Mom placed another rock in the pile we'd made in the field facing the island's interior behind the citadel. With a slight huff, she planted a crude stake with a bit of white cloth tied to one end amidst the rock cluster. The rocky soil resisted, but Mom was strong. That, and she had a hammer.
Mom stepped back with a sigh to survey her work.
Already, the white cloth had begun to drift slightly with the Fall breeze. At her gesture, I placed the last rock at the stake's base. The final addition gave a slight contrast for its notable blue tint compared to the gray shale that formed the rest of the pile.
"It's not ideal. Devoted talismans blessed by a priest would be better, but it's what we have." Mom rose, dusting her claws off. I stepped a bit closer, still watching the flag while I clutched my own basket. "Alright, Gwen, repeat after me."
She bowed her head. "Rest well, unknown friend. May you find peace as you venture through the Dark Paths once more." Her words were difficult to follow, far more grammatically complex than I was used to. My ears perked fully up as I strained to listen and drink in the new grammar. I was able to get their meaning for the most part, but I think I missed some of the modifiers she used. It seemed like just in my old life, formal language could get complicated, if not even more so, kinda like that eastern language all those animated shows were in. German? I think it was German.
Following Mom's example, I bowed my head and recited her word for word with only a mild butchery of the finer grammar used. We held a moment of silence as we stood around before slowly leaving the final resting point. I fell in close to Mom as we walked, our feet crunching in the gravel rich soil along the way.
"When people die, Kitten, they enter the Dark Paths," Mom said, stroking my hair from the tip of my head to my ears. Under other circumstances, I might have purred, but it wasn't right for what we were doing, so I simply took comfort in her touch.
"You don't need to know the specifics just yet but think of them as a place beneath the realm, kind of like a…a reverse mirror of our world, a labyrinth of unseen places and people's memories. Before you ask, no, you can't dig there," Mom said with a wry little smile before her tone became serious once more. "Everyone enters the Dark Paths, and everyone will one day leave the Dark Paths. Even you and I were there, once upon a time," Mom said with an odd, bitter little smile.
"I was?" I asked as my thoughts raced. Was this some form of reincarnation? Was it real, or just her beliefs? Life in the old world suggested a lot, and I really do mean
a lot, of potential beliefs, but the mere fact that I remembered an old life suggested the possibilities were out there. Plus, I knew beings like Mr. Muscles existed given I was here.
Regardless, I couldn't know; not right now at least.
"I said everyone, didn't I?" Mom said with a touch of snark to her words. "One day, hopefully when you're much, much older and after a full life, you will go there too and make your way out again to be reborn once more. Death doesn't have to be a bad thing, Kitten. Sometimes, it's just a chance for new beginnings."
Mom trailed off, looking back at the grave. "Sometimes, though, people can get confused, lost even, maybe even leave the Dark Paths before they're ready. That's why everyone deserves a proper burial, so that they can always have a beacon to get their bearings." Mom stared off into the distance with a familiar look I knew. She was seeing things I'd never known, people I
couldn't know, but had been her whole world. Her gaze finally came back to me as she focused on our environment.
I hummed and followed her gaze. "So many," I said, softly.
The grave marker we'd made was only the latest of many. Graves surrounded us in rough rows, filling this section of the old fort. Every grave was slightly different and built by painstaking hand. Each had a bit of cloth tied onto the marker stake. Most had green cloth, a few had blue. Some were significantly older than the others and the cloth no longer blew in the wind but hung stiffly to their stakes, the elements having taken their toll.
I knew Mom had dug most one of them despite how horrible the soil was. I'd only seen them long after burial. I'd tried digging at one point in another part of the island and exhausted myself in short order because it was so rocky.
Yet, Mom had dug without complaint with a collapsible shovel.
I gripped Mom's hand tightly as we stood, observing the graves.
Once, when I was supposed to be napping, I counted the graves. Fortunately, basic math skills hadn't forsaken me, and I'd come to 98. In some sense, the number seemed mundane. In others, it felt unreal, but I knew they were here and close enough to touch.
99 graves were placed here long, long after the fort had been built and abandoned. I knew none of them. Today, Mom had added one more to that number.
Mom rarely talked about the graves, or what had happened to
cause them, yet I knew it had to affect her. I wasn't just a sheltered little girl who would look at these without realizing something was wrong. Each and every single one of these graves represented someone Mom must have known. Yet, there was nothing I could do to help.
The pain Mom faced was deep inside her where I couldn't reach.
Mom squeezed my shoulder. "Indeed," she said sadly. We stayed quiet for a minute before Mom shook herself and hefted her basket. "Come, we have one more to see."
It didn't take long. At the very end of the rows laid one more grave, similar to all the others, except for the extra care given to it. The stake held a yellow ribbon like cloth tied to it. It was rough, like all the others, but care had been given to make it thinner and longer. Stylish, even, like something a child might wear in their hair. Piled in a bowl were dried purple wildflowers taken from the island's interior. It always surprised me to see them still here, but Mom had made the bowl deep to protect against the wind.
Mom smiled bitterly and reached into her basket to pull out two items: a small wreath of flowers, and an effigy made of twine bound twigs and a stick. Both looked so small in her hands. Despite being understandably rough, both were lovingly made.
