Changing World

Part 1

Lizbeth woke up with such a deep sense of disorientation that she couldn't even tell if the first flickers of consciousness around her were part of a lingering dream or a newly born nightmare. For several minutes, she felt a bit lost until she grew accustomed to her surroundings. The remnants of the lethargy she had been immersed in clung to her mind like a thick fog, making any attempt at clarity difficult.

She couldn't remember anything. Had she not dreamed?

She had the feeling that she had dreamed something strange, but she couldn't remember it. Nothing at all. She also had the feeling that she had heard something rude, but that too had been erased.

She slowly opened her eyes, meeting a warm and diffused light, yet strangely foreign.

She wasn't in the capsule. She was in a large and comfortable hospital bed, the room's walls white with a black horizontal line running across the middle.

The room she was in wasn't like the Argentine facilities where she had fallen into a deep slumber.

This room had the air of a private place, isolated from the rest of the world, with a panoramic view to the right of the ocean stretching to the horizon, as if the cloudless sky and sea had merged into an endless mass of blue.

Of course she didn't remember how she had gotten there, and the answers refused to reveal themselves. The place had a peculiar atmosphere—calm, yet unfamiliar as hell, like a refuge from the world, but also welcoming with that view.

"Where am I?" She wondered, touching her clothes and her temple. She had some sensors attached to her, and her skin smelled slightly of soap, although it had no particular odor. Had they been cleaning her? Who? How had she woken up, and when had they taken her out of the capsule?

She checked herself and found she was naked underneath. Her skin looked radiant and smooth, her nails short. How long had she slept?

It was then that an automatic door opened softly, and a familiar figure appeared in the doorway: Leon.

His face, though still familiar, was marked by a tan, as iff time had touched him differently. He had long hair down to his ankles and dressed casually wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, almost making him look like a tourist on a tropical island, though he wore a white robe over it.

"Welcome back, Little Sleeping Siren," he said with a mischievous smile. "It's about time. We've been waiting for you."

Lizbeth tried to speak, her throat feeling a little strange but not dry. She tasted something slightly sweet. Raspberry and honey? She tried to speak but cleared her throat a little.

"Slowly, try to speak slowly. We've been medicating and rehydrating you sufficiently for the last three days. But you'll feel strange."

Leon approached the bed, checked a screen next to it, and then checked some sensors on her arm and temple. "Hold on a moment. We'll take these off later, just let us monitor you a bit longer to make sure everything's good." Lizbeth nodded, unable to find the right words.

How much time had passed? What had she missed?

"W-whetg...Wghat year is yit?" Her throat felt hoarse and she stuttered a little. It almost reminded her of when she had begun to express herself after being freed.

Leon smiled and approached her "2017, sister."

Hey brother, hey sister. Yeah, he was the same Leon.

Lizbeth sat up from the bed and walked over to the window.

"Wow, wait. Not so fast," Leon said, approaching and helping her to reach the window. She didn't feel dizzy or anything like that. Just a bit disoriented.

She looked out the window. She was in a tall building. Below, everything was green—palms and other plants in a city bordering a beach and the sea. The clarity of the day made her eyes burn a little.

"I-I d-don't r-remembeer Tiierra del Fhueego beiing likee thiis. H-Have I b-beeen a-asleep for moore than te-en yeears?"

Leon nodded. "Yep. The capsule started sending signals a month ago, that your metabolism was slowly waking up. There was a year when you almost had one heartbeat per day. Almost a record. And… no, you're not where you fell asleep."

"Whey-ere… wh-ere are we?"

Leon led her back to the bed and sat in the chair next to her. He explained that she had been transferred to a private island in northern New Zealand, a more modern and better-equipped refuge than the center in Argentina, which had become cramped due to the growing number of feys needing shelter.

The world, it seemed, had changed in irreversible ways. Humanity had made big strides in technology, and the world was reconfiguring itself, pushing civilizations toward a future even the almighty wisest algorithms couldn't foresee. Lizbeth—like the rest of the feys—was now in a new era, one she would have to learn how to navigate.

Somehow, during the time she had been submerged in her slumber, the world had moved on without her. The advance of technology, political and social transformations, everything seemed to have evolved in a direction that was baffling.

Leon told her a few things, but the rest she could look up later. She had missed several wars, a couple of economic crises, and some movies. In the hidden world as well. A conflict between vampires who had lost their head leader in 2006—then some conflicts in China, with the appearance of two enormous dragons that could hardly be hidden. And also, a war in the academic field due to discoveries that had, in recent years, delayed the history of civilizations by hundreds of thousands of years.

