Chapter Seventeen

Ouroboros
 
Chapter Seventeen
 
 
The days had gotten colder rather quickly and three ladies were wrapped in long sleeves and warm jumpers as they sat in a white Ford Focus outside the German Heart Centre in Munich. Skipping rather joyfully the tall slender figure of Tzuyu hopped out of the hospital’s front door and strolled over to the parking lot entering the driver’s seat of her car.
 
“Is he doing okay? Are you all set?” Wendy asked gently as Tzuyu entered the car, smiling at her younger Sister and brushing the stragglers of tears in her eyes.
 
“He’s doing so much better. Yes, I’m ready to leave,” Tzuyu replied, putting her seatbelt on and starting the car, the four of them lurching forward out of the hospital parking lot into the busy streets of Munich and soon onto the highway leading them west towards France.
 
Having spent a couple more days in Munich after receiving the encrypted message from one of their Sister’s they departed for Bristol, Tzuyu’s home in the current Cycle. Before leaving Munich however Tzuyu had visited her great grandchild Alexander Bauerschaft for one last time at the hospital. After having suffered a heart attack he was already doing a lot better, able to stay awake and speak for longer periods of time.
 
Since the incident Tzuyu had visited him every day and had been introduced to more of the family. It had been a devastating emergency and she had been beside herself at the risk of losing her great grandchild she had finally met. However, luckily he recovered well and at the same time it had brought the whole extended family together and Tzuyu couldn’t have been happier to have met so many of her descendents.
 
It was morning a little after eight when they departed from Munich and if traffic permitted they would make it to Calais before six in the evening. If they took the Channel Tunnel they estimated to be in Bristol at Tzuyu’s apartment before midnight of the same day. It would be a long trip but they could rest for a day or two in Bristol before heading off to Scotland. There were a few things Tzuyu needed to pick up and check up on back home.
 
As the only one with an EU driver’s license out of the four Tzuyu would have to do most if not all of the driving, especially considering they were driving her car with the steering wheel on the right side of the car, something the rest of the girls were not used to. Joy, who had a Korean license, hadn’t thought of acquiring an International Driver’s Permit before their trip; she had assumed they wouldn’t need to rent or drive a car. Additionally she wasn’t particularly confident about driving a car with the steering wheel on the right side, but in a pinch she could still drive in most of the European countries - a lot of them allowed her to drive with her Korean license as a tourist.
 
Within a few hours after leaving they were by Stuttgart, bypassing the centre via the highway that ran along the city’s southern edge. Another hour further south west and they crossed the famed river Rheine, the border between France and Germany, arriving in France without so much as a checkpoint to check their passports. It was a novel experience to all but Tzuyu, even if Wendy had crossed plenty of borders before the advent of passports during her long lifetime.
 
They had a short break on the outskirts of Strasbourg before moving on towards Calais. Their route passed by Verdun and Wendy insisted on them at least stopping for a few minutes outside the Verdun Memorial Museum to have a look. Even Tzuyu was curious, having grown up in the UK where the Great War and Verdun were all essential parts of her history.
 
They stopped for a moment in front of the museum, the monumental temple like structure soaring in front of them. A temple dedicated not to any god or deity, but the victims of a war so devastating it had been called the war to end all wars; a war that could have used divine intervention to stop it. If only the people back then had known that it was just a precursor for the next.
 
They didn’t get out of the car by the museum as they didn’t have enough time to actually go inside to have a look at the exhibitions. A few minutes further away from the museum they arrived at the Douaumont Ossuary, the massive graveyard for the victims of the battle of Verdun.
 
The field of white stone crosses stretched across the landscape was sobering and as Joy and Mina strolled further into the yard to have a closer look both Wendy and Tzuyu were caught in a moment, caught in an ancient memory, an event that they both had shared. Tzuyu grabbed onto Wendy’s arm and leaned in on her elder sister who didn’t even seem to notice this as her mind drifted back to years gone by, somewhere far away, an ancient memory.
 
The charge was upon them. She had never witnessed such a mass of sword and shield in one place, of steel and flesh. She had never imagined that the defence of the city would lead her into such confrontation, to a pitched battle with the immortals. The dust soared into the sky as the ground shook under the determined and rhythmic steps of the infantry as it closed its distance, with the enemy cavalry at the flank. She wanted to run, she wanted to flee. The mass of shield got closer and closer, ever approaching to the first fatal distance; a shower of spears. Her shield took two which stuck to so she had to ditch the shield under the weight of the spears. Then the first man was upon her, the first of a blade.
 
She woke up under a stack of heavy bodies; she was alive and had survived. It was evening by now and carefully looking around her she couldn’t see any movement, any living creature. Doing her best she pulled herself out from under the pile while staying prone on the wet sand; wet from blood. Her Sister. Where was her Sister? She had to find her. Out of the darkness a hand reached out and grabbed her shoulder.
 
