Chapter Text
When her family moved to the newly built house, she remembered being all sorts of happy. Mama and Papa had laughed as she bounced up and down, pointing at the house and occasionally exclaiming to her siblings how excited she was.
She didn’t really remember what happened after that. Faces blurred as she tried (and failed) to help her family move in. She was the youngest and had the most energy, so it was only fair she helped. But nothing really seemed to stick when she thought for too long.
What she did remember was that one day, she was sick.
When she got sick, it felt unfair. She wasn't supposed to be sick. She had games to play. She had a tree she almost reached the top of. She had promised her brother she'd beat him in a race.
But then she got hot.
That was all she could think about for so long. She just felt so hot.
At first it wasn't too bad. She'd wake up sweaty, her nightgown sticking to her skin, her head pounding in a way she couldn't explain. Sometimes she'd shiver so hard her teeth clacked together despite feeling like she was sitting in the middle of a fireplace.
She figured her body was just being silly.
She couldn't eat much anymore. That was all right. She wasn't very hungry anyway. Her mama would sit beside the bed and tell her stories while gently wiping a cool cloth across her forehead, whispering, "It'll pass, darling."
Papa would nod, smiling that toothy smile. "It surely will."
She believed them. Parents always knew those sorts of things.
Sometimes Mama would bring little toys into bed so they could play pretend together. Sometimes she'd braid her hair while pretending not to notice how much came loose in the brush. She smiled a lot. Her eyes never did.
For a few wonderful days, everything really did seem to get better. She ran outside with her brothers and sisters until her lungs hurt from laughing. She chased dragonflies. She climbed halfway up the old oak before Papa noticed and hollered for her to come back down. Mama cried that night. She never understood why.
Then the fever came back. Harder. She remembered blood. A little when she coughed. More when she threw up. A lot in the chamber pot when she had to go. Enough that everyone suddenly looked frightened whenever they saw her.
The games stopped. The curtains stayed shut. Adults whispered outside her bedroom door. She wasn't supposed to hear them.
"...another family..."
"...yellow jack..."
"...Lord help us..."
She didn't know what yellow jack meant. She almost asked.
Instead she fell asleep.
°❀.ೃ࿔*
The funeral happened two days later.
She attended because everyone else did, and that’s what you’re supposed to do at funerals, but no one acknowledged her. It was very rude, if you asked her.
The adults cried. Her siblings cried. Mama nearly collapsed when they lowered the tiny white coffin into the earth. She sat cross-legged on top of it afterward.
She wasn't sure why everyone had gone home. It seemed lonely, but she stayed. She talked to the birds. She counted clouds. She watched ants carry leaves bigger than themselves.
Eventually the sun went down, then came back, then went down again. She got hungry, except she wasn't. She got sleepy, but she never actually fell asleep. Days blurred together. She wandered. She played by herself. Sometimes she forgot why she had been sad. Sometimes she forgot she had been sad at all. Seasons changed. The leaves turned orange. Snow fell. Flowers bloomed again. One year became another. Then another.
The house changed. Paint peeled, rooms were rebuilt. Families arrived, families left. Some stayed years, others only months. None of them could see her, yet she still tried introducing herself.
Only to find she couldn't remember her name anymore. She tried very, very hard. Mama had called her something. Papa too. Her brothers shouted it whenever they wanted to play. It was–
It was…
She frowned. She couldn’t remember. That made her cry. Fat, ugly tears trailed down her face and she cried harder than ever. She wasn't sure why. Eventually she stopped trying. If she couldn't remember…
Maybe she didn't need one.
The little girl who had once lived in the house slowly forgot many things. She forgot her parents' voices. She forgot how many brothers and sisters she'd had. She forgot songs. Birthdays. The color of her favorite dress. She even forgot she'd once been afraid of anything, afraid of everything at times.
But she never forgot how to play.
°❀.ೃ࿔*
There was a man in her house.
A very strange man, she decided immediately.
For one, he didn’t look like any man she had seen. He had long hair, always frowning or pushing up his glasses or writing in his book or looking so sick and tired. She didn’t like seeing people sick.
The newcomer always coughed, a wet, rattling cough that echoed through the quiet house. She hated the way it bounced off the wall and landed on her skin. Eventually, more people came. For weeks, the girl watched people carry soup, fresh water, medicine, wet towels and books upstairs. She didn't understand, but it felt familiar.
Then one evening, the coughing stopped. The man’s room became very, very quiet. The people stopped, too, holding their heads down and taking something from his room before leaving. Everyone always left.
But not the stranger.
When she was finally interested enough to see what had happened to the house goer, she opened the door to his room and peeked inside. The man stood beside the bed.
Then he looked at her.
He screamed.
In return, she screamed.
He scrambled backwards, hitting the bedside table and knocking over the book he always wrote in. He pointed at her, saying nothing but half words before finally spluttering out, “What are you doing in my house?!”
She stopped her screaming, frowning. “I live here!” She said, the most obvious thing in the world.
He shook his head rapidly. It looked fun, so she shook her head, too. “N-no, I live alone!” He exclaimed, clutching his chest. “And the way you’re dressed–“ he paused.
Then he looked down at his free hand. It was somewhat transparent. “Oh God,” he muttered. “Oh God, oh God, oh God…” He brought his hands to his face, shaking his head as his voice got more and more broken. “I’m dead.”
She looked at him with a dawning realization, face lighting up. “Uuuu, does that mean we get to play!?” She bounced up and down, circling him. “Play, play, play!”
His head snapped up, eyes full of tears. “No! No, it does not mean we play–“
She suddenly froze in her tracks. “Say, what’s your name?” The girl questioned, swishing her arms back and forth. “You gotsta have a name.”
“Of course I have a name,” he sniffled, wiping his eyes, “it’s– it’s…” For a moment, she thought they’d be the same. That he wouldn’t have a name either. That they could be nameless together.
Then he looked down at the book that had fallen, picked it up, and scanned the first page, sighing in relief. “Seth. My name is Seth.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I wanna name,” she pouted. Then her face lit up and she was bouncing again. “I wanna be called Seth, too! Then we can both be Seth!”
“No! We can’t both be Seth– you’ll just be… uh…” He thought for a moment, looking around as if trying to find a name. “… Aqua?”
She stopped again and stared at him, tilting her head. “Aqua?”
He stared, too, before nodding. “Yeah. Like, uh,” he paused to think, before snapping his finger. “Like your eyes.”
The little girl stared at him for a long, long moment, before she grinned so widely it almost hurt. “I like Aqua.”