It seemed that, little by little, all the stories that the occult circles had investigated for hundreds of years were also finding support in certain geological substrates from the past. However, there was no option but to adapt, rebuild, and rewrite history.

Lizbeth, for her part, would also have to do the same, though for her, the only thing she had to catch up on was the decade she had lost. It was a bit disorienting for her, and it was still hard to accept that so much time had passed.

Ten years... did that mean she was already eighty? She felt as strong as she did in the 1940s.

She asked the question that had been on her mind for a while. "H-Has there been any news of Shin?"

Leon pressed his lips together and shook his head. "No, nothing… sorry"

Lizbeth nodded, lowering her head and tapping her fingers.

While Leon ordered her a light late breakfast, to help her stomach adjust, the room's doors opened.

Oxy and Noki appeared and rushed toward her. The two had arrived a few weeks earlier when Leon had notified them of the imminent awakening. To her, it felt almost like it was the day before, but the two girls crying showed her how much time had passed. Rein was busy but would be coming soon.

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The following days passed in a whirlwind of sensations as she caught up with news.

Emmeline had entered her period of hibernation three years ago. She was being cared for in her castle. Lizbeth almost thought it would be fun to go see her, if only to draw something on her former mentor's face while she slept. Although the risk of punishment later was probably not worth it.

Mimi came to visit her, and they spent several weeks together on the island. Lizbeth noticed she looked a bit tired, but when she tried to inquire into her life, Mimi simply sighed and with a smile, explained that she had been traveling and taking care of personal matters. When Lizbeth offered her help, Mimi shook her head. That hadn't changed. There was a part of her that she kept closed off— and she made no effort to hide it. If it really had to do with a memory or something like that, it was better not to press the issue.

Then Rein came to visit her too and apologized. In recent times, she had been immersed in books and travels related to forbidden archaeology. She and others of her kind had found some data about her type of fey, and it was a bit strange. But it would take more years of research and discoveries to corroborate the information. Dragon feys could be a species even older than Homo sapiens. It was to be seen what kind of face the world would make when it found out about it.

***

During the following months, she went through a rehabilitation program on the island. It consisted of physical training and study to help her adapt. It was a basic program that had been developed a few years earlier to acclimatize feys who were found, although in her case it was more focused on physical exercise and cultural awareness to make sure everything was okay. Her voice worked wonderfully, and she really felt like a teenager.

She didn't know what to do, so she would stay on the island for at least a few months. Besides, being with Leon, the girls, and her acquaintances felt better than wandering around. Unfortunately, Mimi left quite soon.

Lizbeth discovered that due to the two economic crises, her savings had mysteriously multiplied several times. What Gehirn had done, she didn't know, but it seemed that all who had entrusted their money to him had received juicy dividends. The huge multinational company he had created, called ZAIEN, had also multiplied. Did Gehirn intend to take over the world?

Although that changed a bit the following year.

In 2018, while she was still in the island, Lizbeth learned that Gehirn had been attacked by an extremist anti-technology group. He had survived, but part of his memories had been lost. A collective that, in their fury to destroy what they considered a threat to humanity, had raided his mansion, stripping him not only of his security but also of an important part of his identity.

The details were vague, fragmented like a distant dream, but what Lizbeth knew for certain was that her friend, and kinda little brother, had lost part of his memories, plunging him into a darkness that nothing could illuminate. He remembered many things,—but others seemed to have been lost forever.

She had thought about visiting him, to talk, share what she knew about him, and maybe, somehow, help him recover some memories. Fortunately, he remembered her and the others. But others circumstances prevented it. Gehirn had moved to the United States. The Kingdom, with its complex politics, now treated Gehirn as a figure of national importance, due to his close relationship with the powerful ZAIEN company. She decided that the best course of action was to wait.

Meanwhile, the hidden world remained immersed in shadows for the public. However, they were no longer completely isolated from humanity. Although they lived in secret, hidden in the depths of human society, it was estimated that more than 200,000 feys inhabited the planet clandestinely, not counting the unknown ones and the more than 50,000 human espers and other magic users.

Some continued to choose to live among humans, adopting various identities to remain unnoticed, while others kept their distance, establishing secret, nomadic, or sedentary communities in remote places, such as the private island where Lizbeth had awakened. However, despite the considerable number, the feys remained an endangered species—a race trapped between the mark of the past and the uncertainties of the future.

How many people specifically knew about the occult world, including occult circles, academics, magicians and the like, as well as people in positions of power and related families? Who knew, but it couldn't have been more than a few million—possibly not even ten million.