“Just like Sardes,” Tzuyu whispered, her hand placed on to Wendy’s shoulder squeezing it carefully.
 
Blinking a couple of times Wendy was brought back to reality from the past, back from a memory of a spear that had threatened her life. The white stone crosses once again spread in front of her and she felt the warm touch of Tzuyu and looked over at her younger Sister, seeing the glazed eyes staring into the distance. “What did you say?”
 
“Just… this reminds me of Sardes,” Tzuyu repeated looking at her Sister with a careful smile.
 
“That was my exact thought too,” Wendy said, sighing in agreement. It had been the two of them who had fought in the thick of the battle. It was Tzuyu that Wendy had been searching for through the piles of bodies after the catastrophic aftermath of the battle, after the utter defeat and slaughter they had suffered. She wrapped her arms around her Sister and gave it a tight squeeze. “We pulled through then, we’ll do so now.”
 
“I know, we’ll survive,” Tzuyu smiled back to her Sister. Seeing the massive gravesites made her thank her stars that at least in her previous Cycle she had managed to avoid any major wars, that she had managed to avoid having to live through both World Wars. She could only imagine the horrors that would have entailed knowing the power of modern weaponry. It had been bad enough in the nineteenth century.
 
Further ahead along the centre walkway that split the gravesite in two she noticed Mina and Joy approaching them once again. Tzuyu waved for them signalling that they were about to leave and getting into the car soon after they were off once more on their road trip.
 
It was now early afternoon and continuing on from Verdun they were fast arriving to Reims from which the road lead them north-west to Calais. Mina had been observing and asking questions about their route. Perched forward from the backseat closer to the two in the front, she had to ask. “Are we stopping by Paris?”
 
“No, it’s not on the route unfortunately,” Wendy said looking back at Mina who sat behind her and had her chin resting on Wendy’s seat.
 
“You sure we can’t just drop by Paris real quick? It’s practically on the way,” Mina pleaded. She had always wanted to go to and now she was only a few hundred kilometres away. She didn’t want to risk the grand historical city she had wanted to see all her life to just pass by. Until now she had not asked for much on their trip, it was a rare request from Mina.
 
“Well, we can if we decide to. It just means we will either arrive in the morning hours of tomorrow in Bristol or we have to stay the night in France,” Wendy said her face now inches from Mina’s resting face.
 
“That’s no problem!” Mina chimed happily, “We’ll stay just one night in France. Do a little sightseeing today and leave tomorrow morning to Bristol.”
 
“Ah… I guess a single day delay won’t kill us, right?” Wendy said with a careful smile seeing the absolute giddiness with which Mina was looking forward to seeing the famed city of love and romance. She looked over to Tzuyu behind the wheel to receive a confirmation.
 
“Yay! Joy! We are going to Paris!” Mina screamed with excitement as Joy joined the chorus, the backseat shrilled with happiness and excitement as the two celebrated. Wendy cocked an eye towards Tzuyu and saw her wide smile. Maybe the short delay really wasn’t so terrible after all.
 
“It’ll be interesting to see how it has changed in the past hundred years,” Tzuyu said giving a careful glance to Wendy. “Did you get to see it in 1880s?”
 
“No, unfortunately our family never went to Paris together. My mother went there alone a plenty but never with me. We did however go to Stockholm and Helsinki a fair few times; quite a number of my relatives from my mom’s side lived and came from there.”
 
“Oh right, I remember you said your mother moved to Prague as a young woman to live a ‘boheme’ lifestyle in the Kingdom of Bohemia.”
 
“Yeah,” Wendy chuckled, thinking about her mother from her previous life and her motivations for moving to Prague. She had been a wild unconventional spirit, an artistic soul who had felt stifled and bored in the cold and depopulated cities of Sweden. Even Stockholm had been too small for her and eventually she had fallen in love with stories of the beauty of Prague and moved, there marrying Wendy’s father a few years later.
 
“One thing I’ve definitely not seen even though I visited it back then is the Eiffel Tower. It’ll be interesting to compare the skyline of Paris now, as it didn’t stick out as such back then.”
 
“Oh right! It was built after the end of the last Cycle,” Wendy piped up, not even picking up on it until now.
 
“The Mona Lisa too. I don’t even remember really paying much attention to it when I visited the Louvre back then, but now it’s pretty much the most famous painting in the world. I only know of it because of its reputation today, I knew nothing of it back then,” Tzuyu gave a little laugh as she thought of her last visit to Paris. So many things must have changed from back then.
 
“I guess that sounds about right, I only know of it in this life and not in my previous even though my parents were both pretty big art connoisseurs,” Wendy said, turning back to face the road.
 
“See, it’ll be a new and interesting experience for you two as well,” Mina said her face all smiles wide and her eyes dipped into two crescents.
 
