After collecting the first drop of myrrh for the year's journey, he decided to stop at the closest moogle hole and rest before continuing on to the next tree. It wasn't something he ever would have done back when he first took on the duties of Tipa's crystal caravan, as a young man of eighteen who was constantly aware of the weight of his duty. He hadn't really known anything about the world outside of his town back then; how far it was between myrrh trees, how hard the road was between them, whether or not he'd need to constantly rush in order to get home before the year was out.
But now he knew the world backwards and forwards. He knew every turn of every path, the weakness of every monster that might try to slow his way, how to walk through the miasma streams without any fear. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that he'd always be able to return on time.
It was strange, at times, to think about how much his life had changed since the time of those first few journeys. Or perhaps how it had not changed was the real oddity. He had gone out the first time out of necessity, as the only person in Tipa old enough to travel in a caravan who didn't have a job or children that they needed to stay with. At the time he'd known that it would only be for a few years, and then he'd follow in his father's footsteps and become a tailor once the elder of his two little sisters was old enough to take his place collecting myrrh. And hopefully by then, or at latest by the time his baby sister was old enough to take over for her, there would be other young people in the town and the caravan would no longer be one-Selkie large.
Being a caravan member just wasn't something that people chose to do as their lives work. It was the duty of those on the edge of adulthood, so they had a chance to see something of the world before they settled into their lives work and eventually started raising a family of their own. It was something everyone did at least once, to show their devotion to their town, but something which nobody liked doing. It was a duty, it wasn't a job.
Except that the year his sister had come of age, he'd practically grabbed the crystal chalice out from under her nose and let everyone know that he'd be fine with spending another year walking the old roads. And when new people began moving to Tipa, bringing their own sons and daughters, he still chose to go out alone but for Mog. By his seventh year out his father had begun to realize that his son didn't seem likely to settle down any time soon and began to break from Tipa's tradition of letting its women only help with their husband or father's job and not work for themselves to train his daughters to take after him some day.
As he thought all this, he glanced over at Mog, who was nudging the bottles of spraypaint sitting in front of the fire and looking at him with a hopeful expression. "We're going to the desert next," he said, pushing himself out of the comfortable, if moogle-sized, armchair to sit down on the ground in front of Mog. "I need to cut your fur so you don't overheat."
"Oh." Mog's pompom drooped. "So no paint, kupo?"
"Well..." he smiled and reached out to twist a few strands of soft fur between his fingers. It always did feel like a shame to cut off Mog's fur when it got long enough to make him look like a giant fuzzball. "Maybe I can leave a little to paint. Blue would be nice."
Mog perked right up. "All right, kupo! Cut away!"
And that was another thing that was completely different from what he'd expected of his life, he thought as he picked up the scissors and began to snip hair away as close to Mog's body as he could get without cutting him. He'd left the village for the first time thinking that maybe he'd find a wife for himself somewhere out there in the world. Instead he had somehow wound up sharing his life with a moogle.
And it wasn't a bad thing, really. Sure, sometimes Mog annoyed him a little when he asked him to carry the chalice only to turn around and beg for it back three seconds later, or when he didn't fly through the webs in Tida quickly enough and got caught on the other side when they closed up and needed to be burned again.
Mog was the one person outside of Tipa who had never made him feel like he was judging him for being a Selkie. And he was the only one who'd been there for everything he'd seen and done ever since the very first day he'd left the village. Mog worked harder than anyone else who had ever offered to join up with him could have, doing his best to always keep up with him when he fought his way to a myrrh tree even when his tiny body was exhausted. And he knew that he would always trust him to have his back.
And though he'd poured his life into keeping Tipa flourishing, he knew that he'd never feel as comfortable there now, even among his family, than he did when he was traveling alone with Mog. He had been too isolated for much, much too long to be entirely comfortable around other people. His life had become the wagon, the roads, the trees, the monsters that he fought and Mog by his side. Though he liked people, and though he was always happy to greet other caravaners that he met on the road or to visit or write back home, it was never long before he began itching to take off with Mog again.
He had never fallen in love. He had never married, he had never had a family of his own. As old as he was, he doubted that he ever would.
But he never worried about it. He knew that he would never be alone. For three decades they'd traveled together, long enough that he thought that even if he found a wife in his fifties or beyond she would never know him better than Mog did. He might not have ever been in love, but that didn't mean that he didn't have love in his life. And, even when he looked at the happy couples that he knew, he thought that he could be satisfied for the rest of his life with nothing more than his tiny best friend by his side and that platonic love that went with it.
"All done," he said, setting down the spray can he'd been using and nudging Mog lightly to turn in a circle so he could check his work. Mog's fur was cut so closely that it might as well have been shaved over most of his body, except for a ruff of blue fur he'd left circling his neck. "Are you ready to go?"
"To the desert, kupo!" Mog exclaimed happily, bouncing into the air then fluttering his wings to slowly drift back down.
Yes, he thought, smiling happily as he stood to leave the small home. It was true that his life wasn't anything like he'd thought it would be back when he'd been eighteen and the entire world had seemed strange and new, but he didn't regret a second of it. He doubted that he ever could.