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Since his return, Sorey hadn’t taken much of a look into more recent books. The now-ancient books still held his attention and it was rare for him to pick up something new. He’d not given thought to it until he’d heard some references to a local legend that he wasn’t familiar with.
“At this rate, you’ll be considered an ancient seraph while being practically a baby,” Edna said, giving Sorey an exasperated look.
“Edna’s got a point there. It’s about time you get caught up on things that happened in the past few centuries instead of focusing so hard on ancient history.” Zaveid looked down from his perch on a tree branch, stretching out a bit more as he did. “You’ve been back for long enough, don’t you think?”
It was hard not to take even the gentlest of criticism to heart when it came to his age. Before Mikleo could say anything in his defense, Sorey let out a soft breath. “It’s hard to remember that I didn’t just go to sleep and wake up the next day sometimes. I’ve got nothing to mark that time,” he admitted.
Lailah hummed softly, putting a finger up to her chin. “That is true. Seraphs live their long lives one year at a time which can cause the opposite problem for them. Having all of those memories from days long gone can sometimes desynchronize them from reality.” She looked to Zaveid briefly before giggling. “And for others, they root themselves in reality deeply to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
Of course, Zaveid was older than any of them really knew. Sorey couldn’t begin to imagine what the wind seraph had seen over his long life. Yet, he retained his mind, even if he’d once had delusions of killing every hellion by himself. Personally, Sorey preferred the calm Zaveid they knew now to the angry one they’d met so long ago.
“All that aside, I’ll take partial responsibility for this. I should have been more insistent about catching up on the world rather than just what we went through,” Mikleo sighed, closing his eyes briefly. “I’ll admit that I got caught up in what we’ll be doing as well.”
Zaveid shrugged a shoulder with a noise in his throat. “So, fix it, Mikboy. You’re the one who’s got a pulse on that sort of thing.” He furrowed his brow and tilted his head to one side. “Wait, didn’t you write a few books? Just toss those at choirboy, he’ll gladly read anything you wrote.”
Sorey sat up slightly in surprise, looking over to Mikleo. “I thought you only wrote one book. I’ve read that one already a few times,” he said, smiling brightly.
A gentle laugh came from Edna, making them all look over. “You should have known that Meebo wouldn’t let Sorey read one of them, Zaveid. Knowing what we do now, some of it would read differently.”
There wasn’t even a moment’s pause before Zaveid let out a barking laugh. “Oh, yeah! What I remember of it – “
“H-hey!” Mikleo shouted, cutting off whatever Zaveid was going to say. While Sorey could feel it in their bond, he could see the obvious embarrassment on his lover’s face. “I only wrote the truth and you never said anything about it before.”
Lailah giggled softly. “They’re teasing you, Mikleo. What you wrote was beautiful and respectful.”
“Now I’m really out of the loop,” Sorey griped.
“Mikleo wrote a wonderful book that detailed some of the Shepherds through the ages,” Lailah explained.
“With a huge section dedicated to you, Sorey.” Edna shot a grin over to Mikleo who pointedly looked away. “Rose’s section was only a page longer than yours.”
Sorey was rather familiar with the way Mikleo was sitting. He was embarrassed and irritated beyond belief, arms folded across his chest and shoulders hunched. Where he’d once been able to quietly seethe on his own, now Sorey was a part of the process. He could only smile warily, reaching over to put a hand on his lover’s back.
“I can’t be the only one he wrote about in that, though. All of you were with me and with Rose so there’s things written about you too, right?” Sorey asked, looking between them.
It was Lailah who nodded with an eager smile. “That’s very true! I had no idea Mikleo was such a beautiful writer until he let us see the books he wrote. He was careful and honest with what he experienced.”
Though still embarrassed, Mikleo looked gratefully over to Lailah. “Thank you. At least someone recognizes it for what it is.”
“Hey, I’d probably enjoy it if you let me read it,” Sorey protested with a slight pout. “You’ve always been a great writer, even when we were kids. You came up with a lot of stories to tell while we ate. Gramps and I always loved listening to them.”
Mikleo’s embarrassment was shoved aside for shock as he looked at Sorey with surprise. “Really? Gramps never said anything to me.”
Nodding once, Sorey smiled brightly. “He’d always say you’d be a great writer someday. There was a reason he liked to encourage you to write things.”
He could practically hear the gears working and knew that anything Edna and Zaveid would say didn’t matter any longer. In the face of such praise from their late guardian, any criticism seemed trivial at best. Zenrus had always been so proud of them both and Sorey knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Perhaps Mikleo had simply forgotten since it’d been so long.
“Okay, okay, so he was pretty unbiased in what he wrote. If he can write good things about me, he’s definitely not writing it from his perspective entirely,” Zaveid conceded, laughing softly. “Regardless, it still felt like a bit of hero worship in the end.”
“I wrote some of the same things about Rose and I never felt the same way about her as I do for Sorey,” Mikleo huffed. He let out a breath through his nose and relaxed slightly. “I’ll let you read a copy soon, Sorey.”
“I guess it would be strange to read about myself,” Sorey said, grinning sheepishly.
“Sure would. The man, the myth, the legend reading about his own exploits!” Zaveid looked over to Sorey with a light grin. “The real fun would be finding the other books about you just to see how people altered your deeds. Pretty sure I saw at least one that said you were some beefy, heroic guy who took on a dragon bare-handed.”
Making a noise of disgust, Edna wrinkled her nose. “Or the book that gave no credit to the hard-working seraphs that followed him.”
“Wait, I’m not even close to being legendary!” Pausing for a moment, Sorey looked over to Mikleo then back to his other friends. “Am I?”
