Chapter 9
Agatha listened to the sound of waves hitting the shore and fell into memories. Rio propped up her head and stared at her sideways. Her fingers unconsciously passed through Agatha's silver hair, skillfully separating the tangled knots - this action was so familiar that it seemed to have been repeated thousands of times. The sea breeze blew with a salty smell, and Rio's fingertips lingered in Agatha's hair. Every time she combed her hair, she felt an inexplicable sense of familiarity. Her knuckles occasionally rubbed the skin behind her ears, causing her to tremble slightly. Such an intimate move obviously exceeded the boundaries of ordinary friends.
Rio vaguely felt that they should be more than just friends. But as a cosmic entity, she clearly remembered the iron rule: absolutely no love with mortals. This cognition made her frown in confusion - maybe Agatha was her pet? Just like the little pterosaur she had raised many years ago.
Rio stared at Agatha's out-of-focus pupils, the blue eyes reflected the waves but were empty. She suddenly became sure that Agatha knew who the ghost that was haunting her was. This realization made her temples throb, and the name "Agnes" set off a storm of severe pain in her mind. Her fingers unconsciously tightened between her silver hair. Rio felt the pressure in her sternum increasing, as if countless fragments of memory were trying to break through the imprisonment. Her fingertips began to spasm, and the entangled hair was pulled into a tight arc. A drop of cold sweat slid down the bridge of her nose and trembled at her chin.
Agatha suddenly "hissed" in pain. Rio wanted to let go, but found that her knuckles were stiff. When she struggled to pry open her fingers one by one, she saw a few silver hairs shining and falling to the ground. "Ah! What are you doing!" Agatha covered the back of her head and turned around, but her anger solidified the moment she saw Rio's face clearly. The face of the goddess of death was as pale as paper, and her eyes were abnormally flushed. Agatha's fingertips acted before her consciousness, and she had already held the face covered with cold sweat.
"Don't think about it anymore." She pressed Rio into her shoulder, her voice lighter than the waves. The green robe wrapped around her trembling body, and Agatha's palm slowly stroked down the other's spine, like soothing a frightened animal. Rio's jaw pressed against her collarbone, and his breath was moist and painful. The tide gradually receded. In the regular sound of the waves, Rio's trembling finally subsided.
"Agnes, your hug is very useful," Rio's voice was muffled on Agatha's shoulder. The ghost's body had no temperature, and she couldn't smell the breath in her memory. She slowly stood up, and her fingertips unconsciously hooked the piping of Agatha's purple robe before leaving, "If there is a physical body, the effect should be better."
"Eyre, as the goddess of death, I think you have a better way to help me solve this problem?" Agatha quickly covered up her little disappointment that she didn't want to admit. She wanted to hug her a little longer, but Rio did give her a good opportunity to ask questions, and she didn't want to let it go.
"It's not that hard, but it's not that easy either." Rio tilted her head, stared at Agatha for a while, and asked, "Do you have someone you love? Do they love you?"
Agatha's pupils shrank suddenly. The lethality of this question far exceeded any magic. She took a half step back, and her robe dragged a messy trail on the beach. "What does this have to do with materialization?!" There was a sharpness in her voice as if her heart was exposed.
"Agnes, I don't mean to offend you, but the method is this: you need to get the tears of the person you love, and then drink it on the night of the year when the moonlight is the strongest, and it can't rain all night that night. After drinking it, you have to stay awake in the moonlight and silently recite the spell until the sun rises the next day. Agnes, you must make sure that the person you love loves you, otherwise it will be invalid. The love between you will not only recast your flesh and blood, but also determine how much power you can recover-if it is strong, then you can even get more power than before."
"What is the spell?"
"That's simple, 'Let me come back', that's the spell. But Agnes, what's important is whether you have someone you love and whether they love you." Rio blinked mischievously, her face full of curiosity.
"I never worry about this problem." Agatha rolled her eyes.
A hint of jealousy flashed across Rio's face, but she covered it up in an instant. She muttered "Okay, cool" and was about to stand up and leave, but she was shocked that she was jealous of Agatha's lover - first of all, she didn't love Agatha, so she shouldn't feel jealous; secondly, she couldn't love mortals, and she shouldn't have such feelings towards mortals.
Agatha didn't notice Rio's emotions. She was busy thinking about how to get her tears without Rio's knowledge. Agatha was afraid that Rio would disappear forever after knowing that she was related to her current fragile appearance, and she would never be able to regain her body.
"Goodbye Agnes, duty calls." Rio found an excuse to leave, and she felt a little uncomfortable that Agatha didn't say bye to her. Obviously, Agatha has been immersed in the "resurrection plan". Perhaps Agatha is hoping that she can leave quickly so that she can find her lover instead of being forced to accompany herself like a waste here. For a cosmic entity, whether it is the headache that exists all the time, the amnesiac brain, or another kind of pain caused by recalling memories, any of them is her huge weakness. Now she has three weaknesses at once, which is really no different from waste according to God's standards.
Rio sighed in her heart. She decided to find a time to go back home and talk to her father and brothers and sisters. Her condition seemed to be getting worse and worse. She urgently needed to know what happened to her. She vaguely felt that her family knew what happened better than she did now. Even though she had lost her memory now, she still had a deep impression of her father's indifferent, disappointed, and angry eyes. In the blurred fragments, her mother's sad eyes kept staring at her, and her brothers and sisters lowered their heads to avoid their parents' sight. No one dared to look at her. The goddess of death had never seen this scene since her birth.
Rio raised her hand and waved lightly, and the robe on the beach responded to the call. A faint green light flashed, and the sand attached to the fabric fell down, and the corners of the robe regained their luster. She wrapped the outer robe tightly, and the sound of the fabric rubbing against each other was particularly clear on the silent beach. The moment she turned around, a whisper drifted with the wind: "Te veo querida." Before the voice fell, her figure had dissipated like mist. The last arc of the corner of the robe remained in the air, like an unfinished farewell gesture.
She disappeared too quickly, missing Agatha's surprised look back and silent tears.