The ring road around Reims finally showed the sign for Paris and Tzuyu took the turn towards the capital of France instead of the road north-west towards Calais; even she would like to see what the city looked like in person. It was rather surprising that although this lifetime she had lived in Europe her whole life, she had never visited Paris before. There had been plenty of trips to other European cities with cheap flights but Paris had so far eluded her travel itinerary.
 
The approach to the city was much like any other, where the outskirts were open fields with few houses along the highway before sets of low lying individual houses came into view. Soon tall apartment complexes of the suburbs slowly filled up the skyline and their view of the city ahead as the highway finally connected with the ring road that circled the very heart of Paris.
 
Much to their dismay they couldn’t see any of the lovely sights of the old city from anywhere around the area. It wasn’t until they got off the highway and slowly drove along the banks of the Seine that they felt like they were finally in Paris. Much like any city, the historic and cultural centres that were kept pristine had a very different feel to much of the rest of the liveable city.
 
But this didn’t bother them once the towering Notre Dame Cathedral came into view behind the bend and passing it, they could see the Louvre on the north bank of the river; that was their first target.
 
Finding a parking spot on the south side of the river not far from the bank, they stepped out onto the narrow historic streets of Paris. Mina was elated. There was a bounce to her step, she felt like she was floating as her gaze spanned everywhere around her, taking in the architecture and the rustic streets, the sense of wonder and fascination. She was in a daze as she spun about staring wide eyed and in a wonderful smile, her movement almost a ballet performance in of itself.
 
Joy soon linked arms with her and the two skipped ahead towards the river as Tzuyu and Wendy followed them. Crossing the Ponts des Arts Bridge, the wonderful palace of Louvre spread along the bank of the river. The closer they got the more admirable the magnificence of its architecture was revealed to them, truly a place that had been fit for a king before the royal court and palace had been moved to Versailles. Walking through the east entrance into the inner courtyard of the palace, they admired its fantastic architecture with its elaborate pediments on three sides of the building and the grandest entrance ushering them further into the central courtyard where the entrance to the glass pyramid gleamed in the sun.
 
Having read online that the shortest lines were through the Passage Richelieu entrance of the museum and that the famed pyramid entrance had the longest; their information was quickly confirmed to be true. The lines at the pyramid entrance were extremely long, hours long they suspected. Avoiding this entrance and taking their pictures of the pyramid and the gardens that stretched further out behind it, they entered through the Passage Richelieu entrance with less than a ten minute waiting line.
 
Travelling through the palace of art mostly in their small group, every now and then they split up into pairs for a short moments before reconvening, most often the pairs formed being Mina and Joy as one and Wendy and Tzuyu as another. This gave time for the Sister’s to catch up in private and spend some quality family time together, getting to vacation as Sisters, a luxury they had very rarely had. Every time their group split up to separate ways they would meet up by the entrance of the next zone before moving on. This managed to keep the group generally intact so nobody got lost. Some of the most famous paintings such as the Mona Lisa, Coronation of Napoleon and Liberty Leading the People they saw together.
 
After a few hours of strolling they had managed to make their way to the second floor of the Sully Wing. Once again split up into pairs Joy and Mina drifted into one of the more quiet corners of this area with French paintings aged only about a century off from the modern age; around the time of the Eternal Ladies previous lifetime. Browsing the quiet corners and art pieces by this time in the afternoon there were surprisingly few people walking around considering how jam packed the museum always was.
 
Walking in further Mina continued on strolling through as Joy stopped to admire a picturesque scene from some ancient temple filled with what she assumed were nymphs or sirens of sort. With plates of food, flowers decorating the sides and a massive red canvas draped over pillows and massive rugs, several women lay in complete bliss and content in the midst of it all. Her mind wandered, imagining what it would be like to live in such a fantastical scene, to just lounge in pure ecstasy and bliss of an existence without a care in the world. She could get used to that, although instead of being like the ladies she would find a pair of comfortable pyjamas to laze in.
 
Tucked into the folds of the blankets, the drape, and rugs there was something that called out to Joy. She inched closer to the painting and in very faint almost indiscernible shade she saw a set of curves and symbols that caught her attention. The way the lines curved and jarring corners jutted Joy was certain she had seen something similar before. A while back as well as very recently. Doing her best to appear inconspicuous and looking around to see that nobody was observing her too hard, she took her phone out and turned the flashlight on to take a closer look at the dark edges of the painting.
 
“What is this…”
 
Draped in the finery of the linen and curtains, tucked into the dark crimples and crevices of the cloth the symbolic lines twisted and turned in an eerily familiar way to her. With the overlapping of the drapes and while trying to avoid the glaring eyes of a museum attendant it was hard to get full coherent symbol, but it finally clicked in her head.
 
