Finding

"How peculiar." Niel's grandma spoke softly, her eyes still closed.

"Where you came from, your past, it is our future." Her wrinkled brows opened slowly, revealing dark brown eyes that seemed to perceive everything.

Hearing her words, Agate was slightly startled as his conjecture seemed to be somewhat true, but her words after that made him even more surprised.

"But it's very weird, I can sense that you have been here in this town in the future before traversing back here, but the place you claim to be from, I can't see it." 

"What do you mean?" Agate exhaled slowly, adjusting his emotions.

"It does not exist in my vision..." She paused for a bit before slowly continuing, "No, it's more like it should not exist."

"Grandma, what does that even mean? Then can he even go back ?" 

"That, he should be able to. He will soon enough." She paused, then directed her eyes from Niel to Agate, reminding him softly, "It seems like the time of both worlds runs parallel to each other, so when the sun settles down, you will naturally be able to go back. Whatever it is that brought you here, can you describe how it was?"

"It was a strange formation, painted with deep red blood color, in a wide circular shape. There were jumbled scriptures, like detailing in between every space." Agate looked at Niel, and while pointing at him, he continued, "It was drawn on the wall of his house, and the most weird part was that there was this shiny stone, in between."

Niel felt a little ick knowing it was on his house; no wonder Agate was standing outside dumbfoundedly. 

"Hmm, that's weird. I don't think I have ever come across such formations before, but I will surely look into it for you." Agate's brows raised slightly, looking at Niel's grandma, "What do you mean, to look into it for me?"

She just smiled amiably and said unhurriedly, "Your time here for now is coming to an end, but I have got a feeling you will be back, maybe if you go to my house, you will find something? But for this formation and its purpose, I still need to look into it a bit."

She averted her eyes from him and looked out of her small window up at the gradually darkening sky, and said in sudden realization, "Oh, yeah, and I think the journey back will give you something important!"

"Something important? What is it?" as his voice had landed, he started to feel a weird sensation as his vision started to blur, and before he fell into the same darkness, he vaguely saw Niel and his grandma frozen like a paused scene.

Just when he thought he would completely black out again, he felt a strange shift, as if something had changed, but he could not point a finger at what and how at all; it was just a subtle feeling.

Soon, he realized what had changed; his form seemed to have vanished. No, it was as if he was merged in the highest point of the world, overlooking everything down below, and all he could see were very thin lines, more like puppet threads, attached to each person's head. If he were in his body, his eyes would have definitely turned big with shock, because on top of all this uncanny scene, what made him more shocked was how some faces were so familiar, amidst the crowd, he could see himself, his father, his brother, his mother, and some vaguely familiar presences, who had no face at all, and all of them had a perceptible thread stretching up in where, no one could see. 

With that, he slowly felt the surroundings turn dark as his last image remained of his mother slowly dying away, because of his medicine...but he could swear that before everything vanished, he could see when he was giving that medicine to his mother the thread upon him, which was the thinest out of all the people present there, move ever so slightly as if controlling his actions.