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The world ages around you.
That your relationship to time has been altered isn’t something that becomes obvious straight away. You’re all hovering (with the exception of Kraden, and Piers who’s looked the way he has for a while) somewhere around the edge between teenage years and adulthood, where one can grow very fast or not at all, and for a while, it almost seems like everything’s normal. Like your brush with the world’s lifeforce has left scars on your mind only, and the alienating restlessness you feel when you watch the village you were born in is just the result of the last months spent on the sea and the stress that came with it all.
But as the years trickle by and Sheba’s face keeps its childhood softness, as Kraden comes by walking better than he ever did when you were travelling together, doubt begins to settle.
You try to ignore it. Now that you’re a hero, the children who’d left you aside when you were a younger, not out of cruelty but because they just didn’t know how to reach past your shyness, come to talk to you, to include you in their circles. They’re all young adults, now, a couple of them already married, most of them still playing the game of romantic hide and seek that people seem to love to play, and although they try hard to make you one of them, they don’t play it with you, somehow. You don’t mind—it makes you uncomfortable somehow—but it still shows the truth under the smiles and laugh. They try so hard to make you feel like one of them, because you still aren’t.
But you try. You want to be normal, to have a peaceful life. To be around for Jenna, who’s missed you for so long. She, you know, wants to stay, so you have to stay for her. You have to be there, to be a part of her perfect world. Of your parents’ perfect world. Finally back home, both their children with them, taking part in the life of their village, that is slowly but surely being rebuilt.
Over the next couple of years, more of them get together. One is already pregnant. On their faces, you see the hardening lines of adulthood, the solidity of Earth that permeates everything around Mount Aleph, even now.
“Well, I have to turn in,” one of them tells you one evening, standing up from the table at which you were all drinking tea and playing cards. “I need my beauty sleep. Is it just me or are all nighters a lot less attractive these days?”
The young mother laughs.
“You’ll be back on them soon enough, but that won’t make them any more attractive.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“’Beauty sleep’, though?” her boyfriend laughs, overplaying his shock. “Darling, you’re already beautiful. You don’t need beauty sleep.”
“Very funny. You won’t get me with that kind of flattery. And you know I look like crap when I haven’t slept enough. We can’t all be like Felix here.”
Thankfully, they don’t actually look at you as they say it, or in the laugh that comes after. You’re not sure you could have brought up the smile you know you need to show them.
You look in the mirror that night and see a face that couldn’t be more different from the day you left Prox, but hasn’t changed at all in the years since you came back to Vale.
It’s life that has aged you. The exhaustion, the weight of the world on your shoulders, the lives of those killed for the goal you had to bring to fruition. The lies. But now that you’re back home (if Vale is even home anymore), now that you should be able to rest, to live, life passes you by as time flows around you, past you, like a laughing couple too caught up in each other to notice the silent figure that has been standing just off their path the entire time, and who walk away still none the wiser.
You look in the mirror, see the softness of your cheeks and the hardness of your eyes, and leave the very next day, before you can collapse, before you crash and let them see the other you have become.
You won’t be gone long. It’s what you tell Jenna as you leave, because she, at least, it hurts to leave behind, but while it’s not a lie, you also know that your return will be temporary.
You will come back. As a visitor. But you understand, suddenly, what people always meant by ‘leaving the nest’, the sometimes subtle but always tangible fissure in the before and after of being one’s own person and living by one’s own terms, even if one does go back to live with one’s family.
You fell from the nest years and years ago, and survived, but never grew wings of your own. And you know, deep down, that you can’t ever go back. Not really. Not in a way that will make it home.
You take to the road.
“How do you do it?”
You caught up with Piers in Champa, entirely by accident. Crossing the mountains would be a fool’s venture to the average person, but you’re a Venus adept, imbued with the power of many Djinn, and you’ve lived several years of your life in the ever-worsening cold of Prox. Making the trip was rash even for one like you, but it felt good, to fight the elements again, to focus on something, and one’s life being at risk is great for making one focus.
You’d wanted to talk to Obaba. In the harbour, you find a distinctively sailless ship, moored far enough from land to not run its wings into nearby ships.
How do you do it?
Piers looks over the sea from the edge of the small cliff balcony, and just from the fact that he takes so long to answer, you know that he understands, that your stilted words did not fall on ears who will be shocked or offended by them.
“The truth is,” he tells you quietly, “I never actually did. In Lemuria, everyone aged at roughly the same speed. I’d never been outside; I never felt the difference until I met all of you.” He swallows. “But it actually hit me when I lost my mother.”
You nod, silent. A few breaths, and you sit down next to him, let your legs hang off the edge.
“For a while, I kept thinking about it… with her gone, the only people I was still close to were my uncle and the King… and all of you. Suddenly, I couldn’t ignore it. I’d look at Sheba and wonder what she’d look like in just a few short years. I’d look at Kraden and… I kept having to remember that he wouldn’t be here for centuries more. That unlike King Hydros, if I wanted to say something to him, or learn something from him… I should do it quickly, instead of waiting.” He smiles, wryly. “Dealing with a short life makes every interaction feel… opportunistic, somehow. Unnatural. Must we think of people in terms of what time they have to give us? What time we can afford to spend on them?”
