A girl was floating around in a sea of darkness that rivaled the deepest reaches of space. Filled with the trauma of her past, she had to constantly endure a life of pain. It was something of a nightly ritual she took on for herself to protect the person she cared about the most. However, unlike her outer self for which she had endured such hellish torture, the girl and the one she cared for looked nothing alike.  

The girl wandering aimlessly in a black vacuum had pink hair, blue eyes, pink cat ears, and a flashy pink tail. She was like Carrie, except not stained with crimson.

“How did she break through the exterior?” the pink cat girl murmured to herself. “I need to know. I must know... Williana!”  

Shouting at nothing but the great void filled with pain and hurt, a small pocket of space next to her glowed a deep black; blacker than even nothing and exploded into a lavender light that seemed to stretch for kilometers. The girl stared at its brilliance. When the light finally faded from the watcher’s blue irises, she saw a single person, who was reminiscent of the only one who had managed to get close.   

“Williana, I need to know how you did it,” the girl asked. Her pink tail curled around her body, which used to be naked. However, when the explosion occurred, her body became enveloped in a silken white robe that was a mother’s last bit of love for her daughter.  

“Carrie, it’s good to see you,” Williana said. “Wait, why am I a fairy?” she asked as she parted her lavender hair. Her one blue eye confusingly blinked.  

It was an excellent question, one that Carrie wasted no time in answering with a snide remark.

“You should know the answer to that. We’re in the depths of Carrie’s mind. I’m the only thing standing between her surviving and killing herself. You’re a fairy because that’s what I wanted you to be. When I said your name, the power I have over this area took Carrie’s memories and constructed you from it. And my name isn’t Carrie. It’s Vali.” 

“Vali?” Out of everything Williana heard, she had a problem with the name.  

“Don’t make me repeat myself. And wipe that grin off your face,” Carrie—Vali—said in annoyance.  

“Sorry! No can do!” Williana buzzed her wings and flew over to Vali’s face. Her tiny body, adorned with a simple robe similar to the one Vali wore, snugly fit her fairy-like body. “I know why I’m here. You know why I’m here. After all, you summoned me here. Here. Here. Here. I’m right here, and I won’t be leaving until morning. You're stuck with me until the sun comes up.” Williana laughed, prompting Vali to grab the tiny pest in a tight grip.  

“Listen here, Williana, I want to know how you managed to break through the protection I created!” Vali shouted.  

“Sorry, but if you want to know that, you need to start talking.” Williana snapped her fingers, vanishing into a lavender-colored mist. A moment later, she appeared just to the right of Vali’s clenched fist.

“Fine,” Vali muttered. Williana flew to her head and lightly patted it.  

“Come on, it won’t be too bad. After all, you experience this pain every night, don’t you? It should be easier to handle now that I’m here. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to ask the right questions to speed this along.” 

Vali touched a hand to her tail with one hand and snapped her fingers with the other. In that instant, a powerful explosion filled all of Carrie's consciousness with pure light that alternated colors. The mind was massive, almost never-ending with how much information it could process. Its only limit was its user's lifespan. And in the world of the mind, anything--even the impossible-- was possible.

“Vali, what’s this?” Williana asked. She stared at an odd structure when the flashing light had finally disappeared. Williana falsely wondered about the building's true meaning. It was oddly shaped, but it had a door and roof--the telltale signs of a house.

“That’s a museum. What better way to get it done than act like my whole life is one big museum display for people to gawk at. Other than me, and I suppose you because I made you, there is not a single person in the world who knows Carrie’s origins.” 

“Carrie? Your name is Vali, right? And you’re the same as the girl in the real world?” Williana asked such innocent questions with the ignorance of a child.  

“I see you’re taking your role literally. Fine, if you’re going all out with this, then I will too! I have to know how you broke the defenses I made for Carrie."

Vali floated towards the only door she saw with Williana in tow. When her hand reached out, she discovered it shook with such fright and fear.  

Why am I shaking? I came to terms with what happened. Is it because I have to speak about it to Williana? She already knows what happened because I made her. She’s a simple, imaginative device whose sole purpose is to help me understand what happened-- no, that isn't it. How can she help me understand it when I already understand it...? Why is she here...? Why did I make her...? So why— 

“Thinking about questions you know the answer to is only going to make the anticipation much worse,” Williana got on all fours while balancing on Vali’s robed-covered shoulders and whispered into her ear.  

