Where was she? The details almost didn't seem to matter in the slow swirling storm of thought and focus that enthralled her in these depths. She was..... in her mother's lab wasn't she? She knew that much, of all the very few things that deterred her hurried, frantic thoughts amidst the soft spark of magic that crackled from the device in front of her. This was bad, bad enough that she was in a bit of a panic. So close... so very close! It had been so long that feeling the hum of a machine put her in a thrilled state, even as she smoothed her fingers along the surface of the device, one whose ultimate design eluded her, STILL it was ....SOMETHING! Something that WORKED. Something that gave her ANYTHING! A smooth vibration buzzed through her body, as a reading that she KNEW her mother had some method behind gently made her skin prickle as she frantically tried to find its operating mechanism. IT was doing something, something IMPORTANT! She KNEW it was! WHAT exactly she had even been doing when it had suddenly kicked to life she hadn't the foggiest idea. Was she ... relaxing? Sleeping? Did it even matter?! Did the small chips in her nails and the blood running down her knuckles matter?

No. No it didn't.

That's why her fingers ran so frantically along the strings as they hummed and kicked her digits away from their resonance. As her eyes darted to a display that had some strange alien significance to it. One she could SWEAR she could almost grasp. "What does it mean? I ..I don't... WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!" She hissed urgently. Out loud? It was so very hard to tell. Everything was hard to discern in the panic she operated under. She was so very desperate to find SOME understanding before the instrument died back down, before it's intenral mana resources faded to nothing like so many before it. And then, even as she saw a string gently saw through her nail, and she JERKED her hand back at the sight of it. She suddenly lost her grip on the situation. So very abruptly, it all felt so ...abstract. There was no pain, and her brain kicked itself, suddenly sensing the imperfection in the fabric of this notion, her world suddenly falling out from under her. No, no this wasn't real. BUT THAT DIDN'T MATTER!



She almost fell out of bed from the force with which she jolted upright from her nightmare. Sweat beading on her skin as she screamed, eyes wide as she suddenly grabbed the frame of her bed and panted, eyes wide, suddenly so very alert, her eyes darting around int he fading vestiges of the dream that had shocked her awake. She suddenly brought her fingers to her own sight, rapidly looking them over, to make sure there was no damage to them, and then just as quickly as her concern for her well-being was sated, she suddenly bolted out of bed and suddenly barged into the very next room, fumbling about for the light before it suddenly snapped on, a little thin cylinder crackled before a candle within lit up and she panted as she started to wade her way through the room full of dead instruments. Hurrying, desperate to search for it before the fading memory of the dream fdully left her. It took several long minutes before she finally slowed to a panting stop, her eyes wide and her body shaking as ... like so many times before. She realized that the insrument in her dream didn't exist in the lab.

Presently.

Even as her heart slowed to a stop, and she slumped to the wall, wiping the sweat from her brow, she still felt ....dissonant. The details felt so crisp, even as the details of the actual dream's flow of events faded out of her mind. the instrument itself.....she could remember so clearly. It was a resaonating mtrix of some kind. One that seemed so very much like the several that were in herm other's workshop. Series of ...bells.....pipes....strings. Things that produced soft....subtle... even inaudible strings of noises that seemed to make certain objects vibrate in tune. One of them she had even discoverd, slowly tuned itself to resonate with whatever was closest to its apperatus. Even if perhaps she had no idea what the display readout meant, she knew they were special. Important. They did SOMETHING she couldn't understand.

She sighed softly, fatigue taking its toll on her as she suddenly realized how late it probably was. She slowly sat herself upright and rubbed at her eyes, a slow, steady breath escaping her as she took stock, realized her somewhat frantic state, and slumped into the adjacent room to try and grab herself something to sip. Tea felt like the appropriate beverage to help calmher shaking heart, and as she warmed the water, and that so-familiar hiss of the water coming to a boil reached her ears, she was able to .... hone her thoughts. Another crazed dream she didn't know how to feel about. She was having them so often now. Glimpses of a panicked state, where she was frantically working on..... something. Something important. Something of her mother's. And of course, even now, as she began to slowly prepare the tea in the slow, meticulous process of brewing, she couldn't help but feel torn. On one hand, this could simply be a manifestation of her frustrations; Her own struggles with the instruments in her mother's lab having a gaff at her as her own mind tried even in it's rest to work out the mysteries of the lab itself. Or ...... it was some residual memory from.... before. Before her mother had dissappeared, from her life, and seemingly the memories of every other living person in this damn forest.

