Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 222: When the promise is made, will fate decide?
Destiny is an unexplained premonition that always arrives when people are least prepared, hiding in unknown corners, quietly watching your every choice. In a clump of transparent sunlight that sprinkled on the balcony in childhood, under an ancient tree that grew and flourished endlessly over the years, in a garden where the violet petals were wet by heavy rain... What does the future look like to you?
The sudden knock on the door disturbed Avra's thoughts and brought her back to reality from a deep dream. She couldn't imagine who would be standing in the corridor and knocking on the door that had been sealed in darkness for many years. But there was always a voice in her mind reminding herself not to open the door if she didn't want to lose anything.

When Ovella heard this voice, she felt strange and familiar. Strange because she had never heard this voice among the people around her, familiar because she recognized it, it was clearly her own voice, but it was a voice from a long time ago. It was really strange, the long time ago she thought seemed to have nothing to do with the years she lived in Belman, but was even longer ago, so long ago that she had no impression of it, and could only judge it through some kind of specious premonition.

She said to the voice in her heart: I must open the door.

It's not that she's deliberately rebelling, but if she opens the door, she'll lose something. But at the same time, if she wants to gain something, she can only open the door. Gain victory, gain freedom, gain the trust of her companions... etc. For Olvera now, she feels that these are the most important things to her. No matter what she loses, nothing is more important than gaining them.

The voice stopped talking. Did she agree with Ovella's choice, or did she disagree but had no way to stop it? The princess couldn't figure it out. She didn't even know where the voice came from. Could it be the owner of the dagger in her hand? Just like Alice and the others.

When Ovella came to her senses, she found herself standing at the door, with the silent door in front of her. She stretched out her hand hesitantly, and the cold touch from her fingertips was like the rain flowing through the muddy soil at that time, but the princess had forgotten which day it was. With a little force on her palm, the door made a heavy creaking sound, and slowly opened, presenting the scene behind the door to her white-gold eyes.

Suddenly stunned.

It was a face that was so familiar in her memory, with the same loving care and tenderness. The undisguised warm concern in the eyes made the princess want to cry for a moment; but it was also so unfamiliar. The thin face was full of wrinkles left by the years, as if she had never seen her so old in all her memories.

The once noble and elegant court magician always taught the princess the philosophy of plants and life in the most leisurely manner. Sometimes he would carefully add a cup of black tea for her and ask about her recent situation with a kind and caring tone... Will he feel at a loss when they meet again?
The princess murmured subconsciously, revealing the entire meaning of that person to her life: "Teacher?"

At the same time, a little girl in the void murmured the other identity of that person that everyone knew: "...Mrs. Tree?"

That was the promise she and she made when they stood on the hillside overlooking the dark castle and the entire kingdom ravaged by disaster. It flashed through the princess's head in an instant, but its stay was too short. Perhaps only by dividing this fleeting moment into two thousand equal parts, each as long as a river, and searching carefully in the river for two thousand years, can we find any trace of its existence.

"It's me, Your Highness." The old woman looked at her last thoughts left in the world with loving yet helpless eyes, as if she was looking at a sad past: "I'm here to take you out of this castle."

"Of course." Mrs. Shu couldn't help but laugh: "That's why I came here."

"Yes, remember, Princess, I promised you that one day I would come here and take you away from here, back to the outside world, to live like an ordinary girl and do whatever you want to do."

"Pick me up and leave?"

Such a coincidence always makes people suspect that there is a hand controlling everything. If Metien and Shemi were awakened earlier, if they saw the teacher in Olvera's memory, if they could connect the identities of the two people in time... Such assumptions are actually meaningless, because what happens next will not change. Some plots are not destined to end, but are destined by the ending.

Olvera's teacher is the Tree Lady at the Fairy Sleep Inn?
The companions were all surprised to hear such an astonishing fact. Although they had seen Olvira's teacher in her memory, they had never seen the Tree Lady in person, so they could not connect the images of the two people together. As for Metien and Shemi, although they had seen the Tree Lady, they missed Olvira's memory because they were awakened at the last moment.

Avella asked blankly, "Will you help me, teacher?"

"How could this happen?" Xie Mi also murmured. She didn't know the meaning of the two identities, but she suddenly felt that it was just a coincidence.

Then why am I not happy at all? It seems that it is not a happy thing.

Olvera thought in a daze. At this time, the tree lady gently stretched out her hand, and the dagger in the princess's hand broke away from the five white and slender fingers and fell into the tree lady's hand, where she held it. When her skinny palm touched the wooden handle, every withered flower seemed to raise its head and regain its original vitality.