 “Just shut up,” Vali muttered in irritation. 

Shaking head after stopping once more, she lashed out with the force of 1,000 winds and ripped the wooden door away.  

Williana commented that she didn’t have to do that. “You could’ve willed it away.” 

Vali remained quiet and flew through the threshold until her feet touched the hardwood floors. The walls were made from the same material, but if she wished it to be ceramic or tile, it was only a thought away. Following the only hallway before her, she eventually came to a spot that held two objects: an empty picture frame and a single chair.  

“Hurry up, sit down, and start talking,” Williana ordered. Like a freeloader, she lazily relaxed on on Vali’s shoulders. The energy to fight and argue against Williana didn’t come to Vali. She walked with heavy steps to cover the remaining ten paces that stood between her and pain. With each stomp, part of the long hallway Vali trekked through fell away, choosing to be swallowed by the vastness of her mind.  

With only a single step standing between her and remembrance, the room rattled like a building caught in an earthquake. A part of Vali wanted everything to collapse when she took the final step. Another part wanted both her and Carrie to cease from existing. And yet a third part wanted none of that, and everything, to happen at once.  

But the final part of Vali's mind-- the one that victoriously emerged-- pushed through the impending discomfort and claimed the single white chair for her own. For a single instance, the shaking stopped, and the fear in Vali’s heart became replaced by joy.  

But then the dread came like an invading force a thousand strong. Her palms, sweaty. Her knees, weak. Her arms, heavy. Vomit threatened to spew from her throat like an overturned pot of raw spaghetti. Her two blue eyes wavered against the oppressive force that threatened to swallow her whole. 

I can do it! I can do it! I can’t do it! I can’t do it! I CAN’T DO IT— 

Vali had no choice but to put on a tough act. It was her punishment, after all.  

Thick tears grew fat and heavy in the corner of her eyes, and just when it seemed to consume her, a ferocious light in the form of a tiny fairy purified everything: the fear, the dread...the oppressiveness of her past... All of it was swept away like a leaf in a tornado.

“Vali, you aren’t alone anymore. I’m here. We can get through this together,” Williana said. Her tiny arms weren’t long enough to hug Vali’s body, so she had to settle for hugging the bridge of her nose.  

“Williana…” 

“Easy, we can start when you’re ready.” Williana kissed the spot she hugged and flew up to Vali’s head. The soft, pink forest of hair was fluffier than any blanket and smelled better than any flower. It was really something to get lost in.  

“Okay, I’m ready,” Vali said. She spoke with a voice that couldn’t have been stronger. “If explaining it all to you will allow me the chance to... Williana, I want to tell you the story... The story of a girl named Vali and how she turned—was forced— into becoming a girl who you know as Carrie.” 

With that sentence, filled with a fierce determination and wavering sport, spoke aloud, Vali and Williana stared in unison at the pitch-black picture frame. The frame itself was empty, holding nothing but the blackest void, but that changed when the framed abyss morphed, altered, and grew into an overhead painting of a village.

---

“Vali, tell me what I’m looking at,” Williana asked.  

With her front-row seat atop of her head, Vali answered. “You’re looking at the village I grew up in but from a bird’s-eye view. Or what I’m assuming to be a bird’s-eye view. That big tree in the middle was only a little sapling when the original founders started the village. The house in the far back with the metal gate was where I lived with the man who fathered me.” 

Williana took an unusual interest in the way Vali answered her question. More accurately, it was the simple word choice that struck the most. However, as a construct of Vali’s thoughts, Williana had all the answers. But her role was not one of an observer. She was here as an inquisitor. “Why did you use that word? Why not say he’s your father?” 

“Because I don’t consider him to be my father. And I know what your next question is, so I’ll answer it. He raped my mom—his daughter—my mother. He’s both my grandfather and my father, but he’s such a sack of shit that he doesn’t deserve to be called either,” Vali replied.  

“Did he father you or Carrie? Why do you call yourself that name?” Williana asked another question.  

“I’ll answer it, but I know it’s going to get confusing. Look, when I was born, that bastard gave me the name Vali. My mother couldn’t do anything about the name because she perished in childbirth. The one and only gift I ever received from her was this robe. She took her measurements from when she was a young adult and sewed these clothes to those specifications. But back to the name. Vali was my birth name, and Carrie was the name I chose after witnessing someone close to me dying.” Even Vali couldn’t help but silently gasp at how easily she revealed such information. If she really wanted to end the farce, then Vali had the power to do so. It only required a single thought, and Williana would be whisked away.