It was only the slow, practiced, well-honed motions of making her tea that kept her from shaking. She ....felt. Maybe she wasn't giving herself enough credit, but the practiced motions FELT like they were keeping her together as she finally produced a drink to calm herself, and slowly sank into a seat as she let her thoughts stew in her skull. A process that consumed her right up until she heard it. In the silent smothering void that was her own self-enthralled state of deep thought, she was suddenly jarred as she heard ... SOMETHING jolt from whatever position it'd been in. Her head jerking up, eyes lighting up in shock as she saw the faintest slither of a long appendage before whatever it was suddenly SHOT across the room and out of sight! She was so surprised that she didn't even think about her tea as she suddenly stood up as fast as she could and stared at where that THING bhad been. Spilling a solid third of her cup along the floor as she was so suddenly on high alert. Was something snooping around her mother's lab?

With a sudden urgency, she found herself striding across the room, racing after where she'd seen the creater dart off. Sudden insufferable, HEART-ripping curiosity suddenly welling up inside of her. What WAS that? She had to know what it was, she NEEDED to know what that thing was. Heedless of any danger, she was almost in a full sprint now as she sped across the lab and then came to a full run into the next room as her eyes darted around. She could FEEL it. Her senses tickling as she felt the faintest glimmer of magic from the thing and she barged into the other room, the..... balcony? That's right this let outside, and in the dark of the night she suddenly spotted it. A long, slim creature that was crawling down he side of the house, it's little head zipping, staring at her suddenly as it froze, waiting to see what had followed it. She stared at it. It noticed her staring. And suddenly it turned and bolted! Making a break for safety!

Without even thinking, Shizu vaulted over the edge of the small little balcony, dropping a mere ten feet and landing a bit heavily, but still managing to keep her feet under her as she stumbled only half a step, before racing after the little thing as it attempted to race down the streets, streets that she had to remind herself were dangerous, not that she cared in that moment. Her eyes fixated on the fleeing creature as she raced down the streets in the dead of night, and saw the form of that creature slowly coming closer and closer as she gained on it. Spurred by that sudden frantic need to catch it. The long, slim body of the creature began to sway and veer sharply, zigzagging erratically as it tried so incredibly desperately not to be caught. And yet Shizu never lost track of it, her senses easily keeping a hold of it's mana signature as she bolted after it, her body moving with the jerks and shifts of it's body until at long last she launched herself forward, landing palms-first onto the creature before the both of them SLAMMEd into the ground in a rolling tumble. She was panting just a bit as she DUG her fingers into it's leathery body, ignoring the scuffing of her outfit as she was suddenly wrestling with the creature. And for just a moment, as she wrestled with it, she found herself smiling, elated, suddenly excited as she found herself thinking: It knows something. The thought, which had been sunk into her subconscious ever since she'd SEEN the thing suddenly bolting away from her, suddenly coming to her attention.

In that moment, she felt claws scrape against her. Her eyes widening as her mana skin absorbed the attack, but she remained surprised no less as her eyes slowly widened, and she fell back just a bit as the creature in her grasp suddenly started to flail about and lash with the little hooked claws it had! She leaned back, gripping it's body, trying to force it's limbs against it's body. This close, she could see what it was. A monitor of sorts. Some sort of reptile that ...fed on mana? Her brain tried to, in those frenzied struggling moments, derive why she could sense a mana signature from this thing. Before it's tail wound around her bicep and suddenly squeezed, making her wince just a little before she GRUNTED! She twisted, and slammed the thing's body into the nearest wall, stumbling just a little as the both of them crumpled into a squirming heap to the side of the street, refusing to relinquish her hold on the beast as she struggled with it.

At long last, in it's frantic attempts to shake Shizu free, the beast managed to latch it's maw around her wrist and bite down, and though her mana skin accepted the burden of injury, the sudden force and pressure of the move suddenly JARRED her enough to let go of it's body, inhaling sharply in a gasp as the thing suddenly unlatched from her body and then bolted off as though it's life depended on it, leaving Shizu in a bit of a surprised daze as she found herself panting, blinking owlishly as she looked after the retreating creature and let her mind settle itself. Her brain slowly tuning in on what had just happened. It was one of those lizards... not exactly common, but they WERE littered around and had popped up here and there ever since the Forest had ....grown ....in popularity. But they were, despite their tendency to settle on spots where mana could be found, mundane creatures. And she realized that she had, in her sleepless zoning out .... chased the equivalent of a common iguana out into the streets because her tired mind had thought that it was something important from her mother's research. All in all, it had likely been drawn to the dying mana in the depths of the instruments that littered the lab. As she slowly let her brain settle on her ....foolish little kneejerk reaction, there was a slow, sinking weight in her chest as she found herself.... feeling bad.

She could almost hear her mother now. 'Shizu, dear. You can't let your emotions get the better of you. Ours is a confusing world, you must always watch it objectively, and with respect. Or you'll find yourself chasing your own tail off a cliff.' Her mother had always been of the mind to think first and then act later, and she could only imagine the instructive.... and yet comforting words that the woman might have offered her. And in that thought.... a soft.....rueful smile crossed her lips as she slowly picked herself up off the ground... and started to walk back home. Feeling.... silly. And more than anything.... missing her mother.