Quickly snapping a photo of a portion of the painting she looked around searching for Mina. Just over in the next room she saw her friend gaze into the abyss of shadowed beasts, the painting having drawn her in into the land of myth and legend; hallmarks of romanticism and symbolism. Joy hurried over to her managing to snap her out of her reverie.
 
“Huh? What is it?”
 
“Doesn’t that kind of look like the squiggles that Wendy and Tzuyu showed us, the cultish symbols?” Joy asked Mina shoving the photo of the paintings squiggles to her face.
 
Mina recoiled from the shoved phone before grabbing hold of Joy’s hand to keep it steady and observed what was being shown to her. The lines curved and jutted much like the weird symbols they had seen in books and papers, even in the original sheets they had found in Korea a couple weeks ago, the thing that started this all. Mina fished her phone out and opened up images of Children of the Void cult symbols that she had taken pictures of during their research back in Munich. The resemblance was clear.
 
“We need to find Wendy and Tzuyu. I’ll go find them,” Mina said hastily retreating out of the room and retracing her steps to where she last saw the two. She soon found Wendy not far from her and Tzuyu was in the next room after. Mina explained succinctly what they had found and quickly brought them over to the painting where Joy was waiting.
 
“Here, the hems of the curtain and drapes,” Joy said pointing at the location where she had spotted the symbols. They made sure to stay far away enough to not draw the ire of the museum staff walking around the rooms.
 
“Those really do look like the Cult symbols although some of the letters are weirdly cut off and the text makes no sense, it doesn’t spell out anything,” Tzuyu said pulling back a little to allow Wendy to have a closer look.
 
“It doesn’t?” Joy said a little disappointed that no great clue or revelation popped out from the painting.
 
“It appears to be all gibberish. However, they really are Cult symbols – that’s for certain. Really interesting, and concerning too. Who painted this?” Wendy had a look to the side at the tag displaying the name of the painting and artist. “Leon Frederic. Doesn’t ring a bell to me. Tzuyu?”
 
“Not a part of any of my social circles, at least the ones that I knew of.” Pulling back from the painting the four of them stared at the signs for a moment in silence.
 
“So I guess our biggest burning question right now is was he actually part of the Cult or did he just find some writings of the Cult and found it evocative?” Wendy asked the question from the group, trying to get all of their thoughts on the same track.
 
“I mean, there are a few options aren’t there,” Joy piped up, “he’s a Cult member, he was a descendent or a friend of a Cult member, he found the belongings of a Cult member.”
 
“Also, could be a descendent or a friend of one of your allies, found the resources of one of your allies or…” Mina added onto the list of options.
 
“Or completely unrelated and just happened by these symbols and used them without knowing the context,” Tzuyu rounded off the list on the identity and origin of this painter.
 
“If he was a Cult member, why would he paint them so openly and brazenly?” Wendy asked turning back to look at the symbols.
 
“Well, it’s not really that brazen, look how faint and obscure they are. Most would assume it’s just decoration,” Tzuyu said pulling back to give Wendy even more room to examine them.
 
“True. Maybe it's a bait, trying to lure us into revealing ourselves if we come after them. But then again… when was this painted?” Wendy asked as she looked again at the few paintings they had managed to identify with their language.
 
“1895, well after the end of the last Cycle,” Tzuyu said as she leaned back in to continue observing the script in the painting while Wendy pulled back to think of the options they had at hand.
 
Tzuyu’s frown deepened the more she stared at it. Even though she wasn’t the best at reading the Cult symbols she was fairly good at it having spent lots of study time with Wendy over the ages. The symbols really looked like gibberish, there didn’t seem to be any coherent words even by the Cult’s symbolism standards. “Wait a second, does it really…?”
 
“What?” The rest of the ladies all asked in unison turning around to pay attention to what Tzuyu was doing, noticing that she was looking at the painting very intensely, more so than earlier.
 
“If you combine the different folding hems of the words that seem to cut off they become full letters,” Tzuyu pointed out, pulling back a little from the painting to allow for Wendy to squeeze in.
 
“No way, let me see,” Wendy leaned in next to Tzuyu. Out of all the Sisters she was the expert on Cult symbolism and the best at reading their script. “Well I’ll be damned, you’re right. Holy crap Tzuyu that’s an amazing find! How did I miss this?”
 
“What does it say then?” Mina asked as her and Joy flanked the two others, all four ladies now huddled around the painting.
 
Wendy focused on the symbols, trying to combine the disparate and fragmented letters together in a logical fashion over the folds. The barely visible faint outlines of the letters and the intricate folds they were painted in made it difficult, and she resorted to writing it down on paper to connect the dots instead of trying to do it mentally. She finally had a word.
 
“Catacombs.”
 
“Catacombs? Does it refer to the ones under Paris or something else? From what I’ve heard the ones under Paris are a massive dangerous maze,” Mina said joining in on the brainstorming. She had read lots of literature and history on Paris as it had been one of the cities she had to visit in her lifetime, fascinated by the place. Its history, architecture, and centre as a European place of learning over the ages was interesting, not forgetting its status as one of the most romantic cities in the world.
 
