Title: A Place to Call Home
Rating: PG / K
Summary: Natasha, Knoll, Amelia, Cormag; a staff, some goats, a road, and a lance. In the wake of the earthquake, they come to redefine themselves. Post-game.
Word Count: 2446
Started: July 25, 2010
Completed: August 10, 2010
Posted: August 14, 2010 (LJ), November 12, 2010 (FF.n)
Last Edited: November 12, 2010
Author's Note: Written for fe_contest's prompt 7, vision. There is a reference to the last page of Fae Myenne Ng's Steer Toward Rock in Natasha's part, Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle in Knoll's ("infinite are the arguments of mages" and Ogem's goats), and George RR Martin's A Game of Thrones in Amelia's ("Just stick 'em with the pointy end"). Went through the character supports for research, and did a bit of research on earthquakes and wheat, not that it shows, hahaha. Thank you to wolfraven80 and saffiremoon21 for helping me out. Reviews are always appreciated.
i.
It's easy enough for Natasha to say that Grado is her home, but the words have always rung false. She knows she belongs in Grado, but there is so much more to a home than belonging.
She had time to ponder these things in the silent moments during the war, but now, in the wake of the earthquakes, all her waking moments are spent in the care of others. The temple had been lucky to escape the brunt of the quake, and now the hungry and dying flock to their healing and food. They need the temple, need its unwavering faith and hope. So Natasha and the rest of the sisters do their best to provide it, even though they too wonder why this tragedy occurred.
Bandits strike after the midday fast. It's not the screams that alert them, because they hear enough of those already, it's the sound of an ax sinking into flesh. The sisters don't have the luxury of pondering what to do; they begin shuttling fragile bodies further into the ruins of the temple with little affair. Natasha is yelling for the sisters to find some light tomes to defend themselves with. The sisters need to be able to defend themselves. There is a small band of wounded soldiers that could've defended them if they had not come here to be healed as well.
The youngest sister, just dedicated before the earthquake, races to Natasha through the dust. "There are no books of light, Sister." Natasha looks at her with eyes wide with fear. The sisters have never seen war, never had to take up a book instead of a staff; few enough had ever had to heal the array of maladies that were so common now. As little good as the books would have done, it was better than -
The novitiate fumbles through her tattered robes – they had once been oversized, but all the extra volume has been torn to bandages – and presents to Natasha a book stained dark with black dye. "All we could find was this. I don't know what it is though."
The girl wouldn't, Natasha thinks; the sisters never see mages at work. But Natasha has. She places her hands on the grimoire, thanks the novitiate, and sends her away.
No sister would know how to use it, and no sister should. She could though. She could. Because she knew the earthquake would happen; she stockpiled food, she hoarded staves, she sold everything of worth and bartered it for supplies. She'd acted upon blasphemous knowledge, knowing it would save people. And in that knowing, in her weak faith that the Everlasting would see them through, she knows the pages will reveal themselves to her.
The soldiers must've mustered their strength, because she can hear them dying now. The bandits must be close; she can hear them yelling. Two weeks, and speeded with staves, the soldiers could've been healed enough to win, but there is no time, there is never time. She must decide, does she open the book, or does she toss it aside and pray at her dusty shrine?
This temple cannot fall, not when it is one of the last, and people need it. Not until the bodies are swept away with laughter. And certainly not while there is work to be done.
She opens the pages of the grimoire and knows the fine line of knowledge and faith. She believes, she knows, and this fills her and the pages up until it is blinding to behold. The book burns away into ashes – her hand is burning, but there is something she can feel, something she must grasp – and sifts through her fingers to scatter into dust. She can see so clearly. She could cast dark magic with this book and never hold her staff again – but there is something else here as well. She'd tried so hard in the war to slay with the light tomes, she wanted so much to -
She is not a warrior, she never has been. But she is a healer.
This is the other path, the harder one, the one that is true to herself, and will make her true. She sees herself clearly in battle, and it is not with book in hand.
Her fingers curl with blinding pain and she holds Latona once more. She raises it, and the light comes.
ii.
Knoll would restore Grado its former glory if such a thing were possible. But that is a thing too ambitious for one such as he, scorned and blistered – the blood had been boiled and overturned, it had burned, but he kept going because the Stone was within reach – beneath his robes.
(When was Grado at its height and glory? Intent and action intersect with the Dark Stone; does he call that pursuit height or demise?)
Lyon had only wanted to help the people, caring not if he was hated by them. But look where that had led him. Perhaps, it is best to ask the people. So in the first years of reconstruction, Knoll roams the land, asking the people, "What is the glory of Grado? What would make this land better, its people happier?"
(Reconstruction is a generous term, more applicable to a country such as Renais where the damage is easily cleaned away. Grado, however, is rebuilding nothing, only painstakingly devouring what remains of itself in a futile effort to sustain itself. No. He'd promised Duessel he'd find a new path. So perhaps Grado is only grasping at what does not exist.)
The responses are as varies as the questions posed by the Dark Stone – infinite. The seeds planted at the frost, harvested as wheat in spring. The golden grass in summer. Goats, providing milk, company, and meat. The army, for none had matched Grado's militant strength. The people, the church, the livestock, the laughter. Knoll hears all these answers, and does not know what to do.