"Hi, Celia. It's been a little while, hasn't it, baby-girl? We brought you a few things." Mom first gently laid the effigy down to lean against the stake in a recess between it and the rocks. Then, she slid the wreath down over the stake.
"I know your journey's a long way from its end, but hopefully you can play with these along the way, you know? Least I can do for you," Mom said. Her voice didn't break but sounded like she wanted to. Bitterness, sadness, and more infused her tone.
I tried to think of something to say. I failed. Instead, I stared as the breeze slightly shook the wreath's purple flowers. It wouldn't last long out in the elements, but I think Mom knew that.
When I first woke up here and realized I'd been reincarnated, I'd assumed I'd been Mom's only child. After all, I'd had no other reason to think there were others. It got a bit weird when Mom was the only person I ever saw in the nursery, but that could be a culture thing. "Only the mother may see her child in its first year" or something along those lines, I had thought. I had nothing to base that thought on, but it sounded reasonable at the time.
Then I was brought outside to see the sun and feel grass for the first time and immediately saw the graves.
I liked to think I wasn't stupid. Impulsive, perhaps, prone to sticking my foot not so much as in my mouth but as jamming it down my throat, but I could put two and two together.
Mom was the last, a remnant. I'd had a sister, once upon a time. I'd survived. Celia hadn't. My sister, my very own twin in this world, hadn't made it even a month according to Mom.
"My little miracle," she sometimes called me. I'd been sick too, apparently, in those first days after being born. I'd survived. Celia didn't.
I felt as if unraveling that feeling born from this realization would take a lifetime. Yet, I think the worst part was that I didn't feel grief like Mom did.
I wanted to. God, gods, Mr. Muscles, whatever higher being was out there,
I wanted to. I wanted to be in tune with Mom, to feel as she did.
I knew Mom cried at night when she thought I was asleep. I knew she got faraway looks when we passed the markers or sometimes lost herself looking out over the horizon in quiet moments. Yet, even with my own sister's grave, I struggled to feel as she did.
Mom could recite names for each of the graves. Sometimes, she'd step in front of a grave to adjust a marker and softly say a name, "Iskan, Conor, Aoife," and so many more. She'd known everyone, an entire crew.
She'd known so many people, or at least, enough to make even my previous life's social circles feel pitifully small. Yet, I just didn't. The only person I knew in this world was my Mom and, only just recently, Sandy, although it would be a stretch to say I knew her. Even my sister was an abstract, not terribly different from saying "I have in the past century had at least one dead ancestor".
Ever since I could walk, Mom would at times take me out here to this part of the fort. Mom liked coming out here, even if she didn't talk much about the others. Sometimes, we would sit near Celia's grave, and she would talk about her old hometown, the crystal lake with fish as wide as an arm span, the glittering woods, and endless misty rains.
I'd come to realize being out here wasn't for me. I could see the loss, but it was a phantom feeling, almost like realizing I had a chance to make a friend but the chance is gone now. Sad, but my heart shrugged it off without difficulty like a thin shroud. Instead, I hurt for Mom and hated how I couldn't do anything to make her feel better.
I couldn't feel for everyone, not in a true sense, at least. Yet, my mom did, and that's why I made the effort. "Here you go, Celia. I hope you like it," I said, quietly.
I fumbled my offering out of my basket. It was a necklace. Rough twine threaded through vibrant clam shells on a string. Most clam shells weren't very pretty, but some, once in a while, were almost pearlescent. This necklace represented a year of gathering as I only found a few pretty shells every now and then buried deep in the sand.
I put the necklace at the base of the grave's stake with a small tinkle of rainbow shells.
Mom's breath hitched. I stood back up but otherwise remained morosely tranquil. I found myself not so much held as clutched to her side with a desperate strength. I did nothing but lean into her hold as she held me to her side and silently shook in the fading twilight.
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If you've paid to read this anywhere outside of Patreon, SubscribeStar, or Ko-Fi, then you've been scammed and someone is ripping you off as it is stolen.
If you're reading this on any other site than RoyalRoad, SufficientVelocity,Spacebattles, QuestionableQuesting, MZNovel, Wattpad, or Scribblehub or it's by anyone other than HiddenMaster, it's been plagiarized and stolen.
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Man, this one took a while. Entire time I was writing all of these more emotionally tense and melancholy scenes like the ending to
LOTR: Return of the King was playing on loop rent free in my head and not in a good way.
From fairly early on in Catgirl Isekai, I'd intended Gwen and Eliza to be survivors of a shipwreck, and happenstance to have decided their survival more than anything else. Gwen could just as easily have taken her sister's place, and that sort of thing just gets to me.
Not only the potential for the end to one's life so unexpectedly, but the idea of having someone so close, someone who by all rights should have been one of the pinnacle figures in your life, but losing them before you'd ever met them…
It's like knowing with near certainty when joining up with a group that an old member, someone who died before you ever got to meet with them, could've been a best friend.
Well, the premise both intrigues and saddens me, and likely made it onto the page.
Also I had art commissioned of this chapter! One of my favorite pieces I've ever commissioned, frankly, and by the wonderful
YoruAlice.
Obligatory author plug because I'd love to write more but society sadly says I need monies to keep living (and support my growing addiction to commissioning catgirl art)
Support me on
Patreon,
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Subscribe Star. Check them advance chapters uploaded every weekend, too. Or check out my
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