Author's Note: I am in a fit of updating. I am uploading a lot of things that have sat on my computer for years - some since high school, which has been more than a decade ago.

Yes, something was definitely wrong. I'd been lying on my bed and reading when I heard noises outside. Looking out my window, I saw some people running around and shouting. The light was fading and they were far away, but I could still tell that one of them was the duelist from earlier that day. That hair would be difficult to mistake. They found who they were looking for and everyone seemed pretty happy. I didn't know why, since he couldn't have beaten my father in that duel. I've never been able to get past that creepy Relinquished monster, and he wouldn't have had any advance warning about it so there's no way he could have. So what exactly were the duelist and his friends so happy about? And why hadn't those 'minor technical difficulties' been fixed before the duel was over? I'd missed the rest of it. My thoughts drifted away from the strangers and eventually back to my book.

Then Croquett came to get me, saying that my father had fallen suddenly ill. That really worried me. My father hasn't been seriously ill in my whole life, and if it weren't serious I wouldn't be going to see him at all. He's just a little paranoid about me and germs. I guess because of my mother.

When I walked into his dimly lit room, Daddy was lying down and staring straight up at the canopy of his bed. He was talking to Mother again. He usually only does that when he thinks no one else is around. Tears streaked his face and he kept saying he was sorry for losing something. It wasn't the duel, but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was.

"Daddy?"

"Cecilia?"

"No, Daddy. It's Celeste."

"Celeste? I was just talking to your mother."

"I know, Daddy. Croquett said..." I cut off as he turned to look at me. His left eyelid was sunken and a little bloody. Bruises were forming along the left side of his face, some of them distinctly fingerprints. Someone had taken his golden eye that he'd gotten in Egypt.

I knelt beside him, mostly because I wasn't sure I could keep standing up. I had to concentrate for a while on not being sick. By the time I was sure I could keep the contents of my stomach where they belonged, Daddy had gone back to talking to the bed curtains. I picked up his hand, holding it between mine, to get his attention again.

"Daddy? What happened?" He plucked at the blankets absently before he answered.

"Lost."

"Your eye?"

"The boy took it." I didn't know what to say to that. My thoughts burned against the inside of my skull, demanding that I release the fiery rage building within me. Many people had dueled my father, and all of them had lost. Some duelists, unable to accept defeat gracefully, had pulled childish pranks to get back at him. A few of those had been exceptionally cruel, but no one had had the audacity to do something like this before. I couldn't even imagine what that boy must be like to be capable of this.

"Good night, Daddy. It will be all right," I said calmly and kissed his forehead before I turned to leave.

"Sleep tight, my silent angel." I smiled at him and shut the door behind me before collapsing against it. I sat there for a long time sobbing noiselessly before Croquett came looking for me. I stood in a daze as he explained that a doctor would be here late tonight. Then he made me eat dinner and go to bed, which in my present state I probably wouldn't have thought to do otherwise. Now more than ever I just wanted to run out into the forest. But it was growing darker and there were still a few Eliminators on the island from Daddy's tournament. Some of them were dangerous, or maybe just crazy. Either way it wasn't safe out there right now.

So instead I went to bed like a good little girl and lay silently staring up at the ceiling where my father had painted a mural for me before I was even born. It was beautiful - all soft colors and clouds and angels. Always angels. Daddy talked about them all the time. It was always angels or Funny Bunny or Duel Monsters. But for all his talk of heavenly guardians, they seemed to have forsaken him. He had lost Mother, been burdened with a daughter he couldn't bear to look at, and now this! Why would someone do something like they had to my father, all for losing a stupid game? It was just a game!

"Why?" It was barely above a whisper, and the painted angels didn't answer any of the hundreds of questions I asked in my single word. Angels are silent. "WHY? WHY? WHY?" I started screaming that one word again and again and throwing whatever was in reach at the silent painted angels. They were laughing at me! I hated them! I threw an ink pen, a notebook, some text books, a hair clip, some other books, a pencil, a bear, a dinosaur, a pillow, a bracelet. I stopped short before I actually threw that, holding it and crying.

Daddy had given it to me on my fourth birthday, when he'd come home from his last trip. He'd never told me exactly what happened, but even as young as I was I noticed that he was happier. That had been the one to Egypt where he'd lost his real eye and gained his golden one. Daddy had gotten the cuff-like bracelet made for me. It had been far too large for my tiny wrist then, but I'd grown into it since. Etched into the burnished gold were seven objects forming a ring around the top. Daddy used to tell me a fairy tale about them. He used to tell me stories all the time before I started looking too much like Mother.

He'd told me that they were magical items each with a special power. Once we found all seven we could use them to help bring Mother back. Then we'd all live happily ever after together. Right. I'd outgrown the tale fast enough after I discovered that magic wasn't real.

I sat half-torn between flinging the cuff away from me because of the lie it represented, and clinging to it because of my father's childish dream that he so obviously still believed in. I subconsciously traced the engraved lines with the tip of my thumb.

A set of old fashioned scales, an ankh, an upside-down pyramid with an eye in the middle and a loop on top, a hoop with an eyed triangle in the middle and spikes dangling from it, an eye framed by decorative scrolling on either side, a staff topped with a winged ball which had yet another eye, and... Daddy's eye. That was it. No doctor could heal what was really wrong with my father. He had lost his dream.

Maybe there was something that I could do though. There had to be! I fell asleep that night curled around the bracelet in the middle of a room that looked as if a tornado had run through it, wondering how I could help my father.