“It doesn’t say where they are, it just says ‘Catacombs’.”
 
Pulling back from the painting for a moment the four of them sank into silent thought, trying to think of what they could do with this information they had just received. Cultish symbols referring to catacombs – it had to be of some significance.
 
“Even if we don’t know which catacombs this is referring to it makes sense for the Cult, a place where they can perform murderous bloody rituals away from prying eyes of the people and then hide the bodies with little suspicion,” Wendy said in a serious tone, thinking of the implications of this. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the Cult still to this day used the catacombs of Paris or any other city to perform their secret dirty rituals. They could be doing it as they spoke, at this very moment.
 
“That’s grim,” Joy cocked a brow and a nervous chuckle. The story she was chasing was turning out more dangerous by each discovery, more dark by every turn in the road.
 
“The Cult is grim.”
 
“Maybe we need to look at the contextual clues. The painter, his home, where he painted this. The contents of the painting itself, can the location of what it's depicting be discerned, is there a location clue in the painting,” Mina threw out ideas for their next steps.
 
“Those are very good ideas. Maybe there is more to the painting than we see right now. Additionally we need to try to remember and have a look at old Cult associations we know of.”
 
“If only we had access to the archives in Istanbul,” Tzuyu sighed, wishing they had access to their old notes of their old hideout from the previous Cycle, although considering how long it had been she assumed all of it would have rotted away.
 
“So I guess until we figure out whether it’s the catacombs of Paris or another place we need to stay here?” Mina said, half giddy and excited at the possibility of staying for a little while longer in this city. Even if they would be investigating for most of the time here it didn’t mean they wouldn’t have a chance to go out at all, or so she hoped.
 
“Well, I don’t want to stay here too long even if we don’t figure it out, we can’t delay our meeting with the rest of the Sisters for much longer. At most we can stay a couple of days, and then we need to get going to Bristol for that thing, then finally Scotland. But yes I think we will stay a little longer,” Wendy said with a smile, seeing the excitement on both Mina and Joy’s face.
 
“I’m so excited!” Mina jumped with a thrill once again, her voice echoing loudly across the halls. From the far end of the room they heard a rather loud shush and saw a museum attendant asking them to keep it down. Mina gave a curt bow of apology in the attendant’s direction before turning back to the others.
 
“Should we finish up here quickly? We still have quite a few sites to see here, the Eiffel Tower for one,” Wendy suggested.
 
“Oh yes! We should probably hurry there if we want to get up to the top,” Mina piped up with excitement once again, this time keeping her voice to a reasonable volume. She was already halfway out the section they were in before the rest of the crew realized she was already on the move.
 
They all followed the excited form of Mina as she raced through the Louvre to make the most out of her afternoon and evening in Paris, a change of pace from the intensive brainstorming and reading they had been doing for the past week. It was a well earned and needed break and time for rest as this evening they would dive back into the books and research. There was always more to investigate.
 
 
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“Nothing?”
 
“Yeah I can’t see anything at all.”
 
Sana hovered over Dahyun’s shoulder as the latter examined every inch of the back wall of the Munich Frauenkirche Cathedral their voices echoing across the church.
 
“Are you sure they left any message behind for you then?”
 
“No, just a possibility that they could have done so. It is pretty common practice but then again now we have a meeting location, maybe they didn’t feel it was necessary, or we are in the wrong church,” Dahyun huffed a sigh as she straightened herself out almost bumping into Sana who managed to pull back from her hovering.
 
Ever since repairing their friendship the day before Sana had been all but glued to Dahyun, shadowing her every move afraid if she lost sight of her friend she would lose her again. Dahyun didn’t mind this too much, she was happy that Sana had forgiven her and was now fully on board with what they were doing. However it had made some things more difficult namely bathroom visits; she drew a line there and Sana herself didn’t even try to cross that boundary, much to Dahyun’s relief.
 
The loud creaking and clang of the front door of the church echoed as three footsteps approached the corner that Dahyun and Sana were searching through.
 
“Anything?” Chaeyoung’s voice made its way across the room to the two as she came into view from behind the pillars with Yeri and Nayeon in tow. Much like with Sana and Dahyun, Yeri and Nayeon were chained to Chaeyoung.
 
“Nada, you?”
 
“Same on our end. I don’t think they left anything here. It could be in one of the other churches, but then again this is the Cathedral of our Dear Lady which feels the most apt place to leave a message,” Chaeyoung chuckled as she reached the duo in the corner of the church.
 
“I guess they left in a hurry or they figured that there was no need for a message since we knew where to meet up now.”
 
“I think that is the case,” Chaeyoung sighed sitting down on the pews closest to Sana and Dahyun.
 
