"I thought you were joking at first," Yueret said. "How can a bear girl be our mom? She's not human."
The rider got off the doll and slapped the air with his hand. A large blue energy hand appeared behind him and struck the maid in the buttocks.
"Great lord, I am hard," Aragas said in a calm but high voice, imitating a human groan.
"I know," the man in black clenched his fist, causing the energy arm behind him to disappear. "Aragas is the only doll that won't disassemble if something hits it."
"So the doll wasn't lying when she said dad had a special ability," Unana thought.
Aragas crawled out of the room. Unana and Yueret were left alone with their father.
"This may be strange, but I'll explain," the man with the helmet in his hand approached the window. "Just sit on the sofa."
"I don't want to," Unana whispered.
"I won't ride you," the doll tamer said. "I only ride my maid. She's hard. She's made of a different material than most dolls."
Yueret walked over to the sofa and sat down on it. Unana initially wanted to remain standing, but soon realized it was too difficult and decided to join her brother.
"It was a long time ago," the man holding the helmet said. "My name was Sogotoh back then. I lived in Yenekit and went to school. My little brother, Itinit, wasn't around yet. Have you seen him?"
"Yeah," Yueret answered. "You didn't even create him?"
"No, he's my true little brother. I can't create people. I guess no one in this world can. Do you believe me?"
"No," Unana and Yueret answered simultaneously.
"Okay, I'll continue. As a child, I learned that games actually exist. They weren't just ancient legends. Back then, there were very few of them, and they weren't as developed as they are now. Back then, you couldn't buy tree cones from trees, freeze toads, fly on bears, or launch fiery comets into the sky."
"There was nothing you could do there," Yueret recalled. "But those games are no longer on the network. I only found descriptions of them."
Sogotoh waved his hand in front of him and summoned an oval screen with so many multi-colored buttons that they formed a pattern.
"I still have some of those games. I didn't give them to you because they're unplayable. But back then, beings had to play games like that."
A large rectangular screen with a blue frame appeared in front of the sofa. Along with the black background, snowflakes occasionally flew across it.
"What is this?" Yueret asked.
"It's a game," Sogotoh answered. "Of course, it's strange. There are no buttons. It is possible to play it only with the power of thought. Previously, there were special helmets with antennas that sent a signal from the brain to a screen. Do you know about the signal?"
"Yeah, I've heard something about that," Yueret admitted.
"Good. Then try to direct the snowflake to the right."
The helmet in Sogotoh's hand disappeared, but then somehow appeared on Yueret's head.
"Brother, you have horns now," Unana giggled.
Yueret touched his head and soon realized his sister wasn't lying.
"What should we do?" The eldest of the "cubs" looked at the screen, but couldn't influence what was happening there.
"Focus on one snowflake," Sogotoh suggested.
Yueret selected one of the snowflakes, the largest one, but couldn't do anything with it.
"Now do you understand why I didn't like those games?" Sogotoh continued. "They're impossible to play. Of course, if you have your own antennas connected to your brain, then you could control the snowflake. But with this helmet, even after a few months, the most you'll be able to do is move it a little."
"And what did you do?" Yueret took off his helmet and handed it to his sister.
"I hadn't done anything yet," Sogotoh answered. "But I really wanted games to be different. When I learned how to send a snowflake off the edge of the screen, a being appeared to me in a dream and said he knew how to create a game that would be like the real world. To do that, I needed to do something. I started working for him."
"What?" Unana jumped up. "What kind of being is this?"
"It's best you don't know. It's a very scary creature."
"Did it have a nose like a carrot?" Yueret asked.
"How do you know?" Sogotoh appeared in front of the sofa and partially blocked the screen.
"I met him by chance," Yueret bowed his head. "Unana and I got a little lost and found a house on the riverbank."
Sogotoh disappeared. The next moment, the screen in front of the sofa vanished into thin air.
"I blocked him in his house so that he would never meet you," Sogotoh continued near the window. "I was afraid he'd turn you into dolls."
"But he didn't," Unana looked at the floor. "Yueret saved me."
"It seems that Yueret is a real big brother," Sogotoh noticed.
"Usually I save him," Unana smiled. "But that scary one was too scary..."
Yueret hugged his sister and began stroking her head.
"As I thought, you two get along well," Sogotoh glanced toward the sofa. "You're like real bear cubs."
"By the way, why did your lizard call us bear cubs?" Unana asked. "We only have a mother bear, and you're normal."
