Impossible Miracles

Chapter 16
Another Side

There was darkness.

It was difficult to move. Where was she? What time was it?

It was time to pour tea for Master.

Where was Master?

She saw light, and she followed it, and when she opened the door, she was assaulted with sun, wind, and grass.

There was nothing else, save for a large tree in the distance.

Where was Master?

She walked. The house was empty. It was dirty, blankets of dust coating everything that wasn't waterlogged from the leaking roof. Collapse was only a matter of time.

The lab was empty. There were no signs of life and she knew she did not have to climb downstairs to check for him.

Where was Master?

She wandered. Wandered and wandered, always within the property. A week later, and she came to the tree she dismissed every time she had passed it by. The shade was comfortable. Her circuits were overheating.

The tree was the only anomaly in the flat horizon. She did not remember it being there when she was last awake.

How long had passed when she was asleep?

She saw a rock slab behind the tree. It was standing conspicuously out in the open, but always having been blocked by the trunk, she had never noticed it. She approached it.

It was old. Weathered. Beaten. It had probably been present for centuries. It was difficult to tell; she had no data on weathering and could therefore make no accurate extrapolations.

The lettering was faded, but barely legible.

Len Kagamine

Beloved brother, dear friend

A short life does not preclude the fulfillment of dreams.

**30 — **46

Len. Len was her Master. She had found her Master.

But he was now a rock. She did not understand.

Time passed, as she knelt by the grave marker, she discovered that waiting while awake was much more difficult to waiting while asleep. Time passed slower. She had time to think.

And think she did, as she remembered what she could from her memories, clunky in disuse from her long slumber. She thought about Len, her Master, the only human she had known.

She thought about how he could never talk to her again, and she found herself strangely expecting. As though, even though there was no hope of resurrection, he could come back some day. If not today, then the next day.

It wasn't real. None of this was real.

She wanted to hear his voice, hear his words. His lectures, his teachings. She wanted to see him, to touch him, to know that he was there. But he isn't any more and she could have none of that, and it bothered her, that it did.

Where was her Master?

Her Master was in front of her, and he was far beyond her now.

Never again. Those words repeated in her mind, ran in circles until she began scowling and frowning tears came to her eyes. She hastened to wipe the bothersome liquid away.

Never again, and this time the phrase that Len had always used came to her. He had missed his sister.

She missed her Master.

And she began crying. Loud wails, in earnest, that transmitted across the whole field that was their yard. She could hear nothing but her own sniffles, and by the time she had cried herself dry, night had already passed and dawn was ushering in the new day.

She sat quietly, spent, for a few more days. The tears and the horrible wrenching in her chest were her constant companions.

Then, one day, as she was sorting through her memories of him, to relive them as well as she could, she remembered something he had told her.

He had told her that songs chase away sorrow. That they celebrate life, bring blessings. That they were the miracle connection from people to people, and that they had magical properties. He had said all this with a bitter smile, one of the few moments he had brought up his sister, as she was the one who held these beliefs. Apparently she had repeated this ideal so often he had involuntarily memorized the speech.

She wanted a miracle to happen. Something, anything, to take away the pain.

And so she sang.

She sang until her throat was sore, indicating wear and tear of her artificial chords. She sang her joy, her sorrow, her aching loneliness, and, most of her, her regret for never having understood him.

She sang until all of her was spent, and she slumped next to her only love in her life, satisfied and accomplished.