“Do you think they are still here?” Yeri asked sitting down next to Chaeyoung. Nayeon sat behind the two and perched her head over the backrest to their side.
 
“We don’t know. Considering our Sister’s message to us was a couple days ago, it's very likely they have already moved on towards Scotland,” Chaeyoung replied, a little sad that a reunion with two more Sisters or the Lock had to wait. She had been looking forward to seeing some of them.
 
“You can do that mediation thingy, right? You can find out if they are still here,” Nayeon quipped from the back.
 
“Sure yeah we could do that, it takes some time though and we need to find a safe and secluded location. We don’t want to risk any Cult member seeing us and getting suspicious of ritual activity to identify us,” Chaeyoung said looking over at her Sister Dahyun for a confirmation.
 
Dahyun stared at her for a few seconds with wide eyes before nodding rapidly, “Yeah for sure, let’s do that. If they are still in town, we have a chance to meet up now and if they aren’t then we only really lose about an hour of travel time.”
 
The two by the wall walked over to the pews to sit next to Nayeon behind Chaeyoung and Yeri so they could converse in hushed tones and not cause ire in any of the other churchgoers, or reveal their conversation topics even if they were currently speaking in Korean. Chaeyoung and Yeri turned around to face the three sitting behind them and together they looked for a suitable location for a ritual, preferably a place that was free of charge and secluded.
 
“The English Garden looks like a viable place. It’s massive and has plenty of space in the fields and trees where to have a picnic and not seem suspicious. Also it’s close by so we don’t have to go out of our way to find a secluded location,” Chaeyoung suggested showing the location off to Dahyun from her phone.
 
“Picnic this time of the year?”
 
“I mean, it’s lunch time and it’s sunny outside. Also it’s not that cold either.”
 
“Also, we had a picnic not too long ago,” Sana chided Dahyun.
 
“It sounds like picnics are fast becoming our thing,” Nayeon laughed, following the chatter over Chaeyoung’s shoulder.
 
“Sounds like a plan then. Let’s drop by a store and then go to this garden place,” Dahyun said, the group quickly getting up and filing out of the Frauenkirche into the warm early afternoon sun and walked to the nearest grocery store. Being in the centre of town, it didn’t take long for them to find one and with their lunch equipment gathered they headed for their rental car to drive to the English Garden which was close by.
 
This time of the year the leaves had begun to change colour beginning to lose their green and acquiring hints of yellows and oranges with red peeking out underneath some brushes. They decided to drive further away from the centre of the park to a place in the gardens further away from roads, to a secluded location.
 
Strolling away from the parking lot after finding a nice reclusive spot to leave their car in, they walked along the many paths of the garden surrounded by the golden shades of the autumn. Ideally they were searching for a clearing warmed by the sun and not directly next to the paths, far enough that if someone wanted to see what they were really up to they would have to walk a little ways to them, giving the women time to prepare and sort themselves out. After a short ten minute search they discovered a section of grassy fields which ran along one of the various streams and rivers of the park and wasn’t overshadowed by large trees allowing for plenty of sunlight.
 
Setting their blanket and groceries down they first ate their fill before Chaeyoung sat down facing the sun and began to fall into her meditative state. This was the first time that Yeri and Sana saw this and were curious of the process, Nayeon having witnessed a little of it back in Trieste when the group wasn’t on speaking terms. They had heard what it was about and generally what it entailed and how unimpressive the whole act to the outside really looked like, however in their mind there still was some expectation that something visibly unnatural would happen. All they witnessed was Chaeyoung going limp in her meditative pose.
 
A few minutes later they saw Chaeyoung stir from her slumber and point to her right muttering quietly. “Somewhere under one thousand kilometres to the west, two people. One person over a thousand kilometres, north west.”
 
Dahyun sat by her Sister, immediately wrapping her in a sweater and hugging Chaeyoung to warm her up. “So the two who were here are probably somewhere in France, maybe by the west coast by now. I think they are on their way to Scotland. That single person though, already in the UK?”
 
“So it would seem,” Chaeyoung said as another shiver ran through her body. This was the part about meditating she really hated; the deathly cold. Each Sister felt a similar sensation when they meditated but to Chaeyoung it reminded her of that first time that the eternal cold of death took hold of them way too vividly; the time they had died by their Mothers hands. It was an unpleasant reminder of what had started all of this so many years ago.
 
Sana and Yeri shuffled a few steps closer and Yeri touched Chaeyoung’s forehead feeling the icy freeze on her skin. Chaeyoung smiled. “Ah, your hands are so warm. That feels nice.”
 
“You really are freezing cold, alarmingly frozen,” Yeri muttered in surprise with her eyes wide.
 
Sana’s hand s past Yeri at the edge of touching Chaeyoung’s cheek before she stopped. Chaeyoung noticed it and nodded to her with a smile letting Sana try her skin as well.
 
