4On the eleventh anniversary of Ace's birth, the girl was practically just a heartbeat in a pile of bones. She was still alive, if you could say she was living. Ace stood from her throne, the first movement she'd done in years, that is, besides in her imagination, where she roamed wild and free with no limitations and everyone was alive. She stood and walked to one of the tall windows that leaked silver light into the castle. The torches cast eerie shadows onto the floor and walls, like shadow demons were frolicking on her castle's grounds.
The young girl looked at her reflection through the mirror. She was still wearing the dress she'd been in since she was a young girl, many years ago. The pale blue dress looked like something they might wear in the 1800s, but Ace looked as though she hadn't aged a day. She'd prevented herself from aging, in her mind. She would be forever young, and that made her frown bigger, if that was possible. Her icy eyes revealed her pain and longing, but that was the only thing.
The young girl walked outside of her castle. So much had changed. The corpses were gone; she was just in a field of dead grass and dead souls. Ace looked in the back of her castle. An old swing set was there, eaten by vines and moss, but when she walked towards it, they recoiled. It was a simple wooden swing with a rusty chain. Ace walked over to it and sat down on it.
She swung back and forth slowly and peacefully. Ace's hair blew back and forth in the breeze she was creating, and she pumped her legs back and forth, closing her eyes and letting the wind control her. Ace let herself stop and kicked the dirt with her black shoes, sighing softly. She heard someone approach her.
It was a woman dressed in white. She seemed inhuman, almost with an unearthly beauty to her. She had the same icy blue eyes as ace, but with long milky brown hair. "Mother." Acknowledged Ace, looking at her mother. The woman smiled and sat on the swing next to Ace's. Ace got a strange comfort that she'd never had. She felt… human. Ace's mother tenderly held out a hand to Ace, smiling with a smile that understood her. One of the smiles you meet only three times in a lifetime.
Ace took the woman's hand. "I know why you're here." Said Ace, her voice like gravel. She'd never used it much. She'd never had a reason to.
"I'm dying, aren't I, mother." Said Ace, not looking at the woman in white.
She nodded.
"I'm dying very soon, aren't I?"
She nodded again.
Ace shrugged. Maybe it would be better for this lonely little girl. This girl who never got to live her life. She spent it lost in the darkness of her imagination with no sunlight, no love, and no hope of redemption. Did Ace ever have a chance in this world to begin with? Did she ever have any hope?
Or was this fate made for her, like the cruel hands of fate sculpted her to life out this meaningless existence.
Ace spent her last moments on that swing. The last thing she saw before her eyes closed by the sweet hands of death was the forgiving face of her mother's. The woman in white picked up the frail body of Ace, carrying her away from the swing and back into her castle, where she laid the body of the lobotomized girl. She tucked her into the bed Ace had made for herself yet never used and kissed her forehead, as should have been done before for Ace.
She then left Ace to sleep peacefully in the never-ending eternity of death, allowing Ace to finally be at peace with herself and the world.
The spirit of Ace's mother returned to her body every night to bless her with sweet dreams and to caress her broken heart and sew it back together one thread at a time.