

— Maybe that’s why he’s up here?

 

However, despite all of these things having happened to him, all of these lives and experiences and new lessons learned, he still does not know the most fundamental answer to the puzzle of his life.

 

Why?

 

Why did life one stop?

 

It’s not that he minds at this point. He considers himself happy and productive. He has a full home and people he cares about and a person he understands to be in love with, so in all honesty, there’s no real concrete reason why he would want to dig around deeper, why he would want to gnaw and burrow around the thick roots of this tree he finds himself atop, other than the fact that there’s a gnawing voice in his head that says that he’s missed something.

 

It’s like back with Nekyia. That was far more obvious. It was too perfect. That bothered him a lot. It’s the same voice, but here, in reality, it’s much quieter. It’s much softer. But it, nonetheless, whispers to him.

 

— He’s missed something.

 

Hineni closes the door to the bedroom and turns around to face the darkness, looking at the owl who has been perched there in silence, watching him curiously. She must have followed him upstairs.

 

“I’m going to the orphanage,” says Hineni. “You can come with me, if you want.”

 

“The Hineni-man broods in thoughts of shadow-children,” hoots Obscura. “When he could perhaps brood children with his darling Obscura, yes?” She clicks excitedly with her mouth, hissing a little.

 

Hineni lifts an eyebrow, impressed. “That was a good line,” he says, nodding in approval. She hoots. “I wasn’t brooding, though,” he explains. “Why does everyone always think that? I was thinking.”

 

She transforms into her half-human form, walking alongside him, squishing herself into his side so that they can awkwardly walk down the far too tight staircase together at the same time.

 

---

 

Hineni wanders down the street, looking around the poor neighborhood.

 

“Where the hell is the orphanage?” he asks, looking around the dark streets.

 

“Perhaps going to the home of children at night is unwise?” asks Obscura. “Should they not return in the daylight, when they will not be feared to be on the hunt?”

 

Hineni shakes his head. “I don’t care about the kids. I just want to see the damn place,” he says and then stops, rubbing his head. “That sounded worse than I meant it. Sorry.” She hoots. Hineni shakes his head and keeps walking.

 

The streets are dark and the moonlight, while full, does little to mark out the silhouette of the building he has in his mind’s eye.

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He walks for a time, following old roads and turns. Obscura flies at his side, hovering in her half-human gestalt, as they wander the night.

 

But no matter to where in the neighborhood they wander, Hineni just can’t… seem to find it. Sure, he hasn’t been there in a while. But it wasn’t that long ago.

 

This whole new story of his life happened only briefly after he came back home from the orphanage. That means he last left it… what… eight months ago? -Ish?

 

Surely he can find a building that is in his own neighborhood that he spent a majority of his life staying at?

 

…Right?

 

Hineni stops, standing in the middle of a dark street and he looks around the shadowy world around himself. It’s quiet. All of the people of the city are asleep in their homes and beds. Even the thieves are resting and warm behind thick walls. Only two people stand out in the crossroads, lantern light engulfing him as he looks down the many roads, all of which lead to nowhere significant.

 

“…I don’t understand,” says Hineni. “I mean, it has to be here.” He rubs his forehead, closing his eyes to think. He spent over half of his childhood there. Even in the other vision of the world, presented to him by the frog-god, Nekyia, the orphanage had been a feature of his other life.

 

— But even there, he never actually saw it. It was only ever spoken of.

 

Hineni opens his eyes, confused as he looks around the world. A taloned hand places itself on his shoulder and another gently grabs his. “You have the eyes of a lost deer,” says Obscura. “Lost in the woods of the bitey-things.”

 

This may be true at the moment. Hineni stares around himself, perhaps looking very much like a wayward doe in the forest. “Did they close it?” he asks, trying to make sense of it. “Listen,” he says, looking back towards Obscura. “It has to be here. A whole place like that can’t just… vanish,” he says, unsure of himself.

 

“It is true,” says Obscura. “But she does not see it and neither does Hineni. A mystery.” She yawns, stretching herself out next to him. “Can they return to the nest?” she asks, rubbing her tired eyes.

 

“I…” Hineni looks around the area, one last time. He isn’t sure exactly what particular closure he could have found there. Maybe he wanted to ask if the caretakers knew anything about his past. Or maybe he wanted to see if there was anyone he grew up with, who he could talk to now.

 

— He’s never run into anyone from there in the guild or anywhere else in the city. In fact, he doesn’t even remember what a single person, adult or child, there had looked like.

 

All he has of that place, of that duration of his life that must have gone on for years, is the fuzzy memory of having been there.

 

That’s it.

 

No details. No faces. No smells and sounds and events of particular note. It’s just… it.

 

“- I, yeah…” says Hineni. “I just don’t understand,” he explains.

 

She pulls on his hand. “We will look together again tomorrow, yes?” she asks. “In the morning, they will ask the sock-elf and the library-creature and the river-boy, who are all clever and wise, yes?” she suggests.

 

Hineni rubs his tired eyes, thinking.

 

Maybe she’s right? It’s late and he’s dragged her out into a terrible neighborhood in the middle of the night because he wants to skulk around an orphanage at midnight. They’ll ask the others tomorrow for an address, or if they know of any building like it that had maybe been recently bought out or renovated. There’s got to be something.

 

“Let’s go home,” says Hineni, squeezing her hand and nodding. She hoots.

 

The two of them walk home together.

 

---

 

Sockel and Rhine look at each other.

 

It is the next day, early in the morning and Hineni had found them by the front-counter, getting ready for a dungeon excursion.

 

Sockel nods.

 

“- Are you sure?” asks Rhine, rubbing his lip with the back of his thumb. He looks towards Hineni.

 

“Yeah,” says Sockel. She turns towards him. “Listen, big guy,” says the elf, walking towards him. In a moment of unusual discomposure, she turns her head to the side, rubbing the back of it and messing with her hair for a moment. She looks back his way. “The thing is, there uh, there isn’t an orphanage here,” she says.

 

“…What?” asks Hineni.

 

“I was really confused about that too for a long time,” says Rhine. “But then Sockel told me you were probably just trauma-coping and made it up like some kind of sad weirdo.” She shoots a glare back his way. Rhine stiffens up and turns quiet.

 

“- Of course there’s an orphanage,” says Hineni, ignoring the comment. “Why the hell wouldn’t there be?” he asks, eyeing them carefully. “What are you trying to sell me here?”

 

“Look,” says Sockel. “I know there isn’t one here,” she says. “Every single kid without parents lands in my part of the street eventually,” says the elf. “Trust me. That’s it. It’s the alleys or the forest.”

 

“Sockel,” says Hineni.

 

She shakes her head. “It’s the truth. Go ask Seltsam for some zoning plans or whatever. She can show you.”

 

Hineni stares at her for a moment and then leans back against the counter, exhaling a long breath that he hadn’t known he was holding inside for so long. The room is quiet for a time.

 

“…If that’s true,” he starts, looking back towards them. “- Then where the hell was I the whole time?” asks Hineni. After all, his span of childhood had been a very long time.

 

But he receives no reply.

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