snowyyland

It was nice at first.

Dark and comfortable; a change quite welcome from what had transpired before. Wherever it was he had found himself, it was far from the stage. Far from the commotion of the theatre.

In the darkness he reached out a hand, turning it back and forth in search of that familar line between purple and white— when it proved to be too difficult to see even the faintest outline, he let it fall limp. His eyes had never done well in the dark, though, they had not been made for it: long corridors with great windows lit by bright morning sun, balconies painted orange by the sunset, the intense, heated glare of stage lights… it was in those places that he belonged, among light and warmth and the company of others.

Here, though, it seemed to matter less. Nothing to look at, nothing to hear, nothing needing tending to: the moment of quiet respite that, in life, he had always secretly longed the most for. Perhaps the theatre had overheard him over the years, grumbling as he awoke, stomping downstairs towards yet another day’s beginning. Well, here you are, then, perhaps it had thought, now that his time was all up. All the sleep you could ever ask for. So he didn’t fight the exhaustion, didn’t struggle against its draw, but sank deep into it, collapsed in an unmoving heap of muscle against bone, and let his senses melt away in the dark.

What will become of me, he thought, maybe this is all it is, silent darkness for all eternity.

With a mind too aimless and thick with fog to dream, he turned his thoughts towards memories: In his final moments, the theatre had been saved, hadn’t it? No more crumbling ceilings or rotting floorboards. Safe and quiet. But the memory of what had followed that was blurry, fading away the harder he tried to recall it. There had been the stage, the light, that figure. That figure had been called Balan, just like him…

Another Balan. That thought stuck clearly in his mind, turning over and over again. A being made out of light and of his own positivity, with the same name, same voice, same crescent-smile shining in the dark. Someone more alike to me than anyone else in Wonderworld. He must have been up above, a lone figure among the aftermath, slowly making sense of a world that was brand new. Or, more hopefully, the cast had found him by now, had taken him gently into their care— with their help, and in time enough, surely he’d be just as capable a maestro as his predecessor. Perhaps that was just how it went: where one maestro ended their time, that of another began. He’ddone it by himself, after all. Maybe at the same time he’d first awoken, born out of a similar light some three-thousand years ago, another laid in the same space as he did now, wishing, just as he did, “Please, let him succeed even without my guidance.”

But still, how deeply he wished he were there to see it.

High above, far from the darkness where he lay, something chimed, much too real to be merely misheard, an odd recollection of life as his mind mixed and reconstructed his memories. Wake up,now, it called, ringing out again. This is far from the end.

A heart still beat beneath the hand that lied over his chest.

Wake up. Begin again.

Movement began slow, each muscle aching as it awoke from sleep at his command. Fingertips brushed over his face— skin, still warm, still living, it couldn’t have been too long yet. Just beneath his eye sat something cool and rigid to the touch, a single crystallized drop. Several more slid from his arm as it moved, clattering against the floor beneath him with each slight movement, and by the time he could sit himself up, with both legs swept over the bed’s edge, an ocean of hundreds had fallen from him, forming pools around his feet, the tiny, faintly-glittering remnants of a broken chrysalis.

The tune called out a final time as he finally rose. 

Time ticked again.

With legs still stiff and painful and eyes still barely adjusted, his first task was a mountainous one: ascending the stairs. Each slow step further brought forth a steady stream of late-afternoon sunlight that broke into a flood as he reached the top, emerging from the theatre’s often-neglected basement. The main lobby had been, for the most part, returned to its standard level of clutter: a few chairs still left untucked from beneath their tables, stray boxes pushed off to the sides, stuffed with odd assortments of damaged props and other decor. What could not be so easily fixed by the crew had seemingly been put back into place by the theatre itself, settling once again into still, perfect silence. The lobby, at this time of day, was not a place he visited often, nothing but a place in between one stage and another, existing only to be passed through. Bathed in the unfamiliar midday sun and absent of its usual early-morning and late-evening crowds, pulling a chair aside to stop and sit in it felt almost eerie. 

How hauntingly normal. He eyed an elegant photo frame propped up in one box, broken at one end with its glass covering reduced to a few shards left hanging at the edges. *But that night really did happen, didn’t it…

Any difference that had occurred seemed to lie in him, instead. They were far from the first change he had noticed, but now out of the dark, laid flat on the table, his full attention fixed itself on what had happened to his hands: gone from around his wrists were the usual crimson ruffles of his suit, replaced by smooth, plum-colored cuffs lined and swirled with tarnished gold. A bit plain for my tastes, but…

“…Lance?”