“… most people don’t, I think. Or we learn to ignore it. I’d never really thought about it.”
He sighs, and smiles again, sad but warm, open. Almost amused.
“I must sound insensitive, criticising people like you for something you have no control over. It affects you more than it does me, in the end.”
You shake your head.
“I understand.”
Silence falls again. You watch the sky slowly grow purple as the seagulls fly around the port, looking for fish that won’t come.
The world, like its people, is changing.
“… my uncle asked me to come back,” Piers suddenly says.
“To Lemuria?”
“Yes. He… I told him that I wanted to keep travelling, that the world would need someone to make new maps with all the upheavals that are happening, and this ship will reach places that no one else can, and could potentially save lives, but…”
He stops, tense, and looks away, and you understand, suddenly, why he brought this up now.
“… he still hasn’t fully recovered from losing my mother,” he finally tells you, quietly. “He puts up a good front, but… you’ve seen what the house looked like. It wasn’t just unwashed laundry.”
“...he hasn’t stopped drinking?” You hadn’t wanted to assume, at the time, but Piers’s words make it all too clear.
“No. And now, I…”
“.. how long do you have? Without the draught.”
He laughs lightly.
“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’m still young, and from what King Hydros remembers of the ancient times, just having been raised on Lemuria water will stretch your lifespan quite a bit… even before we factor in the influence of the Golden Sun, I would have centuries ahead of me. There’s plenty of time to explore the world anew after each sudden continent shift or to waste on waiting for the right time to say something.”
Despite yourself, you smile. You love Jenna with all your heart, and Sheba understands what makes you tick better than you understand even yourself, but there’s a certain kinship you feel with Piers alone, a kind of quiet, a gentleness that stops and waits while most of the people you love seem to ever rush ahead. For all his physical strength and his thirst for discovery, Piers is a gentle and contemplative man, and being near him is restful in a way that you needed when travelling with people like Sheba, Jenna, and especially Kraden.
“But it is strange,” he adds, leaning back a little, “to think that I will grow old before he does. And at the same time, everyone else I meet…” He sighs. “I suppose I understand him, a little.”
“But you don’t want to go back?”
“No. Not to live there, at least. The world calls me, Felix. And I… I have some responsibility in all that’s happening to it right now. It may have been to save the world, but that doesn’t change the drastic changes it has caused to people everywhere. It doesn’t change that people have died. How can I… how can I simply go back to Lemuria and be blind to it? Even if King Hydros is trying to change our isolation policies… you know it will take decades at the very least for the slightest change to happen.” He shakes his head. “I can’t look away from this world. I have to be there. I must live through those changes, and do what I can.”
You smile. As heavy as it is, putting words on that responsibility is freeing.
“I know what you mean.”
“Do you want to come with me?”
It comes suddenly, firmly, and for a moment, you forget to breathe.
Could you? Could you find a home not in a village but in a person, make his ship your own, settle down in a different way?
“… maybe for a while. Have you been to Osenia yet?”
One day. One day, perhaps, you’ll be able to stop walking. One day, you’ll truly be able to rest your head on those who understand you and care.
But until then…
His smile is a little bittersweet, but there is still warmth in it.
“I can take you there. We should see how Sunshine is faring.”
“You come back soon, you hear me,” Obaba tells you as you prepare to step onto the trail of ice Piers has frozen on the surface of the sea. “Eoleo needs some proper role models who aren’t old women, and I’m afraid my good for nothing grandson isn’t up to the task.”
“We’ll be back,” Piers answers, taking her offered hand. “Please take care of yourself, Obaba.”
“Hah. You don’t need to be so polite with me. I know what you’re thinking. Don’t worry, it’ll take more than a few years of rationing to kill me. I’ll keep this village running for a while yet.”
His eyes widen. From her side, Eoleo watches you with serious eyes, silent, but older than any six year old should be.
Like people used to say about you, when you were little, although they used to comment on how shy you were instead. Eoleo, in his own way, reminds you more of Isaac.
Finally, Piers shifts, and smiles.
“… we’ll be back for sure. Although it might not be at the same time.”
“Fine by me. Now get going, and try not to get eaten by sharks.”
He laughs.
“That shouldn’t be too hard.”
The children of Yallam have grown up. Before, they had all seemed to be ten or older, an eerie and stomach-twisting void left after them, but now, the older teens are balancing a couple of toddlers on their shoulders. One girl introduces you to her little sister, clinging to her like the former mayor of Alhafra may have clung to the pearls her parents have once more begun to ship.
You hold her carefully on your lap, and together the two of you learn a new song, one meant to mimic the motions of raising a large sail, and the knots that will keep it full.
“The Sea of Time has been changing,” Piers tells you later, at the inn. “I had a hard time getting back in last time. King Hydros has tasked those of us who can still sail with mapping it periodically, so that we won’t end up stuck on either side.”
“Things will settle down eventually.”
“Yes. But those songs they taught us…”
“We’ll make new songs.”
He raises his eyebrow at you.
“You?”
“… I’m sure Kraden would be delighted with the task. Sheba too.”
