And the World Shall Forget You

[Nayt]

Maya was silent in contemplation for awhile. She really wanted to help Eld out here, but she was having a tough time thinking of something that could be even remotely specific to this subject matter. Honestly, the topic was just way too vague, and she'd never read anything about a Repeat with a capital R before. Her only option was to think of horrible cataclysms that occurred in cycles, and that brought up a few morbid thoughts that made her a wee bit uncomfortable. Maya wasn't too fond of doomsday scenarios . . .

"The world 'ends' in cycles," Maya replied with a small, but (vaguely) nervous laugh, "If that's catastrophic enough for you."

But that wasn't to say Eld was even talking about a doomsday event. That wasn't to say he was talking about non-fiction, either. Chances were, this was grounded in fiction.

Nonetheless, Maya actually knew quite a bit about that cataclysm. She read more than anyone else in their small collective of friends, and her father just so happened to own multiple tomes based entirely around real-world doomsdays. This world was uncomfortably prone to it. After all, mankind excelled in the destruction of one thing: mankind.

[Zach Kaiser]

No...that didn't sound like what Eld was searching for. Or if it was referring to the Repeat, perhaps this Repeat was unrelated to what happened to Akizetsumei. While he certainly thought there was something mysterious about the graveyard they'd found, that it somehow was linked to the end of the world was just crazy.

He should have moved on to a more pertinent question that Maya might know the answer to, but his curiosity demanded he ask something else first. "How does the world end in cycles? Can't it only end once?"

And then something occurred to him. "Oh, wait, do you mean what everyone calls 'The End?'" The history books had a more technical name for it, but the layman's term was just "The End," despite the fact that the world was clearly still around.

[Nayt]

"Mm," Maya nodded her head.

She leaned down and picked up her coffee cup again, blew on the top once, and took another sip. Ooo. It was cool enough to take longer drinks, now! Maya took a moment to take a long sip. Once she parted the cup from her lips, she was all smiles-- something Eld might not have seen for awhile.

After she put her cup down again, though, she focused on Eld. "The world's 'ended' more than once."

It was easy for her to recount knowledge on global cataclysms. She'd read almost every book her father owned on it. Granted, a couple of them were in different languages, and she-- unlike her father --couldn't read the language of ancients (something her father said was the language of God, though Maya personally doubted that), but there were a few abridged translations for some of them.

"I-it's-- well, the world doesn't literally end, b-but everything changes so drastically that it can never be the same again," Maya paused to think of a way to better explain this concept. "L-like with what we know, one species was the dominant rulers of the planet, which was then replaced by another species, which was replaced by another, and another, and another. Th-that's how the world ends in cycles. A-and cataclysms like the End usually cause those shifts."

[Zach Kaiser]

It took a second for Eld to respond; he was distracted by her smile. He hadn't seen her smile like that in ages...probably not since they went out. It always used to make him feel like everything was right in the world. He wondered if she'd ever smile at him like that again...

"O-Oh. Hmmm...did they cover that in class and I was just not paying attention that day?" he asked rhetorically when he realized she was done explaining. Chances were that the real case was that this was information only Maya had access to, since he knew her dad owned books that weren't available in most stores or libraries.

"Well, makes sense, in any case." He sipped his tea now that it wasn't going to burn his tongue. It was delicious, of course; everything the Takamine women made was. If for some reason her father got out of work (though he wasn't sure if one could technically get fired or laid off from being a priest) Maya and her mother could open up a restaurant and make a small fortune, he figured.

I guess I'll just have to see what Etsu uncovers, he thought to himself. It was clear Maya didn't know any more about it than he did, though she admittedly had a better knowledge base to guess from.

He could think of only one other thing to ask. "Well, there's something else too. Have you heard reference to something called the graveyard of memories?" He didn't explicitly say it was the graveyard where Akizetsumei fainted, but Maya was a smart girl and could probably figure out as much.

[Nayt]

Maya looked at Eld with a confused tilt of her head. "Graveyard of memories?"

She went silent for a moment again. Took a moment to take another drink of tea. This one she definitely recognized, and Eld would probably be able to see that much in the way she reacted. She was silently contemplating a lot longer than she was when he mentioned the Repeat.

