Beryl

After I showed Hope to her room, and making sure she entered, I turned around and headed to the kitchen to grab my fan. With it in arms, I could reopen the door to the garden, it's been ages since I saw Eta again, and not to mention the others.

Hope

I see Beryl, I see you, and you're out of milk. What's that, you're not going to the fridge? What are you doing? Beryl walks back to the arch, and unravels whatever they're holding. I can see now that it's their fan. They wave it towards the arch and I see vines slowly crumble the pillars to reveal a meadow of flowers. That's one way to make an entrance.

I follow them from my room, and I make sure they can't see that I'm behind them. Along the way, I grab a small bag of chips from the kitchen counter. I slide through the curtain of roses as they slowly start to cover the entrance. Pretending I'm a spy, I roll behind a hedge and hit my head on it's stump. I silently whine, and look through the gaps of the hedge. Beryl is walking up a long path, which leads to a weird temple looking building. From spy, to ninja, I sneakily, and very stealthily hit everything as I try to make my way towards them.

Beryl

I make my way up the steps of the sanctuary, making sure I don't hit any of the flowers along the way, it's a very tight staircase. I step on one of the stairs wrong, and the staircase crumbles beneath me. Luckily, with my quick skill and haste, I take out my fan, and land slowly. I start reassembling the bricks in place. It was all muscle memory from this point on. I decide to keep time as slow as possible as I make my way up to the top, less chance of anyone noticing I was missing. Absent-mindedly, I reach the top of the staircase, into the weathered aviary. I immediately make my way to the middle, my most prized flower.

She was waiting there for me, singing her song like always.

"It's been a while, Eta, hasn't it?"

"Go away."

"Eta, but I'm here now."

"Yes, but you weren't before, were you?"

"Eta come on, I was trying to protect this world for you."

"Who are you talking to?"

Suddenly, it's almost comical, really, I could feel the aviary slowly turn from a bright green to a rusty orange-brown.

"Beryl, nobody's here but me." Hope finished her sentence.

Eta's dead. She died a long time ago, I wasn't talking to her, that wasn't her, that was me missing her, I'm never going to get her back I'm not going to-

"Why are you crying?"

I didn't realize that tears were streaming down my face until Hope pointed it out. It slowly burned as it dripped to my chin.

"Berry, come on, tell me what's wrong!"

I couldn't muster words, so, instead, I reached out my arms for a hug. Hope complied, and hugged me.

"It's been hard, since she died."

"Since who died?"

"Her name was Eta."

After explaining the early parts of my life to Hope, she began understanding more and more about me, as if I'd been keeping a large part of me from her. I explained that I hear Eta sometimes, and that I thought something messed up my psyche that day.

"Who else do you hear?"

Oh boy.

"Well, there's a lot you see, some of them are literally built into me and others..." You've heard this part of the story before, haven't you? Or are you skipping pages.

I finished explaining all the parts of me to her, and I felt lighter. She nodded and tried to be as respectful as possible. I look around, this place hasn't been taken care of that well, stuff is still green, but it's withering, too.

    "So did you want to hear one of the voices?"