A look of reminiscence suddenly emerged in Mrs. Shu's eyes: "This is a relic left by my teacher."

Avella opened her eyes wide in disbelief. The teacher's teacher was a very distant concept to her, perhaps even more distant than the outside world. It was better to say that she had never thought that someone as powerful as her teacher would actually have his own teacher. Moreover, why did the items left by the teacher's teacher appear in her hands?
"This is the paper cutter that the teacher used. She loved reading and, of course, creating. She was used to writing down the stories around her and the unrealistic fantasies in her mind. Then she used this paper cutter to carefully cut the pages and bind them into her own book. When she did all this, I was watching by her side." Because of her words, Ovella vaguely saw such a picture in front of her eyes: the teacher's teacher, who must be a very good person, was sitting under the shade of a tree in the bright sunshine, carefully holding a finely shaped paper cutter, cutting off the yellowed and rotten parts of the edges of the pages, and then using a thread to pass through the holes to bind them together to make a new book. While she was doing all this, the young Lady Tree was watching by her side, looking out with curiosity and yearning in her eyes, just like the young princess who held her chin with both hands and looked at her intently when she was brewing black tea in the garden full of violets many years later.

That must have been a very beautiful sight, but Olvera didn't know that some people at that time still looked like trees.

"What happened next?" the princess couldn't help but ask, wanting to know the rest of the story.

"Later, the teacher left and only left me this paper cutter. It rained on the day she left." Mrs. Shu recalled the past and felt that the rain came at the right time, not because she longed to be separated from someone in the rainy season, but because rain was the most appropriate time to leave: "I looked for her for a long time, but I couldn't find her. Finally, I changed the paper cutter she left me into this dagger, hoping to change something in this way."

Should we say it was successful? She didn't know, but at least it wasn't a disappointing ending.

"My Lady Princess," she said to Olvera, "from now on, this dagger will be in your hands."

"Hey, me?" Olvera was at a loss: "Why? Isn't this something very important to the teacher?"

Madam Shu shook her head and said, "It's nothing important. We just want to express our feelings. One day in the future, if you have your own student, please give this dagger to her."

"My...future?" Olvera hadn't figured out what she was going to do after leaving the castle. She only knew that she should fight alongside her companions. Now, the teacher's words seemed to point her in a direction she had never thought of. Should she find a student and teach her everything she knew? Although, she didn't seem to know anything.

She was a little timid and yearning, and reached out to take it, but was gently held down by Mrs. Shu.

"Not now, Your Highness." She smiled gently, "I want to borrow this dagger because I have more important things to do."

What was the more important thing? And why did you say borrow it? Obviously, the dagger was still the teacher's, right? Aoweila was puzzled, but she didn't ask any more questions. She nodded and agreed honestly: "Okay, teacher."

Metien watched this scene in the void, and suddenly felt suffocated, and her eyes and nose were sore. Perhaps she was the only one who felt distressed by the implication of this scene, because Shemi was too young to understand sadness; and others were not involved and could not empathize.

Many scenes and words flashed through my mind: I solemnly took the dagger in her garden and heard her say: I believe you can find the teacher and rescue her from the dark and lonely cage; I discussed with everyone in the lobby of the Fairy Inn and heard Miss Shelia behind the counter say: The Plant Disaster Star can absorb the vitality of plants and transform it into its own power; on the road leading to the cliff, I used the power of the dagger to burn the thorns blocking the way, and muttered to myself when I was confused: Madam Tree herself is a tree, why did she create a weapon that can kill herself?
……

All the confusions were answered at this moment.

"Don't..." The little girl squeezed out two words from her throat with difficulty, but she couldn't penetrate the boundary between reality and illusion and reach the ears of that person. Besides, this was the ending she had been waiting for for a long time, how could she give up so easily just because of these two words?
The next moment, his skinny hands tightly grasped the wooden handle of the dagger, slowly and solemnly turned it over, aiming it at his heart. Then, under the princess' astonished gaze, he stabbed without hesitation.

Chi-

That was not the sound of a sharp blade cutting flesh, but the sound of leaves rubbing against tough tree trunks, so crisp as if its original owner was still using it to cut paper, the sharp edge caressing the smooth paper, separating those soft things cleanly and neatly.

The tremendous vitality accumulated by a tree over thousands of years suddenly rushed towards the tiny dagger, injected into it, and became its new power.

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)