Though, she didn't connect this with the graveyard that Akizetsumei fainted in. Maya still figured that Eld was discussing matters of fiction at this point. Honestly, it seemed like the only possibility. He was sort of talking about some really vague and potentially earth shaking stuff, therefore it had to be fiction. Magic did not exist. Cycles were not fueled by anything mysterious or supernatural. There was a god out there, but he did not interfere with the goings on of mortal lives. This was Maya's understanding of the world.

"Oh! I think I remember that in . . ." Maya trailed off to think again.

Without warning, she got up from the couch and scampered off down the hall towards her room. She hadn't told Eld to follow her, but then again, she hadn't told Eld to not follow her, either . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld recognized the look Maya got. He got it himself often enough; when you read a lot, it could be difficult to remember the specific book you read something in. He waited patiently until she got up and left down the hall.

He shook his head and smiled; this wasn't too surprising either, when he thought about it. It had just been awhile since the last time she'd been near him and had completely forgotten about him. Some might have found it off-putting, but Eld found her manner to be kind of endearing.

He got up and followed her, figuring it was better than waiting for her to come back given the amount of books she might have to dig through. Especially if she got distracted.

[Nayt]

Maya's room was at the end of the main hall. She'd opened the door hurriedly and rushed in, but didn't close it behind her. Instead, Maya simply took to sitting on the floor in front of a pile of tomes. Eld would find upon his arrival that Maya's room was a total wreck. Books were everywhere. Clothes were everywhere. There were a stack of notebooks in one corner of her room, and a pile of papers interwoven with a pile of clothes. She had a bra hanging off the corner of her dresser, a lace nightgown bunched up at the corner of her bed, and assorted other-- less embarrassing --clothes scattered about at random.

At first, the girl didn't notice anyone was there. It took her a second to realize, but she was still was surprised when she looked over her shoulder. She spun around as fast as she could to face Eld.

"Ah! Ts-- Tsukimono-san! I-- I was just-- u-um . . . a-- h-heh . . ." Maya was blushing profusely.

Some things never changed.

This would hurry things along. This would have Maya overclocking her body's reaction times; she'd dig through her stack of tomes until she found what she recalled to be the right one, whereupon she would scamper out of her room and shut her door tightly behind her.

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld smiled. He'd actually forgotten just how messy Maya's room usually was. It was something he considered mostly silly, up until the point where he saw a bra hanging off her dresser.

"H-Heh, sorry, I'll just go wait back in the living room," he said sheepishly, blushing slightly. He was briefly reminded of a time a few weeks ago when he'd noticed she wasn't even wearing one...

He pulled his mind back from that sharply. Now was definitely not the time. He returned to his seat on the couch, deciding to just finish his tea as he waited.

[Nayt]

Maya returned to the living room not long after, a thick tome in her arms, held firmly against her chest. She plopped down next to Eld. At some point, she had stopped thinking about her apprehensions. In fact, it was roughly the same time as Eld asked her something that she could help him out with. She sat close to him, close enough that she could open the book up and set it down in both of their laps-- which was close enough to rub shoulders with Eld pretty easily. She didn't seem to notice or care right now, though.

"Th-this is a book called Hail to the Thief. It's, um, i-it's really good," Maya opened it up to the middle and spread the book out across their laps, "I-it's about these two young men th-that are exploring the world, when the world's d-doing everything it possibly can to forget them."

Good though Maya claimed it to be, it was a veritable brick of a novel. It was tall, wide, had small font, leaf pages, and was seven hundred pages long.

The two characters seen in the visible pages appeared to go by the names Dagan and Jai Kha. They were currently going through a bit of a hard time. Well . . . it was probably best not to read that far into the middle pages of the book, so not to spoil anything for oneself . . .

"Th-there's something called the Graveyard of Memories in this. Um, i-it's kind of later in the book, but still . . ."

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld was too engrossed with prospect of learning something to notice how close Maya sat to them. If he were to stop to think about it, he'd be reminded of old times, of the two of them sitting just like this, both so engrossed in a book they didn't remember anything else.

One of the things she said struck a chord. "And the world shall forget you..." he murmured. That was what was written in the message. It seemed unlikely it was a coincidence, but all that might mean was just that the whoever wrote the History of Hillcrest was a fan of this book. There was a way he could know for sure, though.

"Is there a description of the graveyard?" he asked, idly flipping through the pages near the back. At this point he was doubting he'd stumbled on anything more than a code from a fan of a popular novel, but he might as well make sure.