Slipping off a glove, he examined the skin on his hand beneath it with a relieved sigh— pale as could be with not a trace left of the deep-purple hue of the negativity’s spread, though his fingernails had grown into thin, sharp points. Well, it’s nothing that can’t be changed, so long as the negativity is—

“Lance!” A hurried clicking of hooves towards where he sat brought the pointed tip of a horn dangerously close to his downturned face, and when he flinched, Aster backed away, dipping into a quick bow in apology. The two shared a few seconds of an awkward stare— he, too, had changed: the once-rich purple streak of his tricolored mane had faded to a deep, stormy gray, though still sided by familar bright blue and lavender. Curious, Balan (surely he had misheard what it was that Aster had just called him) ran a hand through it. 

“Ah…” Aster’s head stayed low in shame, eyes to the floor. “The negativity affected all of the theatre that night, though I tried— we all tried to stop it, but—”

But I was too late.

“It’s alrigh—” He clasped his free hand over his mouth at the sound of the voice that emerged, still much too soft and high in tone to be that which he knew as his own. “I… I apologize for all that… happened that night.” The words dripped out as if they were drops spilling from a broken faucet, agonizingly slow, each syllable sticking to his tongue and teeth. “…It will never again happen, I promise you.”

Aster’s ear flicked against his hand. “Have you… had a look at yourself?”

He dared not look down past the hand that rested in Aster’s mane. Surely whatever further changes had taken place couldn’t be too horrific— seeing as he had been able to lift his head and stand without the theatre’s direction, the tendrils seemed to have been vanquished, the hands had been odd but fine, and, though his legs wobbled with uncertainty as he stood and began towards the door to the entryway, I can walk with much less pain now, he noted. Aster pushed against the side of his leg in an attempt to steady him. And… mostly with ease.

Near the theatre’s main doors stood the mirror that, a million times over, he’d checked his refelction in before greeting new guests as they arrived, its glass miraculously unbroken. Letting go a breath, he opened his eyes.

His hat was, of course, missing, though the ghostly feeling left behind in its absence was so strong it was nearly malleable, as if it were something he might make real if he only imagined hard enough…

No. Instead of the brim of a tophat, his fingertips met hair— not the teal locs he longed to see again, but certainly not the writhing mass of tendrils he recalled from before, either— that fell far past where it usually sat just below his shoulders, a silver-white cascade of strands twisted into knots by a long sleep and heavy with oil. His eyes, so huge and uncomfortably visible now that he struggled to continue to look, had shifted from bright gold to a soft blue, outlined with lavender markings that now coalesced into a single teardrop rather than the sharp, playful stripes that had jutted out from beneath his eyes before.

The rest of the suit, like the cuffs before it, was sorely lacking the extravagance of its predecessor: plain white with only the rarest touches of purple and red, gold trim criss-crossing a new, heavier frame. Shifting uncomfortably in his new shoes, he could feel that their raised heels had thinned out to the point they were nearly mere pegs, and even so, he was still standing quite a few inches shorter than before.

Aster’s reflection inched into the mirror’s view, glancing up hesitantly, unsure of what to say.

“It’s… it’s fine.” The further he looked the more flaws he found— eyes much too wide, ears far too long, so colorless all over, ghostlike. “I just think… isn’t it strange that my appearance should change? 

“How so?”

“Because I’m here, and there was…” Eyes closed, the memory came back in full. There was a light, a figure, all from the last positivity I could muster… there should be someone else here now, too.

Balan hadn’t appeared before him again. 

Perhaps there had been more positivity left in him than even Wonderworld itself had thought. Perhaps he had been allowed to live, though forever changed as a warning, a permanent reminder of just how close he had come to allowing his own negativity to swallow up the theatre in its entirety. Aster’s tail, now bearing the same dull gray as his mane, swished in anticipation of his answer— and maybe being so, so close to finally having that which he desired most was another reminder. Balan had been real, though, even if only for a moment, he could see it as he closed his eyes again: he had smiled, he had called for Lance, then, as far as anyone could tell, he had disappeared back into Wonderworld.

“…There was no need for a new maestro to appear.”

“Hm?” Aster, seemingly unphased at his response, had turned to studying his own reflection in the mirror, combing blue and lavender hair over gray. “You haven’t seen Balan?” 

(His ear twitched at that name.)