He laughs.
“You’re right.”
When he’s gone, you linger in Yallam for a week or two. They need new houses, and although the architecture is different, you’ve accumulated a lot of experience in the months following Vale’s destruction.
And then you set out again, before you can feel the bittersweetness of their newfound cheer. You want to remember the bright voices of children, not think about how close to your age some of them now look.
You walk across the continent, on roads that are sometimes broken but overall more busy than they used to be. There are no caravans in this corner of Osenia, but there are people, and new villages being built inland, where no tidal wave will threaten homes or boats or crops. On your way South, you’re even shocked to find a new road being signalled at the new inn keeping these new travellers fed.
“The quake from two years ago opened up a passage through the mountains to the West,” the innkeeper tells you. “It’s still rough going, but you won’t need a ship to get around to Mikasalla or Garoh anymore.”
“That’s convenient.”
“If you’re going that way, I’d still wait for a decent enough group to gather before making the trip. There’s falling rocks sometimes, and the snow’s nothing to scoff at.”
You don’t tell him that you’d been planning on going that way even without a road. Of the so-called Warriors Of Vale, you’ve found out that you’re ironically perhaps the least famous, and you intend to keep it this way. The changes that have saved some have hurt others, and it’s hard to believe or care that the earthquake that ruined your house saved another village at the other end of the world, or even the world itself. The more you can hide in anonymity, the better.
You cross the mountains on your own, but make sure to grow vines and bushes on the unstable rock slopes as you go.
Just speeding up what would have been the work of time, just a little. So that those who travel after you can walk safely.
You’re sleeping just one day away from Garoh when a sudden feeling of being watched wakes you up, eyes opened and hand slowly reaching for the sword you hid under your bedroll.
“Finally,” a young voice says. “You were a pain in the ass to find, you know that?”
You drop the sword and roll to the other side.
“Sheba?!”
“Who else? Jenna’s kinda mad, by the way. When people say ‘a little trip’, they generally don’t mean ‘three continents away’.”
You wince.
“… she’s mad at me, huh?”
“She’s super mad, but trying not to be because she knows why you need to move, but it’s Jenna. You know how she is. It’s part of her charm.”
You sit up, and sigh. Grinning, she levitates a large stone dangerously close to your bed, drops it on the ground, and sits on it, her back to the fire.
“… I’m sorry, Sheba. How long have you been looking for me?”
“Like a month… no need to apologise, though, I was going to leave too anyway. Just offered to pass on Jenna’s message along the way. And you were easy to find once I managed to track down Piers.”
You blink.
“How did you do that?”
She grins, and pulls out the Teleport Lapis from her messenger bag.
“I dropped by every port I thought he’d stop by and traced his itinerary, and then waited comfortably in Izumo. Then he told me he’d left you in Yallam. I figured you’d want to visit Garoh, so here I am!”
Somehow, even when she’s not reading your mind, she still seems to know what’s going through your head.
“… I can’t go back yet,” you admit, quietly. Sitting alone in the night with only the fire and her smile lighting up the area, you feel like you can say it, like you can open your heart a little. She’d read into it easily anyway.
“I didn’t come to bring you back. I came to get news, check you were all right. And, like I said, to pass on a message. If you’re awake enough for it.”
You blink.
“Didn’t you already do that?”
“What, about her being mad? Oh, no, that’s just me telling you. In fact, if she hears I told you, she’ll probably be mad at me. But maybe that’s a good thing, she can take it out on me and I’ll just tease her back.” She stands and reaches for a parcel that she left further away, on the other side of the fire. “Here. This didn’t even fit in my bag, by the way, so you’d better be grateful.”
The parcel is heavy but flexible, folding slightly over your arm as you lift it.
Inside, you find a padded coat, flexible enough to be worn every day and thick enough to go under armour.
“Jenna made it. Said you’d just let yours go threadbare other wise. Can’t say I disagree; you were always giving us the best armours when we were travelling.”
“… she made it?”
“Kay taught her and Garet. Look, those big quilting stitches are his. And Isaac helped with the leather bits.”
You hold the coat in your arms. It must have taken them weeks to make. Day after day of work, given to making something for you, to protect you.
The loss, suddenly, is so strong that you want to cry.
“I can’t—” you start to say again, because it’s still true, even if you hate it, even if it’s tearing you apart.
“She said: ‘Be careful out there.’ And to visit her sometime.”
Slowly, you nod. Little by little, you draw your knees up towards your chest, until you’re curled up into a ball, the coat pressed against your face, and the tears start falling, sob after silent sob, the fabric dampening against your cheeks.
Sheba, silently, sits in front of the fire, as you empty every unshed tear of the last few years and finally mourn a life you’ve always known was no longer yours.
“You know,” she says, later, as you sit together and drink tea and watch the sky slowly edge from the grey haze of the dying night into the first golden notes of dawn, “I’ve been wondering how Maha is doing. Mind if I tag along to Garoh?”
And before you can put into words an apology about the uncertainty of the future, she turns to smile at you. “We can see where we want to go from there. No need to take any decisions now. We’ve got time, right?”
You nod, and smile.