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Suddenly, the many pathways once teeming with footprints of every shape and size weren’t so cramped anymore, and the more populars stalls weren’t as swarmed and packed as they once were. While there were still a good bunch of people who hadn’t yet had their fill of fun—it was little enough, calmer enough, that Adalia could have a turn at proper leisure.

Apparently some sick sadist had the bright idea to set up a dunk tank challenge in the same exact season where balls of spit become actual projectile weapons… but to each their own, I suppose.

Adalia seemed kinda keen on giving it go, staring silently as we approached, and then staring even more as we passed. After noticing that, I couldn’t really deny her the chance, could I? Especially since she stared so nicely…

Turns out, the dunk tank was too good an enticement to be true. If you wanted to dunk the green elf-person perched in a tank, then the guidelines states you’re gonna have to stand way back and shoot real far in order to get a shot at it.

The five other people we watched give the challenge a go as we waited in turn all ended up either shooting for the bushes way back or splatting in the snow too close… all the while, the smug elf on his shelf kept smiling all the more smugger.

Finally, it was Adalia’s turn to pitch, and it was made plainly clear to her by the staff member in charge that she had only three attempts to hit the bullseye. But what wasn’t clear to everybody else, the smug elf in his container of freezing water especially, was that Adalia only ever needed the one.

A squeal of terror, a splash of water later, and Adalia and I were already scampering off on the prowl for any other clearly rigged games for her to just completely dismantle.

And in our wake, I found that she was a crack shot with a BB gun, a can toppler like no other, and also a far better horseshoe slinger than I – which had the farmboy in me lamenting and spiraling all the way into the depths of despair.

.....

By the seventh venue, and her seventh straight win in a row, Adalia was starting to have a tough time holding all her prizes at the same time.

“I don’t… like them…” She said it bluntly, struggling to reach her eyes up at me over the ears of a giant stuffed teddy. “They… are heavy…”

“You could always just give them away, y’know?” I said sarcastically.

Of course, needless to say or elaborate, she took me seriously. And then before I knew it, she went ahead and just started handing out her spoils to anyone passing by, her mountain of wins whittling down by the donation until eventually her arms were free again to coil around mine once more.

The only thing she still kept in her possession was her santa hat, continuing to dangle slowly and daintily atop her head. And honestly, seeing her so long with it on, and just how cuter she was overall… I don’t actually think an Adalia without it exists within my memory anymore.

Every once in a while, we continued to be pestered by the judges and their unanswerable questions… and it was here that Adalia’s weakness would be continuously exposed to the world.

It was quite ironic to think the person who can easily gauge a person’s thoughts and feelings at a mere moment’s glance could just as easily fumble when it came to questions of her own.

I suppose being numbed to your own feelings would do to you… and really… she really was trying her best.

But in the end, she just couldn’t understand.

Just couldn’t feel.

And after the last judge strutted off looking dissatisfied with the answers Adalia had given, I needed to ask, I needed to know…

I spoke, “Before your failed transformation, you were… you were able to feel things easier than you can now, right?”

Once again, I could never escape those peering, prying eyes of hers, knowing my thoughts long before I could even speak them.

“You want to… know… if there is… a way… to restore… me…?” Adalia blinked blankly into the distance. “Sister… had searched… had begged… many years… many times… always… nothing…”

“Not even my mother?” I asked. “Or maybe… maybe somehow I could do something to…?”

The fuzzy ball at the tip of her hat slowly swayed left, and then right, as if she had already had this line of conversation so many times before.

“Terestra… is able…” She whispered. “And in time… practice… you will… be able… too…”

I was sensing a ‘but’ incoming, a brick wall to come popping up ahead to our speedy high prospects, and indeed, a second later, through more vacant whispers, there it was.

“But I am… afraid… I am not… strong enough… to accept… your help…”

“Not strong enough?”

“You wish to restore… all… I have lost…” She explained. “To restore one’s… nature… you will need… to disturb… one’s soul…”

“Oh.”

Realization. The insidious killer between that brick wall and my hopes. In my head, I saw glimpses of Harry’s tortured face vivid yet fleeting. The agony and pain of having your very essence meddled with was something you can’t really forget.

Then there was also Ash, also Subjugation. I remembered her pain, her sufferings. And then I remembered Lenora, her dead, barren stare of nothingness… sharing an almost uncanny resemblance to Adalia’s swirly gray graze. The consequence of having a soul beyond all amends.

I felt my blood go cold.

“I have… already… disturbed my soul… twice… altered it… twice…” Adalia spoke, once more dredging up memories that just simply refuse to let us be. “To become… human… once… only to fail… and return to my… true nature again…”

“So that’s what you meant…” I said, hearing my voice grow weak. “If we try to restore you, if we alter you again…”

“I am lucky… to be alive… the way I am now…” She said, slowly cocking her head at me. “I don’t know… if my soul would survive… a third time…”

“You’ll die.”

“Not… die…” She corrected me. “A broken soul… cannot die… Lady Enstar… will not take me… I will live… but I will not be alive… I will be less… lesser… than I already… am now…”

“You’re not less,” I quickly said, once more, the haunting visage of Ash’s little sister rippled across my mind. If Adalia was… if she… no, I don’t even want to think about it. “You’re… fine,” I trailed on. “You’re perfect. To me, you are. You don’t need to be anything more.”

Adalia’s head swayed, slowly, almost, rocking to the motion of agreement, but not quite. Her eyes stared up at me, and just faintly, just maybe… in the murky fog of her gaze, I might have seen her wanting, longing…

“But it would be… nice… to be…” She said. “To be… more again…”

And to that, I didn’t know what to say.

“We shouldn’t be talking about this,” I said, quickeing our pace, immensely regretting ever having brought any of this up. “If we hurry, we might just be able to save the mood. C’mon, I’m sure there’s another game you can break, another prize you can give away.”

But when I turned to her again, glanced at the sullen, silent figure clingling close around my left arm, I knew the world and me had disappeared from her eyes. Down a rabbit hole inside her own head, she went… and whatever the hell she is pondering in there… I’m not sure I even want to know.

I took another step forward. Yet, my foot did not reach. Adalia did not budge.

“If I asked you… to make me normal… again… that I want to be… me… again… if I begged you…” a tilt, and instantly I felt myself completely disappear in the mystifying look she gave me. “...would you help me…?

“Adalia…”

I was beyond disturbed.

“Would you… help… save me…?”

I was beyond unsettled.

What kind of question was this? Didn’t she just tell me she was fine with how everything was? So, where was this coming from? Why was she asking this?

“This is not something I—”

“Just… a question…” She interrupted, assured. “If I wished it… would you… help me…?”

A dilemma. That’s what this was—a dilemma. One beyond any person with a clipboard and a pen could ever come up with. And I really, truly wasn’t sure what the right answer was.

If I chose to help her, if I chose to save her… it’d also likely mean killing her. No, it would be even worse than just killing her.

She knows that, I know she knows that. So that means she didn’t care. If this is what she wanted, if this is what she truly wished for more than anything in the world, than life… then what would I…?

What would I…?

“No,” I hauled us again, stepping forward, and this time felt nothing holding me back. “If you asked, if you wanted… I wouldn’t help you.”

Times like these, rare, unprecedented moments such as these… makes me sincerely glad I was unable to read the look on her face.

The single blink of her gaze.

“I… see…”