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You wouldn’t have been older than 3 when your grandpa bought her home. She was a sleeping princess, golden dress and long flowing hair.
He had kept her hidden away in his workshop area, up on the table where you wouldn’t have been able to see from your position on the floor. If ever you had tried to crawl over to your grandpa, bec had zapped you back to your spot on the workshop floor or your bed, far too big for you right now. In hindsight it probably for the best that he had done that.
When you finally saw her again a small part of you hated him for what he did. Placed in the same manner as all of his other stuffed mummies and dead game trophies. But you couldn’t hate him – because if you started hating him then that’s just one step forwad to becoming what she is. The rooms below yours start to fill with his collections.
That was the night you first awoke on prospit, and for a hot minute – you think the yellow princess has drifted downstairs into your head and is showing you her last memories. Your eyes still shut tight you can feel it-
Bones aching like you fell down too many stairs? Tick.
Feeling of something dripping down your face? Tick.
Imminent sense of dread? Double tick.
But you’re still there. When the initial panic subsides and you realise that you have spent a lot longer than whats probably normal dying (your grandpa always liked to elaborate on the gorey parts of his adventures sometimes) – you creak your eyes open. Theres a pink room, or maybe yellow? Rays of light shine through large open windows – just like the ones in your tower and your body is warm where the light touches.
The rooms a perfect mirror of what yours would be at this very moment if you were awake – your favourite squiddle still tucked in its rightful place on the pillow next to one of your manthro chaps.
You are alive and unharmed, there is no pain.
And then you remember a yellow princess sleeping in your uncles arms.
The dried blood in her hair, the burns on the hem of her dress.
You remember the girl in the attic.
She had to come from somewhere afterall.
You are only three years old, and yet you know that one day (when you are a bit older) you will die.
⭐✨ { 🌙 } ✨⭐
Still too young to understand why your grandpa acted the way he did (and if youre being honest, youll probably always be too young), you watched with keen interest while he built a robot body in the image of the sleeping princess in the attic, stitches going down her cheeks like tears. It took him three months – most of which for you was spent in complete ignorance of this, theres far much better things to do than watch your grandpa zap himself with complicated electronics and your now four year old mind is better entertained elsewhere.
When he was finished with her – she went in the room underneath yours, placed into the closet and sealed away. You never saw her again after that for a long time, bec zapping you away every time you tried to pry the door open when your grandpa wasn’t looking.
Three jades in a tower, only one awake.
Later when youre around 10, still convinced that the blue doll had killed your grandpa, you sort through some of the stuff that had become littered around the tower – sitting up in front of the tv until your eyes burned watching through old vhs tapes he had taken on his adventures. This is the closest you’ve ever gotten to leaving your island while awake in your whole life, you have to keep pushing bec out of the way from where he tries to sit in front of the tv. You watch them until the image is burned in your brain and his voice echoes in your ears, rewinding again and again and again and again. You bring down your blankets and pillows and just go to sleep with the tv on in the background.
When you wake up again, you are back in your bed, the tv turned off, the night warm.
For a moment you think that your uncles back again from the dead – maybe something went wrong when he died and now hes alive again.
You don’t know what youd say to him even if that was possible.
Its now you realise that he probably killed himself rather than deal with all of this on top of the needs of a 4 year old child. The dolls made of fabric and stuffing – theres no way she could ever hold a gun let alone use it.
You work on the next box of tapes.
⭐✨ { 🌙 } ✨⭐
When the pain behind your eyes builds so great that you cant look at the screen anymore without feeling like youll throw up, you lie down and finally let yourself process the mass of information. You grandpa had been watching how you moved at night – the robot version of the yellow princess had been mirroring your dreaming selves movements and copying them out so that your grandpa could record every single thing that you had done.
That night when you dream, you don’t remember any of that – and so you continue to play amongst the clouds and yellow tiles and pillars of the golden dreaming world.
And the next day? Same old same old.
The migraines mostly faded by now but the knowledge doesn’t leave so easily.
You can still remember the sleeping princess in the attic, shes been sitting up there since your uncle had placed her there – surrounded by confusing big black windows and a stuffed dog that looks so much like bec.
Now that you know what the robot was for you don’t know if it was her or bec who carried you to bed each night for the past week.
That’s when the narcolepsy starts you think – you tried reading about it online now that you had finally figured out how to use one of the spare computers your grandpa had left lying around. Something about a lack of sleep and energy. You cant remember eating all that much during your hunt for clues in your grandpas scattered left behind boxes so both of those probably make sense.
It doesn’t get better though, that’s the problem.
⭐✨ { 🌙 } ✨⭐
Okay so heres the thing.
Age 13 and fingers still numb from snow – you stand before the sleeping princess. Youre the same height now, if you were to stand on her pedestal that is (you don’t do that). And now so many threads that have been lying scattered around your life – so many plans that your uncle had made for you – they’ve all gathered together.
The sleeping princess, yellow dress and black hair, now sleeping once more.
The robot following her every movement exploding – destroying your bedroom in the process.
Theres bec in front of you – all electricity and radiation and static and you still cant understand him.
John had used ashes of his grandma, rose her dead cat. Daves alternate timeline self had jumped into his kernelsprite and become part bird – something that still confuses you to think about it.
You’ve never understood what bec had been trying to tell you.
The yellow princess had died too soon – you cant wait to meet her.