She nodded. ”I can’t remember what my name is and I haven’t given myself a new one. I feel like I need...to earn it. Or remember what it was before, if I can.” Her argument suddenly sounded a lot weaker next to her fears.

The goose hesitated when Giggle offered to look into her past. She’d had the offer before - Tyr had told her that he could touch her and see who she’d been before, just as he’d touched the gemstone that now hung around her neck, but she’d been too scared back then. Everything had still been new and she didn’t know what she was doing. She was still content with staying nameless.

But things were different now and she needed to know. It was like an itch that wouldn’t go away and Giggle had even told her herself - the past would always be following her. That’s what the bones had said, at least. Still, she was scared out of her wits. Because what if her past was not what she thought? What if it was the worst possible scenario?

What if her memory wipe...had been a punishment for some reason?

She closed her eyes and took a shaking breath. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if it was a punishment or a coincedence or whatever else it could be. She had to know. And here Giggle was offering a chance. ”I...if you can...thank you. I would appreciate that a lot, if you can.” She stepped forward and then hesitated again. ”If it’s bad...please don’t hide anything from me. If I’m getting the truth, I want the whole truth.”

The goose felt nothing when Giggle pressed against her feathers with her nose. She had thought there's be something, some kind of indicator to say that the magic had worked, but there wasn't anything. Nothing but Giggle going still as the memories flashed through her head. She blinked and waited, incresingly impatient, for what the hyena would show her.

And when she did, the goose froze. She was...younger? She didn't know exactly how old the Hyena was, but Oliver had put it into her head that she was old - very old. Ancient even and her memory loss was due to far too long spent in the chrysalis. "How old are you?" she blurted out. It might be a rude question, but it was important.

She hesitated. She had been afraid of this. Very afraid that she wouldn't like what her past looked like, but there wasn't any turning back now. She wasn't just going to have Giggle know and bear the burden alone that she was supposed to be carrying herself. So she nodded. "Y-yeah. I'm sure."

Her throat went dry. Twenty cycles? That was it?! There was no way her memory could have been destroyed in that amount of time. She thought it had been thousands of cycles since she'd last been awake. But no. There was definitely a different explanation.

As the link between them opened and the goose saw memories flooding into her head, she focused on them, trying to see if she could remember. But as she watched them play out, such violence, brutality, and chaos within them, as she saw...was that her? The mangled body, the spines and the claws? The sharp beak and the quills? She was horrified at what she saw. She was absolutely disgusted and, for a moment, she didn't process that these were her memories. That that was her fighting and her that looked like a monster.

She had to see more. She had to. It was a bad idea, she knew that all too well, but she had to see more. Because that couldn't be her, that just could not! There had to be a mistake - perhaps it was from her eyes? Maybe it was someone else she was seeing and this was only something she'd witnessed.

And that, perhaps, is what caused the magic to activate. Perhaps Giggle would see it too, if their minds were still linked. As the goose delved into her own memories on accident and saw things she had never wanted to see.

She was facing off against a plant-covered cougar, taller then she'd been in the vision with Kera, but not yet full grown. She suddenly snapped her head and screamed "SHUT UP" before flying at him in a rage and wailing on him in a frenzy. The cat yowled with surprise and tried to back away, but she followed, screeching all the way. The image shifted to a horrifying sight, the same monstrosity as before, but far less mangled, with the spines and claws and everything bending over the body of a splotched dog. It was screaming as she tore brutally into its struggling body, blood and viscera splattered across the ground and over her feathers. They were both screaming, the goose with an insane delight, the dog with a dying terror. It shifted once again and it was her again, mangled, broken, trapped behind a cage of plants. Her head was thrust through the bars, desperately screaming at a strange blue hybrid that had the same black and white face. "Kill me, please, I don't want to live like this anymore! I can't do this I can't take this!!" The hybrid looked at her with disgust and shock before responding in a horrified whisper, "That's your solution, again-? Your solution to every problem; to kill?"