"It's too long to tell," Sogotoh answered. "You won't remember. Let me continue from the beginning. That scary man with the carrot nose sent me a dream in which Yenekit wasn't there yet, but a monument with the head of a three-horned dinosaur was already there. Did you see it?"
"I don't remember," Yueret answered. "I think there's some kind of stone thing in the central square, but I don't remember what's on it."
"It definitely doesn't have a doll's head," Unana said. "Otherwise I would have remembered her. If I don't remember her, then it's something unimportant."
"For some reason, no one can remember this head," Sogotoh continued. "The locals don't even notice this monument. No one even knows how it appeared. But the dinosaur head on top of it has three horns. The scary man said they were antennas, so they must be emitting a signal. But there's no signal. And that's strange. Of course, you could say they're fake antennas, but the scary man kept saying it could be related to the signal. At first, I thought it was just nonsense, but then I became interested in it myself. I had a dream. Unfortunately, I can't show it to you. The city didn't exist then, but the monument already stood in the forest, on top of the mountain. Only it was lower, about half that height. And the mountain itself, where Yenekit now stands, was also lower than the surrounding mountains. Then I realized that the mountain was growing along with the monument."
"Why would he show you his dream?" Yueret asked.
"Because it only has one antenna," Sogotoh answered. "To receive a signal, you need at least two antennas: one to transmit, one to receive. And he couldn't install another antenna, probably for technical reasons. So I started receiving the signals."
"But how did he get the dream then?" Yueret asked. "Do dreams also come via a signal?"
"Yup," Sogotoh said. "But that dream was a memory passed down to him by his ancestors. That happens often, people just don't notice it."
"It's a good thing I dreamed of nothing but food," Unana thought.
"After that incident, I started having a lot of dreams. It's too bad I can't show them to you. They were very interesting. I learned almost the entire story of Yenekit and passed the data on to the terrible man."
"But you don't have an antenna," Unana looked at the horned helmet. "Did you connect that thing to your brain?"
"Yeah, now I need to tell you the most important thing," Sogotoh opened his inventory and hid his helmet. "After I completed the terrible man's task, he gave me access to the Mausoleum of Nature and said I could create any character I wanted in it. I began studying the program and even created several."
"One of them was that lizard," Unana sighed.
"I thought one of you would figure it out," Sogotoh appeared in front of the sofa and grabbed the helmet by one of its horns. "This device is needed so that those without antennas can send and receive signals."
"Where did you get that?" Unana handed her father the helmet.
"I don't remember anymore," Sogotoh answered. "It was a long time ago. They stopped selling those kinds of devices on the network even before I was frozen."
"Were you frozen?" Unana and Yueret asked simultaneously.
"Yeah, that's Timnichan," Sogotoh smiled. "She was my first character, that's why she turned out so nasty. In reality, Timnichan is just pretending, but she does it so well that you start to believe it."
"The first time I met her, she wasn't that stupid, just a little weird," Unana blushed. "But then she started doing things I'm embarrassed to talk about."
"It's embarrassing for you, but not for her," Sogotoh explained. "But she's the best example to introduce you to the characters from the Mausoleum of Nature. After her, the other characters will seem sweet and funny."
After this phrase, Sogotoh stopped smiling. Unana glanced at the window to check if Timnichan's head was sticking out, then got up from the sofa and began searching for the lizard under it.
"For some reason, I feel like it's there, even when it's not," Unana looked at the log wall.
"Now I'll get to the main point," Sogotoh said, approaching the stairs to the second floor. "But for that, we need to go somewhere else."
Unana, who had already imagined the blue tongue of the wet bed spirit, quickly agreed, but after seeing a familiar door on the second floor, she almost changed her mind out of anxiety.
"I can't say I was here. I can't just come in here."
"What you're about to see isn't real," Sogotoh warned. "It's a simulation of a game set in the real world. All the locations here exist in reality, but the characters exist only in the game. You've already been there, and even completed one of the parts."
"I was a bearry…" Unana said quietly.
"It's a story about two bear cubs searching for each other," Sogotoh continued. "One part is about the sister, the other about the brother. Unana has already completed her part."
"How do you know?" Unana looked at her father with fear.
"If I'm here, it means you've accomplished your part," Sogotoh explained. "After I created the Timnichan, I created a few more characters, and then the full functionality of the Mausoleum of Nature was unlocked. I was able to create playable games. Of course, they weren't like modern games, but gradually I managed to create a game with animal girls."
