Garden

Sasha's eyes flicked open.
The room around her had given way to a new landscape of darkness. A deep, ocean-green floor stretched endlessly out from her into heavy, swirling mists. Unrelenting. Oppressive. All-consuming. Still, something prodded at her mind that she wasn't alone.
Taking a deep breath, she strode forward through the darkness, approaching the mists. Yet, the border of her vision didn't retreat away from her as she would expect from a fog. Whatever this was, it seemed more like a wall than an enveloping cloud. It only took a few more steps for her to be within reach of the wall and confirm that feeling. Her hand slipped against the surface, cold and damp, almost as if it was the surface of a pool. Regardless, she wouldn't find answers here.
Sasha pushed through the mist.
The view in front of her cleared, the mist dissipating and revealing a new scene. The darkness shifted to an equally oppressive field of glinting glass. Spears of light reflected off the surface of the glassland up into her eyes. A sight Sasha had seen plenty of times before, yet still, one she had never quite gotten used to.
Blinking and squinting her eyes a few times, she adjusted to the sunlight, taking in her surroundings. She was on one of the glasslands, that much was sure, but beyond that... Nothing around her indicated a specific colony. Yet something felt familiar about the place.
Frowning, Sasha picked a direction and started walking. The fields of grass she had found herself on were relatively flat, not much elevation change beyond mild rolling hills. Yet something tugged her this way, rather than any of the others. Or perhaps it was just random chance? Yet, a moment of continued walking seemed to confirm the former. In front of her, kneeling on the ground, was a woman.
"Hey!" Sasha called out, and the woman turned, looking around. Yet, whoever she was, she didn't seem to notice Sasha. "Who are you?" Sasha called out again, and the woman still seemed to stare right through her. Squinting, Sasha made out a frown on the person's face. A face framed by pale blonde hair and holding a pair of deep brown eyes. A face she very much recognized.
"Mom?" Sprinting forward, Sasha closed the distance to the woman, sliding onto her own knees. She reached out to place a hand on her mom's shoulder, only to find her hand pass straight through, as if she was a ghost. Her mom started crying, turning back forward and hanging her head over a small altar to her family she had made in the glass, containing images of Sasha, Viktoriya, even their father.
What was this? A memory? Yet this wasn't a scene Sasha knew. Sasha knew now she was on Biko, at the site of her former home, where her mother's garden had stood. But she had never gone back after the glassing, let alone seen her mom there. And if this was a memory of such a visit, surely her mother would have responded when Sasha had called out. She had seemed to have heard the words, but had reacted as if the source were invisible.
Before Sasha could come to a conclusion, the scene changed. She was still in the same place—the altar still on the ground in front of her—yet she was standing once again and the woman in front of her seemed older. Despite this, a close look past the slight wrinkles and streaks of silver in the blonde hair revealed she was still looking at her mother, once more crying quietly amongst the glass.
"Mom..." Sasha spoke out again, only the slightest flinch indicating her mother had heard. She didn't know what to say—each word she tried catching in her throat—until she let out one phrase as barely a whisper. "...I love you."
The scene changed again, then again. Each time, Sasha saw the same woman, older still, kneeling over an altar amongst the glass, crying. Each time, she tried to speak, managing only a handful of words before falling silent herself. Finally, she found herself standing in what she knew to be one last vision.
The woman in front of her was barely recognizable as her mother by this point, but Sasha knew it still was. She was grey and wrinkled, frail and thin. Despite this, she kneeled all the same, crying over the altar. Sasha needed to say something, more than she ever had before.
"Mom... I love you. I always have. I promise you, I will find you. Wherever you are. I'm... sorry I ever gave up on you."
As the last words left her lips, Sasha saw—for the first time of all of these visions—her mother smile. The old woman turned to face the sun—propping herself up against a chunk of glass big enough to support her—and closed her eyes.
Sasha didn't know how long she had been staring when she heard a noise behind her.
Sasha turned around at the sound, snapping out of her focus on the body in front of her. She saw a single figure approaching, an empty left sleeve hanging by its side, but all other features dark and shadowed. Sasha squinted, trying to make out more detail, and just as she felt she was about to make out who it was, the vision vanished.
Snapping her eyes open, Sasha sat up in her bedroll with a gasp. Looking around, she found herself once more on the cold floor of an imposing Forerunner facility, her hand grasping the necklace around her throat. A pale blue glow and gentle hum still propagated through the air from the console to her left. Standing up, she wiped her eyes clear of her own tears, and nudged the shoulder of the man beside her, waking him up.
"We have to leave this place..."
Category:The Weekly