“He’s been looking for you for days, I’d assumed you’d spoken to him already.”

“Wh… he’s been ‘looking for me?’ He’s— here?” Aster had barely formed an answer before, unable to contain himself, Balan whisked him up into the air alongside him until their eyes were on level, gripping his shoulders as they spun about. “Aster! Goodness gracious, silly thing, why in the world wouldn’t you just tell me sooner?!”

Aster righted himself in the air, smoothing out his fur with a gentle smile. There was no use answering, Lance was already rushing off into the depths of the theatre with a hurried “Aster! Come along, then, let’s go!”, nearly tripping over himself in anticipation and cursing the frailty of his new shoes. It was still daylight, though as the light filtering in throughout the theatre turned slowly from gold to orange, time was running short, and the labyrinthine theatre provided no help in bringing Balan before him. Before he knew it, the crew were filing back to their own quarters as the clock tower chimed out its evening song on the Isle, signaling the end of the working day, and he hadn’t gotten so much as a meager glimpse at the figure he had seen on the stage. 

We’ll have to meet tomorrow, I suppose. The beginning of twilight found him at the foot of the first flight of stairs leading up to his room, another agonizing climb to make on new, tired legs. Passing cast members eyed him oddly as they descended, muttering out half-greetings under their breath. 

(They’ll get used to it in time, he told himself. We all will.)

At the door at last, beneath his hand, the doorknob twisted before he could grasp it, the door swinging open in a full arch from the other side—

“Oh! Lance!”

There he was.

There he was. What foggy glimpses he’d gotten at the figure in his final moments on the stage had not misled him. Before him, neat and bright and grinning, stood a perfect replica of his old self— when their eyes fully met, the name rung clear once again in his mind, just the same as his own— another Balan.

“Come inside, come inside! I’ve been waiting agesfor you to arrive.” Sparing no time for a reaction, Balan took both his trembling hands and pulled him into his bedroom, comfortingly unchanged in the way of decor but appearing oddly… lived-in.The bed’s strewn-aside curtains revealed bedding in an unmade heap, having quite obviously been slept in, and beside it on the nightstand stood a near-empty, forgotten glass— whether or not hehad been the one to leave it there was impossible to remember by this point. He felt a gentle squeeze at one of his hands, and across from him, Balan made a small, odd noise under his breath, something between a nervous laugh and a clearing of the throat. Lance figured he must have noticed the loss of attention.

(Subconsciously, though, and too dizzy with emotion to refocus himself, he squeezed back— you’re here, you’re real and living and you’re here, we both are.)

Once Lance’s eyes were back on his, Balan started right up again, grinning as ever. “I’m certainly glad to see that you’re doing alright. Finding you out cold on the stage gave us all quite a fright.”

Lance paused— such a casual way to speak of the very moment you’d been created, he thought, though “casual” had been the tone of the entire encounter. There was no such thing as a strangerin Wonderworld, really, when the details of a person could be read with a single look, but still, a small part of him ached with a feeling of something being missing, a grand introduction, a tender, tearful first meeting…

Now is hardly the time to worry about that.Steeling himself, he pressed further. “Do you… do you happen to remember any more? That night on which you found me, what happened before?”

“…Before?” Balan glanced up and down as if it would call forth memories of any sort, his smile falling for only a second before returning as an awkward, lopsided grimace. “Well, it was a day like any other, I’m sure. You know, chore after chore after chore… such a bore.”

It most definitely was not. The theatre had seemingly been running so smoothly the entire time he’d been asleep, Balan surely had to have some sort of memory of how to play the part of maestro in his absence, manufactured by Wonderworld… a wild offshoot of his clone-making ability, transformed and enhanced by Wonderworld’s own power— that had to have been the answer— but then again, Balan was so different from any clone he had ever seen, though, so lively and so much more real, keeping pace as Lance inspected him, turning as he turned, smiling all the while. 

How incredibly strange. Someone who looked and acted just as he had, but an entirely new life, separate from his own… his thoughts raced and danced and repeated. We’re both here now, you and I, at the same time…

He could not bring himself to be bothered by anything. 

“Are you alright?” Perhaps it would be the tearful first meeting he had imagined after all. “…Lancie?”

There was not a semblance of shock in Balan when Lance pulled him into an embrace, crystal drops of every soft, pastel color raining down to the floor, just acceptance, an amused laugh, an equally tight embrace.

“I’m… I’m fine. Thank you.”