[Nayt]

Wait-- Eld was totally going to spoil the book for himself if he kept doing that! Maya figured she had to talk quickly before he did anything rash.

"I-it's been awhile since I've read this," she said with a hint of nervousness.

Maya set her hand on one page to stop Eld from flipping through it. She had to explain this setting to him without spoiling anything, apparently. This was going to be tough.

"B-but if I remember right, it's . . ." Maya trailed off.

She paused to word this in her head correctly. It'd been awhile since she read this book, and as good of a book as it was, it was a pretty hefty novel. There were a lot of details that were hard to recall.

"Empty," she replied at last, "Barren a-and . . . um, just this whole . . . lifeless expanse. Its surrounded by an impossibly thick forest, but the ground o-on which its resides is . . . dead? And it's all marked with hundreds of items a-and weapons and stuff, all plotted out like gravestones and given space, even though there're no bodies buried there."

[Zach Kaiser]

Close as they were, Maya would be able to feel Eld stiffen next to her. He slowly turned to his head to look at her, and could only give her a wide-eyed stare. Even once she was done it took him a few moments before he could collect his thoughts enough to speak.

"Maya, that perfectly describes the graveyard where Akizetsumei fainted," he said at last. What this meant, he couldn't even begin to fathom; there was no reason a graveyard outside of Hillcrest should have been mentioned in a fictional novel. He didn't know how old the novel was, either.

Depending on how much Maya believed in coincidence, the supernatural, or Eld himself, his next question might have made him seem crazy in her eyes. "In the book...is there anything special about the graveyard?"

[Nayt]

Maya did feel Eld stiffen up next to her, and when she was done speaking and glanced over at him, she felt extremely uncomfortable. It was then that she realized how close she was sitting to him, too. She'd have put a bit of distance between them if they didn't have a book sharing their laps.

"Um . . . y-yeah, b-but-- I can't really remember. Th-there was a lot to it. It's one of those books that you have to read the whole thing to understand, you know? A-and if you forget a few details, a lot of things just don't make sense anymore," Maya admitted shamefully, "And it's been years since I've read i--"

Right there, right in mid-sentence, something Eld said finally struck Maya as supernaturally bizarre. She turned her head to address him with an intensely curious stare.

"W-wait-- there were that many grave plots out there?"

Yeah, that was kind of a crazy thought. Hundreds of grave plots outside of Hillcrest? There were hundreds of grave plots in Old Hillcrest, but no one had ever lived out by the lake before. There's no reason for there to be so many out that way.

[Zach Kaiser]

Eld found himself backpedaling a bit. "Well...no, there were only a dozen or so plots. But I meant that the description of it was the same. Dead ground, hidden in a forest, and marked by seemingly random items instead of graves."

So no, it wasn't hundreds of graves. But had it been, once? Or were there more graveyards like this scattered throughout the world? Or was there a more mundane explanation, like the writer of the book having been inspired by the graveyard near Hillcrest, or a fan of the book creating the graveyard?

Actually, that last possibility was as disconcerting as any of the supernatural possibilities. "Is it alright if I borrow this book?" He couldn't promise that he'd read the entire thing, but he wanted to know everything the book said about the Graveyard of Memories.

[Nayt]

"Oh? Sure," Maya replied.

She didn't mind people borrowing books from her. In fact, it always brightened up her day when she had the opportunity to discuss works of literature with someone. She just hoped Eld would actually read this rather than skimming around for information. Honestly, he'd just be confused if he did that. This was really the kind of novel you had to read word for word, else nothing at all made sense. And even then, it didn't really make sense until later. He was going to have a sincerely difficult time making sense of any of it if he didn't read it full-through!

Maya closed the book and pushed it over so it was entirely sitting on Eld's lap. Hail to the Thief was etched into the front cover, with the author's name, a certain Jaster Mairse, printed in small font at the bottom. It was a pretty high quality novel, all hand bound and everything.

Once that was done and over with, she scooted over to her side of the couch, where she leaned over, picked up her cup of tea, and took a long drink from it. Thus far, Maya hadn't thought much about how strange Eld was acting. He kind of had a tendency to be a pretty strange agent sometimes. Didn't really have to make sense, either. Actually, it was something she liked about him way back--

Stop that.