We stopped at the clock tower; a man with ginger hair behind me was panting heavily. "Right, that's far enough," said the green-haired woman; we didn't know her yet—but I could sense a familiar aura about her.
"H-Hey," Robin managed to say between gasps, "Did we really have to run this far?!" He protested because we'd been running for nearly half an hour.
"They might well have spies following us," the woman replied, looking back at me with a loving smile—and to be honest, being smiled at like that by a woman I didn't even know gave me quite a shiver.
"Thank you for helping us, Miss…?" The man with the dark brown hair gestured to the woman to tell us her name—well done, Romeo!
The woman in front of us, hearing this, tilted her head slightly before chuckling softly. "I must look very different, mustn't I, to have left you speechless like that" she said, and that left us even more surprised and curious about the figure in front of us.
"Oh! You're Mrs Jane, aren't you!" Robin guessed, clapping his fist against his palm as if he'd come up with the most brilliant guess in the world. Even the woman could only smile in bewilderment at Robin's absurd guess—and who on earth is this Miss Jane?!
"Really? I thought she was my neighbour, wasn't she?" Romeo responded to Robin's guess; hearing all those wild guesses really got on my nerves—why was I surrounded by such idiots?
But the woman in front of us just laughed so hard that tears streamed from her eyes; she wiped them away with her finger. "Your team really is very entertaining, isn't it? Pyxis is the best!" she said, and that immediately caught our attention—a crazy assumption formed in my mind.
"…You know our team's name?" I asked, in disbelief—our team had only completed one mission; we shouldn't have become famous so quickly.
"Of course, I'm the one who came up with it, after all." Hearing that made my heart nearly stop beating; everyone fell silent, waiting for her to continue. She looked at us, still with that smile that now felt iconic, before revealing the truth: "Hello~ Mother Goose is back~!"
No one answered; the silence was broken only by the sound of a nearby bird singing. "Eh? Why are you all standing there like statues—" Before she had a chance to express her confusion, we had already shouted.
"WHAT?!?!?!" Robin and I screamed, whilst smoke seemed to pour from Romeo's head—so much had happened in such a short space of time that it had taken him by storm.
Romeo shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Wait, are you Mother Goose, whose body we cremated a while ago?" He tried to confirm, whilst Robin and I were still gaping, trying to process it all.
"Thank you for cremating my old body," she said before placing her hands on her hips, "Hmm, how should I explain this to you lot…" With this youthful body, she clearly seemed far more expressive and animated than before.
After speculating for a while, it suddenly dawned on her. "Simply put, if I die—my soul lives on and will form a new body, but only after my previous body has completely disintegrated." That was why, when she died, she'd wanted to be cremated.
"W… Why didn't you ever tell me about this?" I asked, my fists clenched—all my previous grief and tears felt pointless now that I thought I'd lost someone precious to me once again.
Mother slowly approached; she seemed to understand what I was feeling right now. When she was just an inch away from me, I instinctively took a step back—my eyes fixed on the ground, not daring to meet hers.
She then knelt down and her arms enveloped me in a warm embrace. "I'm sorry, sweetheart... I want to apologise for everything I've done—including what concerns Red," she said softly, with a mother's tenderness.
"I lied when I said that Holmes was also a Fable so that you could get to know each other quickly..."
"I never imagined that members of The False Epilogue would turn up and go so far as to injure you so severely"
"And the reason I didn't tell you that I could return from the dead was simply that I hadn't found the right moment to say so"
Her embrace grew tighter and the warmth grew stronger; I was reminded of the moment when she first reached out to me and offered me a job. At a single glance, I could immediately sense that she was a kind old lady, and I had never once looked down on her or said anything bad to her.
"Foolish…"
"Forgive my foolishness, Alice."
"Fool, fool..."
"FOOL!" I shouted before wrapping my arms round her again. I was torn between wanting to get angry and wanting to cry, but I decided not to let my emotions get the better of me.
The pain of being lied to by someone I trusted is still there—but at least the joy that a precious person in my life is still alive is enough to overshadow it.
It was then that I realised there were two men watching the scene; I quickly grabbed Mother's shoulder and pulled her back. She was a little startled by my actions, but before she could ask anything, I'd already cleared my throat. "Anyway, there's something I'd like to tell you about Red."
"Go on," she said, after which I began to tell her about the twin Admetus had met. Hearing my whole story left Mother speechless, as if she were trying to process it all.
Once I'd finished speaking, Mother stood up again and began to ponder the possibility that Red really did have a twin. "She's never said a word to me about having a twin," she remarked—so she hadn't told Mother either.
"Perhaps the girl who's thought to be his twin is just someone who happens to look very similar to Red by pure coincidence," Robin suggested. "I mean, we have a living example right here," he said, pointing both hands towards me.
Robin leaned in slightly towards me. "Excuse me," he said before adjusting the fringe to cover my left eye—so that I'd look just like Red. "Blimey… I didn't expect you two to look so alike."
I now had the same style of fringe as Red. Mother looked at me for a moment, and that's when I had an idea, I walked over to Mother. "Let's just match their surnames!" I said, and that immediately caught everyone's attention.
Red had once mentioned that she had a full name, though she'd never told me what it was. "Mother, you know her full name, don't you?" I asked, and it took her by surprise.
"Oh? I thought you knew," she said, and I shook my head—seeing this, she put her hands behind her back, ready to reveal the real name of the friend who'd been with me for half a year but hadn't wanted to reveal her full name.