“You’re right! I am confused, but let’s go at a slow pace. We still have some time before the sun rises,” Williana calmly replied with a small lie. “But I do understand why you chose that terminology.” 

The little fairy turned to the picture frame and focused on the fountain standing a few meters away from the big house’s door. “It’s a pretty piece of art. The fountain, I mean,” she added on.  

“It is. Wait until I tell you about when it ran red.” 

“Very well.” 

“But I was born in that house. Specifically, there was a little nursery in the basement that shitty man kept me in until I was of age to start my duties as Verta’s Priestess.” 

Williana tapped her little knuckles against a pair of fluffy cat ears. “You need to explain. Be as detailed and descriptive as you want.” 

“My village stood on top of a flat mountain. The ‘walls,’ I guess, of the mountains, were steep. I have no doubt an experienced climber could make the trip up and down, but no one in the village could do that. There was a rope bridge, though. It stretched from the village’s outer exit to a flat ridge located some distance away. According to the man who fathered me, it was common for a passing storm to destroy it. In such a case, we had no way in or out, and it became almost impossible to leave.” 

“What does this—” 

“I’m getting to it!” Vali’s words silenced Williana. “The village stood for a few hundred years. Maybe it stood for a thousand years. I don’t know, and I don’t care anymore. I do know that there was a time, however, that the bridge took an extraordinarily long amount of time before it was repaired. During that stretch of time, a sinister darkness had enveloped the village, and every inhabitant learned of a false Goddess named Verta.  

“People are selfish. They vie for control whenever they have an opportunity. And in one such case, many, many years ago, a village chief had the chance to act out his fantasy. It was in the time in which it was impossible to leave the village by normal means. Unbeknownst to anyone else, the evil chief had gained the trust of a few close men and excavated a path from the top of the mountain to the very bottom. Suddenly, there was an escape route! Over the years, the number of secret tunnels expanded and grew until there were spots all over town. They were all very well-hidden, but the evil chief knew where all of them were.  

“That’s an important detail, and I’ll tell you why. Somewhere along the way, from the founder’s time to when the evil chief lived, knowledge of IDs and Gods and blessings weren’t a thing in the village. I’m sure you know that when a baby is born into this world... their ID first appears when their mother or father speaks a name for them. For a while, though, everyone in the village didn’t know what that meant. But the evil chief discovered it during one of his secret expeditions. He twisted the information during one village meeting and announced something to the people. He claimed that the Goddess Verta gave him a divine prophecy in which his child shall become the next priestess. The mysterious stone tablets were proof of that, he said.  

“The people were rightly suspicious of him, but they cowered against his might when he used a skill. I’m sure you’re asking how I know this, but he, and the various other chiefs, including the original founders, kept very detailed diary entries. I’ll get to that later, but he wrote that a ‘ball made from flowing light soared from my fingertips and illuminated the ever-growing darkness, giving me the right to be the Goddess's Messiah.’ 

“The people knew nothing of IDs and skills. They didn’t know that they could have done the same thing. In a way, they were like livestock who had no choice but to follow the alpha animal. The evil chief had unrivaled power, and since he claimed that the Goddess Verta, who I don’t think even exists as a Goddess who can give blessings, he was able to do unthinkable things in her name. It was the evil chief who started the tradition, and the village soon changed to suit his needs... But I was the one who ended it all. I only wish I knew how many innocent girls were forced to take on that damn role.” Finally, Vali’s explanation came to an end. She started with a voice full of passion and ended with a weak whimper. 

“But,” the Singi continued to speak as she stared at the picture of the village. Suddenly, before she could say anything else, the picture frame glowed black until it showed something different.  “I knew it was a matter of time before it showed that damn tub.” 

Williana leaned up and stared at the picture. Sure enough, she stared at a picture of a wooden washbasin that could function as a bathtub. But it wasn’t water that filled it.  

“One of the duties I had to perform was called purification. Every few days, the bucket became filled with the various liquids of every village inhabitant. To sum it up for you, I had to bathe in shit, piss, spit, vomit, sweat, and everything else a person produces.” Vali answered Williana’s unanswered question, but she didn’t stop speaking. It was as if a floodgate of words broke in her mind, and Vali wouldn’t stop talking-- she couldn’t stop explaining. She would speak and speak until there was nothing left.