“It’s been long enough, Sorey. Humans have a much different perception of time compared to seraphs and their memories are far from perfect,” Lailah said, an apologetic note in her voice. “Even with Mikleo’s accurately detailed account available, someone was bound to make an attempt to recollect what they remembered. You may not feel like it but you are most definitely a myth or a legend to many Shepherds now.”
It was one thing to not know of local legends or myths in an area, quite another to realize that you yourself were one. Not having met with many new Shepherds face-to-face, Sorey hadn’t found the opportunity to confront his new reality. By staying with his friends, the truth of what the world had become and how he was viewed within it had been all but ignored. Perhaps it’d been done on purpose to protect the fledgling seraph’s mind.
However, knowing what he knew now, Sorey wasn’t sure he was against the idea. The history of Shepherds in general was complicated and not as pure as one would think. With the memories he had from Maotelus – Laphicet – of the first Shepherd, it was better he was the role model they followed.
A soft chuckle brought Sorey out of his thoughts. “Try not to break him, Lailah,” Zaveid quipped. “I’m not saying it’s not the truth but let’s try to keep that to ourselves for a while. After all, I doubt Mikboy’s ready to start fighting off Sorey’s countless adoring fans.”
While Sorey was amused, Mikleo grumbled softly. “Trust me, they’ll learn quickly not to push their luck.”
“That was actually almost too sinister for you, Meebo,” Edna muttered.
Really, Sorey was glad for the tension being broken up by some humour. “You already know that no one could ever take your place in my soul, Mikleo. In all seriousness, I’m not too eager to start touring places with other Shepherds yet.” Sorey smiled softly. “I can already see the changes they’ve made to the whole world even from Ladylake. They don’t need the real me to inspire them to do a better job than that.”
“Humble to a fault,” Zaveid sighed. “Eh, it’s for the best, really. Imagine meeting your idol and he’s this cute, baby-faced seraph who’s already hitched. Hundreds of lady Shepherds would be dreadfully disappointed.”
“Oh, nonsense! Any Shepherd would be honoured to meet one such as Sorey,” Lailah insisted. “Though, some books do exaggerate his…physical features.”
Both Edna and Zaveid laughed lightly, the earth seraph looking over to Sorey. “That’s putting it lightly. I’m sure I have read more books than Grampveid and Sorey has been compared to muscled strongmen in more than one. Humans have such limited ideas of what a hero must look like.”
Mikleo blinked and tipped his head to Edna. “That sounded like a compliment.”
Edna merely smiled in that way of hers, shrugging ever so slightly. “As much as it pains me to do, I agree with Grampveid. The other Shepherds have a picture of Sorey that he could never live up to. I would let them keep their imaginations.”
“And there’s the insult,” Mikleo muttered lowly. “Not every Shepherd has passed over my book.”
Shaking her head, Lailah frowned gently. “How long has it been since you wrote that, Mikleo? As time marches on, books get lost to it. The Celestial Record is actually quite a rare find and considered a historical relic now.” She smiled sadly before shaking herself out of whatever forlorn thoughts she had. “No matter how much we seraphs remember, some things will constantly be skewed as humans try to recollect their history.”
“History becomes myth and then becomes legend. I think it’s safe to say that we all know the truth of what came even before Sorey,” Zaveid said, sitting up then leaping down from his perch. “There’s a lot of ugliness in that history that humans forget about but it doesn’t mean they’re worse for it.”
“Isn’t there something about being doomed to repeat mistakes of the past?” Sorey asked.
Zaveid sat down beside Lailah, chuckling lightly. “Come on, Sorey. If humans were going to repeat what they did in the past, it would’ve happened already. I know what you know.”
While Maotelus’s memories had been something of a jumble, Sorey remembered seeing Zaveid within them. There was less of a reason for humans to enslave the seraphs as they had once before. The selfishness of humans had astonished him at first, but nothing had been more disturbing than seeing the first Shepherd. It was a title he’d worn with pride once but now he wasn’t sure if he had a right to be proud about it. From enslaving seraphs to trying to steal everyone’s free will, Shepherd Artorius had made Sorey question everything about the station of being a Shepherd.
He looked over as he felt a hand on his shoulder, seeing Mikleo’s worried face. Reaching up, Sorey gently patted his lover’s hand with a light smile. “You’re right. I’m happy to let the new Shepherds imagine me however they like. What really matters is the good they’re doing for the world right now.”
His friends smiled lightly, though Lailah practically beamed at him. “That’s the right way to look at it.”
“You might want to consider taking on a new name when you introduce yourself. No need to shatter their innocence by accident,” Zaveid said, smirking playfully. “Of course, you could probably gain even more happy followers if you revealed your true self. Some of them might really like the cute type of heroic Shepherd.”
Despite himself, Sorey couldn’t help but chuckle. “You already know that I’m not looking for that at all. I have the one person I’m staying with for the rest of my life and they would have to understand that.”
“Honestly, why is it always sex with you?” Mikleo grumbled, ignoring the abashed squeak from Lailah. “Sorey and I aren’t separating anytime soon.”
“I’m just suggesting he keep his options open. You didn’t even give him time to live it up out in the world.”
It was clear that Zaveid was attempting to get them out of the doom and gloom mindset. While it was playing with fire when he taunted Mikleo, they both had the reassurance of their union to solidify their relationship. Still, Mikleo rose to the occasion, perhaps just as eager to get out of their depressing discussion.
In the end, it didn’t matter if Sorey was seen as reality or just a legend used to inspire other Shepherds. They all knew what their accomplishments had created and would enjoy the peace while it lasted. Human nature meant that they would eventually fall again so all they could do was hope that Sorey’s legacy kept them on the right path for a while longer.
No matter what, Sorey was at least happy that he was a Shepherd they could be proud of.