The images faded and the goose was left where she was standing. Horrified. Shocked into utter silence. Nothing was processing, nothing but a rage of emotions she couldn't explain. She knew them, all of those that had been in her memories. Familiarity pulsed, stronger for some, but for all...a sense of guilt. Hatred. Despair. All mixed together for an indescribable experience that left the goose absolutely overwhelmed and empty at the same time. She said nothing - what could she say, after all, after seeing all of that?

It was a moment before she regained her voice, spending longer then she should have to process what she'd seen. But the only thing that came from her bill was a strangled honk the had her quickly clearing her throat. "I...something happened? I didn't know I could...I was trying to do it too, see the past but...this is the first time it worked for me..." She gazed past Giggle, off into space, her stomach churning as the images of that torn up dog kept pounding into the back of her head, their screams implanted in her head. "I saw...more."

She gulped. This was way worse then she'd thought. So, so many times worse. That couldn't be her, right? She felt no connection to that...that...that thing she'd seen, she couldn't even begin to imagine herself being that creature, being that cruel. Even the thought of doing those things, of fighting and killing made her so sick that she wanted to vomit. And, worst of all, that last one, where the creature had turned around...Your solution to every problem; to kill?

And then, in a horrifying streak of memory, she remembered the last time that someone had talked about a goose. Pride had warned her of another goose walking the caves. A sadistic, malformed creature...but...he would have recognized her, right? It's not like their scents could be that different, or their voices. Maybe there was a different one and she was seeing those memories through her own eyes. Perhaps she'd only really known this other goose, that that wasn't actually her. Or...maybe there was a different one - worse then her? But then how did Tyr's hindsight fit in? With the moose and "Blackberry"?

She shuddered. She was utterly lost and confused. "I...s-saw that goose again, with all the spines? Attacking this...this big cat with plants all over him. And k-killing some kind of dog. It was really h-horrible and bloody. And this other things with like...the same markings on her face with also with...I don't know, other things? Antlers and four legs, they were arguing. I don't know...what to think about all this. Was that really me?"

She looked down at herself as Giggle pointed out her appearance. She had a point - how had she gone from brown and white and black and covered with markings and spines and teeth and horrible, horrible injuries to this clean, pure white, with no traces of any scars left in sight? Who the hell even had that kind of power? It was one thing to glance into the past or move things with your mind, but to completely alter a creature’s entire body and somehow make it so that they’d never remember their past? That sent a shiver down her spine. There was somebody with incredible powers here.

”Do you think it would be...wise to seek them out?” she whispered, softly. ”I don’t know this “Astraea” and “Nemean.” If we really do have a history, and this really is a punishment, then how will they react to seeing me again? Will they want to kill me?” She shook her head, a lump forming in the back of her throat. ”I...If they attack me...I can’t defend myself. Not that...not that I don’t know how to fight, I do, but I just can’t. The thought of it makes me sick. Like it goes against my very nature to even consider violence.”

The words were coming out now, faster and faster and she couldn’t stop herself from voicing it all - perhaps it helped, though, mumbling through her problems instead of holding them all in. ”And that’s what I don’t understand. How could I be the same person as that goose in the memories? Even in what you’d seen...she was violent. Crazy. In what I saw...she…” She swallowed the bile that was threatening to rise. ”She was leaning over that dog’s corpse. It was all bloody and mutilated and she was laughing and screaming. Like it was the most fun she’d ever had in her life.”

She paused again, squeezing her eyes shut because her brain was still trying to connect herself to that monster. And she couldn’t because how could she do things like that?! All she wanted to do...was good. Good for herself, good for others. She wanted to help and heal and protect, not hurt and scream and murder.

She looked down at the gemstone on her chest. There had to be something else here. Why was she carrying around this gemstone? Why was she so connected to it? Why did she feel strange things when she encountered certain people? ”There’s something else too.” A wing came up and gently touched the apatite hanging around her neck. ”This gemstone...it means something. Or, at least, it meant something to me. When I woke up, it was with me. It was the only thing with me and when I had a friend look into its past for me they heard...about someone called...Blackberry? I’m...I’ll see if I can use that magic again.”

She closed her eyes and willed for the same thing as before - that she could see more, more of the past, but not of herself, this time of the blue apatite hanging around her neck, and she felt a tug at the back of her head as the past revealed itself.