She saw nothing. It was pitch black. Not a single faint glow, nor a shadow to be seen.
Then, she blinked, and the scene changed instantly.
Countless stars twinkled from above. A cloudless sky.
There was a castle, settled directly under the crescent moon. Its round domes softly bulging into the midnight blue above.
There was a garden, filled with hundreds of plants, trees, and flowers surrounding the perimeter. Their vigor was dampened by the night, but glimpses of their sleeping beauty could still be seen under the dim moonlight. So too did the flowers sleep, their blooms reclining into a ball of petals.
In that garden was a vast clearing of grass. It stretched to the border of the castle grounds, where the land abruptly ended, revealing the valley below. Despite its altitude, the grass stood still. Not a gust of wind moved through the trees who stretched their arms high above the castle’s spires.
Under the stars was a woman. She was robed in white, sitting atop a great stone. By her side was a child, her head rested in the woman’s lap. The woman was speaking, her hand stroking through the child’s hair as they gazed out at the stars.
It was a sublime scene, the resemblance of a mother and a child rested in between the vast infinity of the night and the floating cliffside padded by a soft carpet of grass.
She watched from beyond, unable to hear the words. It was such, because she could not remember them. A somber feeling washed across as she observed the two. She was finally able to see her face again, yet it made her feel further away than before. Wanting to reach out, she held back. She knew all too well, whatever she did, she would not be able to reach them. They were, of course, only spirits of a memory.
The girl was falling asleep in the woman’s lap. Her eyelids growing heavy and sliding shut again and again. Eventually, they stayed shut. But the woman had yet to notice. She kept on speaking. Telling a story, she guessed. She often did so on nights like these when she was young.
Without a tug, she felt herself being pulled away. The sky expanded from behind to engulf the scene. The woman and child receded further and further away until they disappeared. Once again, she was once again surrounded by pitch-black darkness.
The ritual had expired, she thought. Or, perhaps, because she had fallen asleep.
When she woke up, she was back on the floor of the sacred hall. Noticing this, her friends around her leaned forward. Nozomi sat up, looking for the elder priest. She was still by her side, the stone in front of her now gray and opaque. The priest’s face was struck with muted awe, but she wasn’t looking at the stone. She lowered her staff to her lap and let out a deep murmur of admission from the back of her throat.
“She’s the one. The same face as the one on the stone statue.”