View source for 2022-12-24: As Bitter as an Oxtongue

{{Cutscene
|cast=Seolla Schweizer
|location=Tsutsujidai
|summary=Christmas Eve - one of the few days Seolla remembers as important. One of the few reasons she was falsely made important. It brought her into this world, and brought her into hell.
|plot=A Walled Garden
}}
{{PhaseAndTurn
|phase=1
|turn=2
}}
She wouldn't have remembered this day - if it weren't a day that glowed so brightly.

The past is hazy. It disappears more and more every day. <s>--Every reset.--</s> She doesn't remember where it was, besides the most illusory and undescribable of sensations. She doesn't remember who she went with, besides their tired but sturdy warmth...<s>--and the assumption that they'd be her family--</s>

But it glowed. The world was glowing each of those days. The whole world was festooned in lights and sounds - on each of Seolla Schweizer's birthdays.


Maybe up here, beyond the clouds, at the 'ceiling' of this whole place, Seolla might be able to see her. It's an absurd thought, even for someone as eagle-eyed as her - but she entertains it, maybe solely because it feels 'right' to be high above the world, where none of it is incomprehensible, and all of it is far away. A wind - a freedom - even if it's perilous, defying the gravity that holds the world together.

The eerie, blocky, blue-green sky that looms over Tsutsujidai, deeply unnatural to anyone, beckons to Seolla in its own way. Far from the worries and struggles of everyone down there. A little blue ReZEL gets her up there easily - parking on a massive L-shaped overhang, where Seolla sits upon the ledge, feet dangling miles away from the cursed colony below.

Of course she can't see anything useful from up here. Not a single person - barely the movement of a vehicle, and possibly even a mobile suit battle would be imperceptible, unless they were quite immense. Tsutsujidai splays out, active, shuffling ever so slightly, but any given detail is impossible to understand.

...Until, that is, midway through the day.

Despite everything afflicting this space. Despite how locked away from time it has been. Despite the urgency of their situation:

It glows.

So many houses are glittering in a rainbow of colors. So many more lights line the inner streets. It's brighter. It's colorful. It's in at least some small way celebrating that seemingly indomitable December holiday.

Celebrating-

The day-

<s>--that doomed her--</s>

The rigorous tests. The incessant probing. The constant monitoring. Every thought wasn't safe - as though somehow, something about Seolla's very existence was seized upon. Surely there had to be something inside her. Surely some capability - what else would they be looking for?

...But-

It was [her fault] that she was normal.

They were furious that she was normal.

And so, she would have to put in that much more to overcome that sin of normalcy.

<s>--would it have been any better if she was one year older?--</s>

<s>--would it have been worse? to be /precious/ to these people?--</s>

"...this makes me...sixteen now, right?" Seolla asks to herself, hands on her cheeks, staring mesmerized into the glimmering holiday lights below.

"That's one that's important, somehow. It's supposed to be a change, right? ...Is there something I want to ch-"

She can't complete that thought. She can't look inward like that. It'd all fall apart. Just keep reaching upward. Forward. That's the only way.

"...h-hah. Happy...birthday to me." Palms move to clutch her head - pain setting in. Unwelcome sounds barging into her ears. Her own grasping hands plunging from below, dragging her downward - perilously, up here in the inhospitable 'clouds'.

Down below, a handful of 'raindrops' fall that are slightly different...yet in some way, just the same, as the other myriad droplets.