***

Around 2019, she decided it was time to move on. She wanted to travel again, and for a few years she did so without any problems.

During that time, Lizbeth found herself involved in her first new adventures to stop an esper trafficking ring in Russia alongside Nitocris. This led them to a risky mission that almost lasted half a year. After finally reuniting with Gehirn, he gave her clues about the attack on him. Along with a group of feys, they managed to dismantle the terrorist group—but doubts persisted about who had financed the group. Not only for the attack on Gehirn, but also against other small companies around the world that sought unity and aimed to bring the feys into the light once and for all.

Between 2022 and 2024, Lizbeth regained the joy of traveling without a fixed destination with her daughters, enjoying once again a relative calm. They spent most of ther time in the Pacific, traveling the islands and ancient cities, and got lost once more in the vastness of the world, letting the wind decide their next destination. In mid-2024, they split up. It was time for Rein to return to her studies. Noki and she traveled together a little longer, but eventually Noki decided to stay in a commune for a while since she had just met someone. Lizbeth wanted to continue visiting acquaintances, so she carried on.

She reunited with old friends, discovered new hidden corners of the Earth, and for the first time in a long time, felt that her life was not trapped in an endless quest. She had accepted that some answers might never come,—but that didn't mean she couldn't keep moving forward.

However, in 2025, there was some few changes. At some point during her journey alone in Canada, Lizbeth found Mimi. It was an unexpected reunion near the place they had live in the past, but no less intense for that. The woman she had known before was still there, with her loose hair and that look that always hid secrets, but something in her felt… different. It wasn't a physical thing, but a sensation, a distance that had nothing to do with space but with something deeper, as if the Mimi she remembered had stayed in another time—and this new version of her was trapped in thoughts she wasn't ready to share.

She had become much more cryptic than before. It was as if she wasn't just protecting her own secrets, but also protecting Lizbeth by not telling her.

Still, between the shadows of that uncertainty, they shared nights that burned with the same passion as before. The attraction between them hadn't faded with the years, and when they were together, the world could be reduced to the warmth of their bodies. But Lizbeth didn't take long to notice that, when the sun rose again, something in Mimi would fade. Her smiles were shorter, her gaze wandered into the distance more often and—although she never rejected her company—she didn't seem completely present either.

Lizbeth tried to ask her what was going on, but every time she did, Mimi would divert the conversation or respond with vagueness. It wasn't an open coldness, but something more subtle, as if she were trapped in something too big to put into words. Lizbeth knew she could insist, but also understood that Mimi wouldn't tell her anything until she was ready. So, for the moment, she limited herself to being by her side, waiting for the moment when the truth, whatever it was, would finally come to light.

That had been going on for so many years... but it was true that as they got older, they seemed to make time for their issues. Well, she thought, smiling, what did it matter? They could look eternally young, but in their minds they were really old, even though internally they didn't feel that way. It was hard to explain. The sense of curiosity, restlessness, freedom was always there, but so was the presence of adulthood. That could be due to brain chemistry, as Leon and some doctors had explained to her. They were aware of being older, but with the chemistry of a person in their early twenties.

Mimi, for her part, also missed Shin. That was something Lizbeth could see in her eyes every time they spoke of him, in the way her voice softened when remembering him. But, unlike Lizbeth, Mimi hadn't spent years searching for him. If she had done so, she would know from her connections. Mimi had not been seen anywhere that she knew of. Instead, she had moved on, carving her own path in secret and trying to stay out of others' problems, keeping others out of hers. It wasn't that she didn't care, but she had decided not to get trapped in the uncertainty of his whereabouts. For her, the world kept turning, and the only thing she could do was follow its rhythm.

During those months together, they shared moments of tranquility, walks at sunset, and conversations about the changes in the world. Lizbeth enjoyed Mimi's company, but couldn't ignore the feeling that something invisible was standing between them. It wasn't just the absence of Shin, there was something more, a shadow in Mimi's thoughts that never seemed to dissipate. It almost felt like when Shin had carried the uncertainty of his curse and how it could affect others. Lizbeth wanted to ask her once more, but in the end decided to respect her silence.

And so, as so many times before, the moment to say goodbye arrived. There were no tears or empty promises, only a silent understanding that their paths, at least for now, needed to part. They embraced one last time, with the certainty that they would meet again in some corner of the world, at some other moment in next years.

See you later...

Lizbeth watched her walk away, her silhouette fading in the distance, and for the first time in a long while, felt a void in her chest that had nothing to do with Shin. She sighed, accepting that the world kept moving, and so should she. And so, with the night breeze on her face, she set off on her own path once again.

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