terminal://memory_room/lily_f.moriarty/opening_zero.log

access.level: residents

Everything was wonderful.

Of course Lily knew this place! She had dreamed of it; or no, she had invented it; or no, it was something else!

Sitting on the cobblestones, she couldn't quite remember anymore, but what did it matter? Everything was wonderful. The statues! The fountain! The park! Lily starts running in every direction. It's another dream, isn't it? It's probably a dream, since this world doesn't exist.

As she runs, she gets flashes. She doesn't remember yesterday, or anything before that. But she remembers this world; that much, she's certain of.

She retraces her steps, the steps of a stranger who had nevertheless existed in a yesterday that is no longer there.

Over there, there's Elwynn Forest. She knows there are wolves, Defias, perhaps even worse things! She stays within Stormwind's great arms. This is no time to end up in the graveyard.

She finds her way along the canals. The Trade District, the Mage Quarter... The Dwarven District, here! At the sight of the Deeprun Tram entrance, she hears a distant laugh, an explanation that belongs to her as much as it eludes her.

Someone is supposed to be here with her. A boy. Maybe? Oh, she can't remember.

She doesn't search any longer. Because she remembers this tram! She remembers sitting on the metal benches, and that gnome who absolutely insisted that someone help him cook rats... Really? Did that really happen? Oh, she can't remember.

The idea that this world wasn't supposed to exist, and above all that she wasn't supposed to be here, slips away as she sits down on the cold metal. Of course she's always lived here. Naturally! She remembers it as though it were yesterday. She's going to Ironforge. That's her decision, by the way. She probably has some very important problems to sort out in Ironforge!

Her pink shoes swing a few centimeters above the floor.

The tram arrives. She gets into the front car, because it's the best place. She knows that, too. The place where you can see everything, the most beautiful place. But this thought isn't hers. Where is that boy who patiently explained where everything belonged, the unspoken rules of this world?

When the tram starts moving, her tiny hands grip the railing tightly. She mustn't fall, oh no! Otherwise, she'll have to walk for hours through the tunnel. It's happened to her before. Wait, really?

Oh, never mind. The tram races along at full speed. Being here, in the front car, on this empty tram, is so much better than-

Than what, exactly?

Lily tries to grasp that distant memory, that image of the Tram existing behind a pane of glass. She can't manage it, because here she is in Ironforge.

Emerging from the tunnel is a ceremony. She's stopped running; you don't run when entering the great city of Ironforge.

Tinker Town. These characters- no, these gnomes, these dwarves, who collect cloth! She hopes that one day she'll have enough cloth to earn the respect of these people. She remembers that, too. That was her goal.

She wants to have a good reputation. So she keeps walking as though the city were a cathedral.

There's something strange about the sound of hammers striking, about the distant voices, about the suffocating heat of Ironforge. There's something strange about the way people ignore her just as much as they stare at her.

The music is missing.

The thought came like a mistake. Lily turns it over and over in her mind. What music? And yet she remembers. The music, the- Lily tries to catch the thought, which behaves like a star you try to look straight at.

She forgets about the music as she enters the Great Forge. She glances at the gryphons; she knows their flight path between Stormwind and the dwarven city by heart. The boy's voice returns. With every new discovery, it returns. The skull levels!

But Lily brushes the information aside, just like the thought whispering to her that she's discovering a place she's supposed to be returning to. She brushes it all aside: her pink shoes, the braid she doesn't remember making in her hair, her pockets containing nothing but a candy wrapper and not a single copper coin. She brushes aside the boy with the blurred edges, the music that no longer exists and yet is somehow supposed to exist, perhaps; she brushes aside yesterday.

She brushes aside yesterday.

She starts running again.

Everywhere. The gates, the icy breath of Dun Morogh coming in like a draft to break through the burning atmosphere of Ironforge, the Commons, the Forlorn Cavern. She remembers that strange murloc standing there, waiting for something. A password, a code? He has a gift she can't get, doesn't he? Oh, never mind. She steals a moment to pet the gryphons as she passes them again. What fun she's having here! She goes around the city three times. She talks to passersby who offer her drinks, food, swords. But she doesn't have a single copper coin; she'd have to collect some from...

From what? Wolves? Wolves don't have pockets.

Never mind.

After a while, the city wears itself out, just like the soles of her shoes. She sits down on the ground and mutters.

– Shadow Bolt!

She thrusts her hands forward.

– Come on, Shadow Bolt!

But nothing happens. Maybe she hasn't got the position right. She stands up again; her hands face the ceiling of Ironforge, she closes her eyes, she concentrates, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt, Shadow Bolt... Immolate? Curse of Agony?

Her hands remain empty.

She catches herself looking for the boy. The boy, the boy... She can't remember his name, and yet names flicker past; Teïla, Aiedail, Sphéno, who are these people?

She runs again, but it isn't the same kind of running anymore. She needs the boy to help her. He knew everything, he knew all of it, the rules, the paths, he'd know why she can't cast spells anymore! The boy with the blurred edges, the boy who looks like smoke, so clear for a fraction of a second and then suddenly it all falls away.

Children don't think in terms of what is rational and what isn't. Children run in the direction they've chosen. So Lily runs. The boy must be somewhere, because she remembers him... Does she remember him?

She asks the passersby. A boy, a boy, she gestures frantically, some ignore her, others repeat the same things over and over.

Darnassus might be the answer. She remembers entering Darnassus with him, their shoes off, walking slowly through the elven city, the music. The music.

Then she remembers the road, so long and perilous, the emptiness in her hands.

She doesn't even have a staff to strike her attackers with.

The feeling that she has no business being here forces its way into her head like a shock wave. It's like a new truth replacing the previous one. She has no business being here. But where should she be, then?

She remembers the anxiety. The fear, fear everywhere, fear like a slow and insidious drowning. Fear is here, but it was there yesterday, too.

Everything is suspicious. The walls, the gryphons, these people like shadows, like puppets, the heat, the sound of hammers that never stops, steady, endless, like a macabre drone, the vibrations beneath her pink shoes, something is wrong, something is out of place, but what?

The dream distorts, deforms, Lily tries to brush the fear aside and put it where it belongs, with the music, the boy, and everything that's wrong with this strange day.

But Lily is lost, isn't she? If she has nowhere to go, if she's searching for something she can't name, she's lost, isn't she?

Lost children, what happens to lost children? They die, they hide, oh, she doesn't know, Lily doesn't know, Lily knows that lost children never see their parents again, that they get captured, that the whole world is nothing but one immense danger closing in around her.

She hides, so small, tiny, without a sound, in a corner of the Military Ward. The boy's name is so close. It stays there, hovering, like a ghost she could almost touch, if only her arm, her fingers, if only her hand could reach a little further, just there.

A large room beneath the eaves and blue carpeting.

– Well now, wee one? What're ye doing hiding down there?

The dwarf's great, rough, stone-hard hand closes around her wrist. He pulls her out of her hiding place. Magni Bronzebeard examines her clothes. How strange, is this the latest fashion in Stormwind? He tilts his head, scratches his beard.

– Ye're lost, wee one?

She's lost, isn't she? Words have abandoned her.

She nods frantically, as though the apparition might vanish if she can't make herself understood.

– Well, come along then, wee one. Can't leave ye all alone and lost in my great Ironforge, can we?

When Lily still doesn't move, he picks her up. She's so small, so light, Lily's hands get tangled in his coarse hair as she clings to the dwarf's back.

He pats her shoulder.

– Don't ye worry now, wee one. Ye're not lost anymore. Ye're with good old Magni.