Five Arabian Nights

Chapter 4

Second Day (2)

A dark-haired figure stood in a corner of the room. Jaune could quickly tell who this was: the painting child. Her long hair covered her tiny body as she sat at the corner's direction. Her figure was shrouded with darkness, but he could see the ragged grey dress she wore.

Her body trembled, her arms hunched to her chest. But that was not the problem.

She was on the other side of the room.

In the middle of the room were two flowers: a lilium candidum and a rose. The two flowers sat on a platform that floated above a pool of eyes, every single one of them staring at Jaune's direction. They blinked when he blinked, they moved when he moved. They were watching him, and he felt fear stiffen his body for a moment.

But perhaps that was what the eyes wanted him to do. Perhaps they wanted to control him by monitoring him, just as many others had done so in the past and present. And he would be a fool to let that happen again.

Taking a deep breath, Jaune stretched his fingers out of nervousness before confronting fear. He took several steps before standing still at the edge of his side of the room. With a moment's worth of second thoughts, Jaune leaped forward, landing on the platform.

A white flower and a red flower.

Purity in two ways.

The innocence and the taking of innocence.

Jaune remembered the flower the girl had held in the painting as he picked the white flower up. And all of a sudden, the rose burst into blood, splattering over his clothes and face. The blond nearly fell off the platform, but he managed to keep his ground. The eyes blinked, waiting for him to fall off, but he did not.

The knight leapt off of the platform, landing on the other side of the room. The moment his feet landed on the ground, he felt his body convulse. It was not a natural convulsion, as he was unable to control his body as his vision became hazy. The ground beneath him morphed into a field of flowers, the petals being the fingers of children. The skies were painted with blue, the clouds seemingly watching Jaune just like the eyes had. And they did watch him. Because he was being monitored.

All the time.

Jaune walked, but the fingers beneath him reached out for him in futile attempts. He walked, and walked, and the fingers reached and reached. Then the pollen opened their eyes as he walked further, and he was soon being watched by a legion of watchers. But Jaune pressed on.

He saw an illusion of a child surrounded by men older than her, each of them plucking off a petal from the lilium candidum she carried. And they walked away, leaving her with nothing but an empty stem. They left her with nothing but a stem.

Just a stem; only the root of her existence. For they had stripped everything precious to her from her within her. In her. Her. Everything from her, everything for her.

Everything she was.

Sadness took over as her world crumbled, and so did Jaune's. For the fingers… The flowers cried, the eyes closed with tears rolling down their stems. The clouds sobbed and cast a gloomy rain over the field, and everything left the girl by herself. No one to monitor her, but nothing to comfort her. What remained of her remained as a hollow shell, neither hope nor jubilance within her any longer.

Overwhelming nothingness. That was true sorrow.

The fields vanished, the skies died, and Jaune found himself in a new room. The eyes were no longer present, for he was now in a pitch-red room. The eight figures that had chased him were hung by their necks, their insides dangling. The men Jaune had seen were also hanging alongside them, and beneath them were the beautiful petals of the lilium candidum.

But what was broken could never be reforged perfectly. The petals had been torn apart beyond repair. Nothing could return it to its natural state. No dark magic could carry over the essence of purity into its original condition.

Jaune gently approached the girl, who remained in the same corner as before. She trembled. She did not look back. She could not look back, for the things that granted her the ability to see had been taken. Her sense of hearing was muffled, for red liquid filled every brim of her ears. Her gift of tasting aromas had been tainted with nothing but disgusting blandness.

Her eyes were hollow, her ears were torn, her tongue was no more. And even then, Jaune did not look away when she turned.

He could not see the beauty of stealing the most precious of things from others. It saddened him to see something beyond his own comprehension, even though he clearly knew that such things existed. His sadness over the world's true colors were the reason why he wanted to become a hero. He wanted to prevent such things from happening because he knew it was wrong to steal, no matter how valuable it seemed. Call him a hypocrite for lying his way into practically everything; no one could deny he was correct.

Just once, he wanted to reach out and be the one to help others up from the utter despair he had once felt.

The blond walked forward, and forward, and forward and forward and forward and… stopped.

He stood in front of the girl, who wondered what part of her would be taken next. Kneeling on one knee, the knight gently wrapped a hand around hers. He softly took a broken flower stem she had been hiding from him and put it next to him. The girl trembled, unable to see where her flower had gone off to. She opened her mouth to say something, and nothing but a soulless whimper came out.

Closing his eyes, the blond knight put a beautifully white flower within the child's hands. And with a determined spirit, he pressed her hands together.

And then a new field sprouted beneath the two. The flowers were pure, each of them sporting neither eye nor finger. The clouds slept in peace, and an eternal blue shined above them. Jaune let his hope overwhelm her despair. Because though sadness could be halted on one's own accord, to vault over it demanded the hopes of others. What drove him to move on? Pride? He had pride, but its origin lay within his trust.

A trust that could be shared to his valuable friends.

A trust that saved him, and that could save others.

The girl remained still. She stopped trembling. With what was left of her body, she lifted the fresh and healthy flower up to her distorted face.

She smelled the flower.

Hope.

Jubilance.

Trust.

Suddenly, the fields expanded, and a warm light shined upon them. Sorrow was undeniably omnipresent, but was joy too lazy to rest within the hearts of others? Jaune believed otherwise. For it was up to people themselves to decide whether they would let others up from the pits of endless despair.

Wealth?

Power?

Honor?

Alone…?

He would never be lumped with those things if an eternal emptiness was all he would be left with.

The girl finally let out her true tears. No longer did the abhorrent red liquid flow out. Jaune remained still as the house faded, and the entirety of his surroundings became a reality.

There was nothing better than being able to cry in absolute happiness.

…

…

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The Second Day (2) -END-