“That is crazy,” Sana said as she gently touched Chaeyoung’s cheek for a second before recoiling from the cold. “That is really insane; it’s like a blizzard on your skin. If anything speaks for the truth about what you two have been talking about, this whole Cycle business, then this is pretty convincing,” she said partially left open from the surprise as her wide eyes looked back and forth between Chaeyoung and Dahyun. It was still hard for her to accept everything, any sane person would have doubts, but this was pretty convincing evidence of the fact that at the very least something very strange and out of the ordinary was happening.
 
Dahyun looked at the absolute wonder on Sana’s face, a little parted from the shock. Her friend was beginning to believe and it made Dahyun happy. She was glad she didn’t have to let Sana go, that she didn’t have to leave her. Sana caught Dahyun staring who quickly looked away as she rubbed Chaeyoung's arms gently a few times before letting go. “Can somebody else take my place now, I’m getting cold.”
 
Nayeon who had been sitting next to Chaeyoung shuffled behind her and now in turn wrapped her body around Chaeyoung from behind to let her body heat warm up the shivering woman. Yeri had cupped Chaeyoung’s hands and was warming them up with her own as the latter sat with her eyes closed taking in the warming rays of the sun’s heat.
 
“I’ve been wondering, within your siblings where do you two fall into in terms of age?” Sana asked after a moment of quiet while they slowly finished off the rest of their lunch.
 
“We are towards the end of the pack. I’m older than Chaeyoung and then we have one Sister younger than us,” Dahyun answered letting Chaeyoung focus on warming herself up.
 
“So right now your youngest sibling is out there on her own? Is she a lot younger than you?”
 
“Hopefully she is one of the Sister’s who have managed to pair up like us; it would be horrible to think her out there alone.”
 
“But the good thing is that she is only one year younger than me, so she is an adult herself so we don’t need to worry too much,” Chaeyoung said opening her eyes to look at the group, with a smile on her lips a little laugh escaped her, “Trudi, our youngest, is very capable. I’m less worried about her and more worried about some of our older Sisters.”
 
“Very true,” Dahyun shook her head, “Imagine if Móna and Jannah paired up.”
 
“Oh I shudder to think of it,” Chaeyoung and Dahyun laughed. Smiles were spread on Sana’s and Yeri’s lips seeing their friends in such good spirits, loving that they could see them smile.
 
“How many times have you been… reborn, re-awoken, re-”
 
“Recycled?” Chaeyoung finished Nayeon’s question for her before laughing heartily. “Honestly, too many times, so much that I’ve really lost count.”
 
“It’s starting to be so many times that I think I might have even forgotten some of the Cycle’s we lived through. Maybe this time we should try to record all the Cycles down on paper once we meet up,” Dahyun said trying really hard to think back on all the different lives she had lived. As expected the more recent events were easier to recall, but going back beyond ten and fifteen Cycles she really began to struggle and she wasn’t certain that she hadn’t skipped a few in between the further back in her memory she went.
 
“Any estimate? Twenty times? Thirty?” Nayeon insisted.
 
“I guess at least, right?” Chaeyoung looked over at Dahyun who shrugged her shoulders, still half in her thoughts trying to count backwards. “Well I can safely say definitely at least twenty times, but I’m certain in reality it is more at this point.”
 
“Definitely more than twenty, for sure,” Dahyun chimed in between her thinking before she was once again counting the Cycles backwards.
 
“How often do you reincarnate? Since the last time was in the 1880’s, is it usually about this long in between?” Sana asked.
 
“Sometimes it is, although I think pretty often it’s around two hundred years. Sometimes it has been more,” Chaeyoung replied as she saw that Dahyun was still deep in her thoughts with her eyes looking out into the sky somewhere far and her fingers stretched out as she counted.
 
“Why is that?”
 
“We’re not certain but we think we know why. We know that one of the triggers of our reawakening is The Door.”
 
“The Door? That bad dude in the Cult, the leader in charge of our kidnapping?” Yeri asked, having recently been told about the basics of their situation by Chaeyoung and Dahyun.
 
“Yes, the opposing soul to The Lock who is our dear friend and also the one who for the first time brought us back to life, so to speak,” Dahyun explained. “When The Door’s soul is re-awoken then our souls awaken at the same time. As a consequence if the Cult never manages to find him or if his soul doesn’t reawaken, then neither will ours. We think.”
 
“What happens then?” Yeri asked as she let go of Chaeyoung’s hands. They had warmed up a fair bit already but more importantly Yeri’s had gotten very cold. She began rubbing them together to warm them up once more.
 
“In such a case the Cycle is pushed back another whole lifetime until the bodies that were inhabited by our un-awakened souls die. Once that body dies our souls can be reborn into a new body to wait for another awakening and beginning of the Cycle,” Chaeyoung finished the explanation, already feeling a lot warmer and not too stiff to move. She could stretch her arms straight and arched her back leaning into the waiting arms of Nayeon.
 
