She's forgotten that she's forgotten things, or at least people tell her that she has...but this time, she remembers that she's forgotten something. Something big.
Something...important. Like breakfast. Forgetting breakfast would be like forgetting your feet, Tao never forgets breakfast or her feet, but she's forgotten something close to it.
There's a restaurant in town that makes her stomach squeeze shut, there's a road she doesn't walk down alone because it feels too wide for just one person. She thinks there's a patch of grass in Kaka Village that should be pressed down and worn but there isn't.
Tao asks people, she asks the kittens but they knew less then her, she asks Tora but she just shakes her head and tells Tao to take a nap. She goes into town, Scruffy Man holds his head like it aches but doesn't know, Hat Lady goes through a bunch of papers in her big office but apparently the papers don't know anything either.
Tao bursts into Boobie Lady's place, not even knocking even though she knows she needs to knock because at this point forgetting has stopped bothering her and is just making her angry. And Tao doesn't get angry, she doesn't like it, doesn't understand it, this coiling feeling in the bottom of her stomach food can't reach.
She yells and screams, paces back and forth while Boobie Lady and her squiggly looking husband try to calm her down. Tao thinks-is sure she's forgetting something important.
No. Someone important. She tries to force her mind to make an image, an outline, something anything so she can remember. She thinks she's forgetting a friend. Tao forgets a lot of things but friends stay, friends don't just leave her head she won't let them.
Squiggly adjusts his glasses and tries to tell Tao that if she forgot something it must not be important, because you remember things that are important. Tao hears the words, hears the kindness behind them, and she feels her head explode and her chest clench and she lunges.
"FRIENDS ARE IMPORTANT! TAO DOESN'T FORGET HER FRIENDS!"
She's held back before her claws or teeth can do anything, but she struggles and yowls because she's never been this angry, doesn't know what to do with angry, so her head simply lets go of control and lets her burning gut tell her limbs what to do.
"Tao! Tao listen-!" Litchi (Litchi, apparently that's her name when Tao is too angry to be friends with anyone) holds her back, stronger then she looks and kinder then Tao thinks she deserves, Litchi keeps her claws and teeth away from doing anything she can't fix, and then her voice hitches, "Tao...Tao you're crying...Tao look at me..."
She can't, she didn't notice the big hot wet tears rolling down her face until Litchi pointed them out and now Tao feels stupider then she's ever felt in her life and for once she can't bare to be so stupid, how stupid could she be that she could forget a friend?
A friend with no face and no voice and no shape. She can't remember a thing, all she remembers is that there's a hole in the world that somebody should be filling and only she seems to notice.
She struggles out her grip and runs, runs until her limbs burn and her lungs ache but her tears keep rolling down, weighing her down. Somehow, her limbs carry her to the grassy hill outside home. Its late, all the street lights are out, the black so thick Tao thinks she could scratch a hole in it.
She looks down at her feet, sees a patch of grass gently blowing in the night air. The grass looks too alive, the patch of grass doesn't look like anyone has ever slept there. That's wrong. Tao knows somewhere deeper then her stomach that the grass looks wrong.
She pulls out her claws, and digs. She digs deeper and deeper and deeper, if she digs deep enough maybe the grass will tell her what she's forgotten, maybe the dirt will give her a face, maybe the night air will give her an echo of a voice.
"He's not there." A voice colder then shadows says from the lip of her hole, and Tao slowly turns to look up. She sees a small figure clad in red and black, red eyes piercing the thick dark, holding a fancy umbrella. "It's a parasol." The figure corrects, in the same voice Litchi uses when she teaches Tao how to write. The figure, the shadow girl, reaches her free hand down, "Here, let me help you up."
Tao looks at her dirty paws, caked in dirt and dead grass, looks at the hole she dug. The shadow girl is right, whoever Tao was looking for, he isn't here. She reaches up, and the little shadow pulls her up with a strength Tao doesn't expect.
"...Tao's forgotten someone." Her voice sounds hoarse and rough, her face feels wet from tears and mud, Tao is done being confused, done being sad, doesn't have the energy for anger, now she's...empty. Empty in a way food can't fill. "Why can Tao forget? He...there was someone important, Tao knows there was...how could she forget? Tao always remembers her friends..."
The little girl's face twists at the words, looking like there's something crawling in her stomach that she can't let out. "...It isn't that you've forgotten..." She starts, Tao thinks each word was picked in advance. "It is just that...you can't remember. No one can."
Tao feels the tiniest wick of fire in her gut again, feels a hiss on the back of her tongue, "why?" The little girl doesn't flinch away, her red dagger eyes never moving away from Tao's face, "why not? Did someone take the memory away?"
"...Yes."
The hiss moves forward, "Was it you?"
The daggers grow sharper, killing the hiss before it could go any further, "No." Shadow Girl sighs, reaches her hand out again, puts it against the side of Tao's wet face, her skin feels like an ice pack, Tao feels herself slump, "...this is just a bad dream. You shouldn't torture yourself for what you can't remember..."
Tao tries to focus, but every limb is filling with stones, she tries to focus on the hole where her friend should be, tries to picture his eyes, or his hair, or his smile. Nothing, as if something bigger then she can possibly imagine is blocking the way, a wall her claws will never ever cut through.
"...I'm sorry." Shadow Girl's voice struggles around the word, as if she never needed to apologize for anything, or never thought she needed to. Tao thinks, in the bleary mess of her own mind, that she sounds lonely. "Sleep, and forget that you've forgotten, sleep...and live."
Tao wakes up, her eyes are heavy, there's dirt on her claws. She's laying down in the grass outside the village. She yawns, rubs at her aching eyes. She looks to the side and sees a very deep hole in the hill.
She blinks at it, wonders if she dug it up because someone told her there was treasure buried there...she sighs in disappointment when she looks inside and sees nothing but dirt. Tao flops on her back and looks up at the early morning sky, she wonders why her throat aches, why her muscles feel tense, why her eyes burn.
...Taokaka thinks she's forgotten something.