---

The sight of the traveller's bag packed with her things almost felt....wrong. And as she started walking, the weight as well was something that made her a bit uneasy, even as she slipped out of the reaches of the forest she'd grown up in. Mingling in with the numerous others that came in and out of the forest, and as she headed for the border of the clover kingdom, she couldn't help but feel a heaviness in her chest as she walked, almost zombie-like in her focused trudge as her thoughts buzzed in a swarm through her mind. She'd suffered no scrapes or real injury in the little.....incident the previous night. Only her pride had suffered any lasting damage, but that was hidden easily enough. But it was enough to jar her into a ....somewhat fresh... somewhat old... line of thinking. She needed to get out. In the years following that strange shattering, the sudden dissappearane of her mother. She had felt that staying behind and rummaging through her mother's belongings was the least she could do. It was her home for so much of her life, and it had been a thing that she had tended to, under her mother's guidance, for longer than she could remember. But all the same, finding herself wrestling with some lizard in the dead of night was ... something of a wakeup call. She couldn't let that lab consume her. Unharmed or not, in that moment, she KNEW that her Mother would have been disturbed by the sight of her. Thrashing with dreams of her obsession with those foreign instruments. Culminating into a sleep-deprived chase through the dangerous streets of the forest, only to find herself sitting near an alley, looking dazed and silly.

What had beguin as simply mourning her mother, and trying to find clues as to the woman's disappearance.... had slowly begun to take over her life. And so..... so very suddenly she had been struck by the almost panicked realization that she could waste her entire life in that dusty lab. Trying desperately keep those instruments alive with her mana, wasting the rest of her days trying to put together a puzzle she had nowhere near enough knowledge or know-how to stitch together. And what was perhaos the most upsetting thought in her mind, when she'd finally fallen asleep, gotten some rest, woken up and started her day; was that the notion of spending the rest of her life chasing her missing mother like some ratty hermit had not upset her as much as it should have. The fact that it felt so ....easy to push away those concerns. To let her emotions, fears, and uncertainties just be shoved away in the most illogical of ways, was what had suddenly spurned her on. What had driven her to pack her things on the spot, and to start putting some distance between her and her old home. Her eyes set straight ahead, fixed in the direction of the Clover Kingdom as she felt the gentle echoing pangs of worry in her heart.

Because in those soft, fleeting thumps in her chest lie a gentle little fear. She needed to live. She needed a life. In the clarity of a rested state of mind, she was beginning to realize just what sort of sad life she had been slipping into, and even more than that she worried that even as she made her way to the place so often called the 'common' region, toward a place that she felt held not only promise, but protection from the pit of obsession that she had suddenly realized she was drowning in. She couldn't help but wonder if this was going to help. In this very moment, the notion of turning back and heading RIGHT back to that small, dusty old lab was not even an urge. Her fear at present eclipsing the idea almost entirely. But as she walked, as briskly as her feet could stand, she couldn't help but ....worry. Worry that she would be tempted in the near future. To go back to that place, for any mundane old reason, and simply never leave it again. Because she'd already spent years of her life there. She hadn't realized just how long it had been, how long her fixation had KEPT her there. She was already an adult, a woman, her life was supposed to be charging into it's first chapters with REAL significance, and it was only now that she had suddenly been able to shock herself into leaving that place.

She smiled to herself, in some small way proud of herself for having finally shaken the nerves out of her body, and ACTUALLY managed to leave the place. The fact that she had even managed her way out the door was something that impressed her, and as she walked, dead-set on her destination, there was something of a glee in the sudden ....freedom that she felt. The sudden exhilaration that she didn't know what was ahead of her. That she was breaking herself out of something that had been gripping her for so long. But that smile was not nearly as deep as she could have wished. As she could have hoped. And even as she looked over her shoulder, and saw the forest vanishing over the horizon like the fading wave of someone bidding her farewell, she couldn't help but feel the tiniest tingle of worry in her heart. That the dingy little lab would call to her once again. That she'd be tempted back there, maybe with new information, with new ....experience. That she might be lured into once again trying to make sense of those instruments and varied items. And that the lab would devour even more of her young life.

Just as quickly, she turned back around and focused on the road infront of her. A nervous smile on her face, at least until she shook the thoughts free and put on what she hoped was a bright, warm smile. There wasn't ACTUALLY anyone back there, and so the ....sentiment of a farewell remained entirely within her thoughts rather than on her lips. But all the same....the thought came to her, and she spoke silently to what she was leaving behind.

Goodbye Mom. Wish me luck.