“But you’re not certain? So if the Cult had not found The Door during our lifetime your souls would not have woken up?”
 
“Possibly. But it is hard to tell if The Door alone is the trigger or whether any one of us being awakened is enough to start the Cycle.”
 
“But in the case of nobody being awoken you would have lived your old lives, the ones that we know and grew up with?” Sana said, her bright eyes faltering and looking down on the ground. The possibilities that were now lost. Not just for Dahyun and her Sister’s, but everyone involved in this; herself, Nayeon, Yeri, and whoever else was now caught in it for being friends with the Sisters they had yet to meet.
 
Dahyun had shuffled to sit down right next to Sana wrapping her arm around her shoulders as she saw the troubled look in her friend’s eyes. “I’m sorry Sana. The best case even for us is to never have our souls reawoken again. It would mean that the Cult and The Door are dead and gone and the Cycle would be done.”
 
“But then you would never meet your Sister’s again,” Sana whimpered looking up with sadness at Dahyun and then at Chaeyoung who was lazing in her friends arms but had shifted to look at Sana whose empathy was warming her heart.
 
“True, but…” Dahyun looked over at Chaeyoung as she tried to find the right words. Her younger Sister picked up on them.
 
“We have lived more than a single lifetime together now, more than any normal Sister could ever get with their siblings. In that we have been blessed. Sure it hasn’t been a normal peaceful family life and we’ve never got to witness any of us grow really old but...” Chaeyoung’s throat caught on the words; it was a difficult feeling to come to terms with. The Cycle had to end, but when it did so did her life with her beloved Sisters and The Lock. “But it has been a wilder adventure than any in this world could lay claim to. It has been good and I think for a long time now all of us have been ready to part ways with each other for the last time.”
 
A droplet fell on Chaeyoung’s cheek and then another. She looked up to see tears on Nayeon’s eyes and over across her Yeri was equally fighting back tears. The sight of her friends crying for her made Chaeyoung teary eyed as well. Fighting the urge she took a deep breath before reaching up to wipe the tears off of Nayeon’s cheeks. “Thank you, for feeling for me so.”
 
Nayeon flashed a bright wide smile through the tears, her gums beaming brightly before taking hold of Chaeyoung’s hand on her cheek and looking away out into the sky to try and stop her tears.
 
Sana’s cheeks had streaks of their own now and Dahyun wiped the tears from the corners of her friend’s eyes with a handkerchief before leaning in on her friend with a hug. Sana held onto the wrapped arms with her own as the ladies basked in the rare warm treat of an autumn sun.
 
“It’s a shame you couldn’t take that painting of your old family with you back in Venice in your old home,” Sana whispered. “It would be a lovely memoir.”
 
“True, but it isn’t all lost,” Dahyun comforted her friend, her words echoing her sentiments not just about the painting or the lost opportunities but also about their situation as a whole; about their uncertain future. “Not all is lost. We have each other.”
 
 
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Dahrene7
#1
Chapter 23: Wish this was still going, is such an unique story truly
Hope everything is okay Author!
poplarbear #2
Chapter 23: Ah reached the latest, I'm sorry to spam your comments section over again with my thoughts but i just love this story so much you don't even know :') thank you. I hope you're doing good and in a healthy condition, see you!
poplarbear #3
Chapter 22: I want to guess that Sukkagirl is Seulgi's first name? Did some research its Aramaic? If so it's around tenth century BC..
poplarbear #4
Chapter 21: <span class='smalltext text--lighter'>Comment on <a href='/story/view/1390872/21'>Chapter Twenty One</a></span>
So did some searching and i found out that the era that the era they were in at the beginning of this chapter is in early bronze age (fifth or sixth millennium BC) and judging from their names they are Sumerians, and it seems they weren't that far from the first cycle
poplarbear #5
Chapter 20: Ah this chapter never fails to put a smile on my face, i want to imagine where they all would meet, Seulgi would be so overjoyed and her oldest sister instinct would kick in making her checking them from head to toe for any injuries in a gentle way and when it's Tzuyu turn she would full-blown breaking down blabbering apologies.. I'm sorry :')
poplarbear #6
Chapter 18: Tbh I've saved their old names and its meaning on my notes as i find it very interesting how you decided to give them names from old languages:)
poplarbear #7
Chapter 17: Oh I'll be waiting for the day all of this will end :')
poplarbear #8
Chapter 7: God i want Seulgi and Tzuyu to meet up soon
poplarbear #9
Chapter 5: Reading this story always fills me with melancholic nostalgia about things that never happened, longing, and yearning.. beautiful :')
poplarbear #10
Chapter 4: I love that you choose Jannah as Jeongyeon old name, means paradise or garden in arabic.