"Ears and Tails," Yueret shuddered.
"Yup," Sogotoh smiled. "It's my favorite project. Does anyone else play it?"
"Yeah," Yueret answered. "I have it somewhere."
Yueret brought up a screen with an icon shaped like a brown bear girl's head.
"Do you know why this game's icon looks like this?" Sogotoh asked.
"One of your characters is a bear girl," Yueret answered.
"Yeah, that's obvious," Sogotoh said. "This is my last character. I really wanted to meet the right girl for me, but I never did, so I created her in the game."
"What did you do with her?" Unana looked at her father suspiciously.
"Nothing, I just married her," Sogotoh smiled. "In my version of the Mausoleum of Nature, that's possible. You just have to press a few buttons, read the agreement, and then play a mini game with the chosen character."
"Ahh..." Unana said.
"Did we also appear from the program?" Yueret asked.
"Yeah," Sogotoh answered. "I entered my data there and combined it with my wife's. Then I simply took you from the den in the forest, like real bear cubs."
Unana and Yueret looked at each other as if trying to understand what this strange man was saying.
"No, you are not characters," Sogotoh answered. "I just have the ultimate version of Mausoleum of Nature, in which I can create almost anything. I just need the program's consent. If it agrees, then everything's fine."
"This isn't normal," Unana grabbed her cheek and pulled it back slightly. "We're non-living."
"Yeah, you're no different from humans," Sogotoh said. "You weren't created like ordinary characters."
"But..." Unana let go of the cheek and bowed her head.
"You even have a mom and dad," Sogotoh continued. "They're real."
"They abandoned us," Unana knelt down. "I thought they didn't exist. But they exist, but..."
"You find this difficult to understand," Sogotoh said. "That's why I didn't tell you this before. I didn't want you to find out that your mother wasn't human, and that you were created in some program. I'm sorry."
Unana rose from the floor and looked at the wall. Yueret watched his sister, unsure what to do.
"You decide what to do with this," Sogotoh said. "If you don't want to see me, I understand. But first, listen to your mother."
Sogotoh summoned the door lock, which for some reason already had a password, and then pushed the door open...
…The space was filled with white light streaming through the round window. A creature was perched on it, but from the doorway, only a silhouette could be discerned.
"Bear cubs, come here," the silhouette raised its hand and waved.
The voice sounded familiar to Unana. She remembered the brown bear girl who had been here before.
"Mom," Unana thought, as if something inside her had burst. She stood up and looked at the doorway.
There was no one in the corridor anymore. Unana was left alone and felt like she could stay here forever.
"Mom…"
Unana ran through the doorway and found herself in a room with log walls and a multitude of boxes. A brown bear girl sat on the windowsill, illuminated by the sun's rays, smiling.
"Mom…" Unana ran towards the character at the window, but only met the window glass.
"It's an illusion," a voice from behind explained. "Your real mother is somewhere else right now."
Unana turned and saw her father standing next to her big brother.
"I need to continue," Sogotoh said. "Something happened to your mother. After you showed up, she didn't like it, and a different character popped into her head."
"Was it the blue-white bear girl?" Yueret asked.
"Yeah," Sogotoh answered. "She was the complete opposite of your mother. The white-blue bear girl didn't agree with me using her to create you. She tried to get rid of you because you reminded her of what I did to her."
"But our mother was a different bear girl," Unana frowned. "Or…"
"They were two personalities of a single character," Sogotoh explained. "One personality loved you and tried to protect you, while the other tried... to make you disappear. More accurately, it wanted you never to exist."
"But that's impossible," Yueret said. "The past can't be changed."
"The white-blue bear girl thought differently," Sogotoh sighed. "I had to make her freeze herself to erase her memories. It worked, but the brown bear girl's memories disappeared along with her. If you've noticed, I'm not calling them by name, because then they'll remember what happened and come back."
Silence fell. Unana looked out the window, which offered a view of the coniferous treetops and distant fog.
"So..." Unana said after several dozen moments. "We'll never meet mom again?"
"You can meet her, but..." Sogotoh looked at the wooden floor. "She won't recognize you."
"But I want to meet mom!" Unana stood up to her full height on the windowsill and looked resolutely forward.
"If you go to her," Sogotoh said. "She'll do something to you."
A two-sided screen appeared in the center of the room, facing both Unana and Yueret. There, against the backdrop of snow-capped mountains and coniferous forests, on the white, almost transparent ice of the lake, stood the very same ice capsule…