“My earliest memories were of me happily bouncing along in that tub of filth. I was young... so very, very young. The man you see there in the picture standing beside the tub was my…you-know-who. His sweet words were laced with a poison that only affected me. ‘It’s your duty as Verta’s Priestess to purify the sins of our village. If they want to go to heaven, then you need to take on their darkness and cleanse it with the power of our Goddess.’ He told me that it was something only I could do. He even brought me out to meet the villagers I would be responsible for saving. If he had a shred of decency, he would have put a stop to the bullshit. You see, he was a descendent of the evil chief. That meant he knew the truth behind the ID, and he had chosen his closest and most loyal friends to share that knowledge with. Everyone else still believed they were a gift from Verta.

"He and his group had all the power, and if they wanted, they could have made everyone’s life horrible. To their credit, I guess... they didn’t do that. I wonder if...if...the knowledge that they could was enough. Even the evil chief said he only wanted total control of his subjects, and I guess that desire continued with his descendants. None of them even tried to fix the bridge...because it would mean people would leave and re-discover skills and the world for themselves... And the evil chief, and the shit-stain who fathered me, and the village elders in between just couldn't have that... They needed to be in control... They had to be at the top of the food chain... If I was born a man, I wonder... No, it's no use thinking like that.

“And that was my reality. For the first eight years, at least. I didn’t believe it was weird or gross at the time because it was the only thing I’ve known, but before I go too far, there’s something else. The man who fathered me became ecstatic when I was born. And the reason is clear as glass once I explain it.  

“The founder and first chief of the village was Human. Their partner was a Singi...like me. At some point, the number of Demi-Humans dwindled until the place consisted of only Humans. I don’t know the specifics, but I was the first Singi to be born in a long, long, long time. My fa—the man who fathered me knew what I was the second he saw my tail and ears. And like I said, no one else knew what a Singi was. When he announced my birth to the village, he took the opportunity to declare that I was special. He presented me like a prized pig and bragged that I was the very reincarnation of the Goddess Verta.  

“Every day, that man would tell me I was special. He petted my ears and softly rubbed my tail when he wanted to show affection. Ugh... It makes me sick to my fucking stomach.” Vali groaned and felt the need to vomit.

“Speaking of your features as a Singi, why are they pink? Carrie—the outside you—is all red except for her eyes,” Williana asked. Vali felt the fairy shift her weight as she rolled over to her stomach.  

“That’s going to have to wait until I get to the end of my story. Just stay quiet and listen,” Vali rudely remarked. “I first realized something was very wrong when I turned eight. The man who fathered me escorted me to the tub during one of my ‘purification’ sessions, but when he opened the door to the special room, I saw a naked man lying in the wooden tub. I turned to the one  I trusted the most and asked what I was supposed to do. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that my father sold me to that man. That shit stain took my virginity, and that fucker had the audacity to watch as I cried out. I shouted, ‘Papa, it hurts!! I don’t wanna do this!!’ but he told me it was my duty as Verta’s Priestess to purify the especially wretched with my own body. I grabbed onto the tub so hard I broke my fingers, and that bastard man slapped my hands away.  

“I knew then and there that something was wrong, but my little self didn’t know what. I only knew that it hurt. Pain is supposed to be a signal to stop doing what you’re doing, right? That man who fathered me didn’t see it that way. After the deed was done and the bastard had defiled me, the man who fathered me forced me to swallow a weird type of medicine. I didn’t want to, but he hurt me and forced it down my open mouth. It burned going down. He said it would increase my purification powers to fight off the sinful liquid that shit-stain injected in my privates.  

“I…I…I—” 

Williana stared at the picture of a wooden basin for far too long as the girl she sat on cried her eyes out.  

“Why does it hurt to talk about it?! I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, BUT I DO IT ANYWAYS!!!! WHYWHYWHYWHYWHY?!?!?!?!? Why can’t I just fucking bury it inside?!” Vali yelled. Her voice had regressed to that of a child, but her body remained the same. Standing up hastily, she grabbed the picture frame and tried to punch it, but it was intangible. Her efforts to destroy it only fueled her raging melancholic madness. The years of withholding such a hellish and harrowing anguish had finally caught up with her, and she vented it all out with a gut-wrenching scream.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”