So he continues to travel, and asks the people what they want, what he can do for them. He saves kittens from trees, bread from burning; he even delivers a child much to his own dismay.
Perhaps the oddest of all his requests is to become a weather worker. It is a small farming town that asks him, not known for any of its crops, but still eking out a modest life for itself. He says he will stay only a little, but they give him a small patch of land regardless. What they ask of him, what the occupation asks of him, is something he cannot learn by reading his books; when an earthquake will strike, when a storm will brew. So he takes the earth as his new master and sets about learning all its lessons.
Knoll cannot see himself staying in one place too long, but perhaps it's his closest neighbor, an old beauty, who induces him to stay with her offer of goats. Before he knows it, a season has become a year and the tending of goats takes up his free time. A new king is crowned and Knoll is listening for earthquakes by pressing his ear to the earthen floor, finding water by the creak of his bones, and tendering trust in the telling of storms. And somewhere along the rippling of time, he has become able to see himself remaining here with his goats.
If there is any recollection of his contribution to the war, it has faded; there is little resistance to forgetting what dark times the Stone had brought. And on the rare occasion raiders come, and he blows the dust from his book of dark arts, no one says a thing. For all men have fled from war, and all men have things to fear and forget.
iii.
Despite the promise of a tearful and joyous reunion with her mother, Amelia does not return to Grado immediately after the war. Instead, she takes Ewan by the hand and they go see the world. Ewan says this journey can wait, that she should go home first, but Amelia says no, and Ewan says no more. Perhaps her reluctance is to know a mother who is not the same, or a reluctance to return to a country that betrayed her.
Grado is the last place they go to. She is surprised when Ewan lingers in a small border town, chasing rumors of a weather-working shaman. She suspects, however, this is Ewan's way of letting her go alone, to make peace at last. She makes her way to the village Duessel said her mother had come to reside. She learns she is too late though; her mother had died of hunger, one of many after the earthquake.
There is an empty ache to her, but she already mourned her mother as dead once, and as callous as it seems, she'd spent all her tears on that first time.
She travels to the capital next to meet with Duessel. He is teaching not only recruits, but farmers and kennel boys, all the boys in the castle it seems like. He greets her with all the gusto she expects of him, and crushes her in a bone-jarring hug. He asks after her mother, and the news of her demise genuinely touches him. She asks if he has found a worthy man to pledge his lance to.
He laughs loudly at that, his armor shaking with the force of it, and she wonders how he can still shoulder the weight after all this time.
"How can you laugh?" she says.
"What else is there to do but laugh?" he replies easily. "I have survived betraying my own country, a war, and my students. I laugh at my own survival!" He sees her confused face. "I may not have a found a new Emperor to pledge myself to, but I have found my own path to walk, which is more than I can say of a great deal of people."
She can hear the boys practicing in the yard, a young boy yelling, "How hard can it be? All you do is stick 'em with the sharp side!"
"Have you found that, Amelia?"
"General, I – "
She has never been able to imagine returning here; she can dream of returning to Ross' family, Neimi's tears, Franz's rivalry, Ewan's love of life, even to the familiar polish of General Duessel's armor, but now even that -
At last, she puts words to what she has felt since what feels like so long ago. Grado is not her future. It may be her homeland, but it is her past. She is the rose of the war, planted here, but flowered elsewhere. What had brought her back here had been guilt and fear.
Deussel laughs long and hard at her dumbfounded expression, "Now there's the look I like to see. Off with you, lass!"
Her future is before her, her path clear before her eyes. So she rattles her armor, and pounds the butt of her spear to the ground, her laugh thundering all the way as she returns to the open road.
iv.
Cormag does not like to linger in the past, but every time he looks at Duessel's cursed spear, he thinks of what life would've been like without a lance in hand. Only a plow and ox to drive. He and his brother would've lived through the war, perhaps not the earthquake after, but they would've been married to a nice girl and tilling the land. They'd have a dog too.
After Grado is stable, he travels the world. It surprises him that the moment he crosses the Frelian border Tana is not waiting in ambush for him (he knows she has other things to do, but really, it was Tana). He is taken by surprise though when her messenger finds him almost out the other side of the border.
"I'm not her messenger," Vanessa insists. "I'm her friend, and she asked me to relay this message to you: She'll catch up to you later."
Later takes quite awhile to pass. By the time she finds him, he has set himself up comfortably in the mountainous border between Carcino and Grado. He makes a good living for himself, making furniture, toys, and rarely the odd practice sword or too. When he finds himself with spare time he carves out figures familiar to him; ox, pegasi, wyverns, horses. He lines them up on his windowsills, letting the sun wear away their color.
Genarog's shriek is what warns him someone is approaching. He picks up his spear and goes outside.
"Sir Cormag! Is this how you treat all your guests, at spear point?"
And so Tana knights him in the service of Frelia right there in the snow amidst the pine trees. He tries to protest, but she hears nothing of it.
He returns to Frelia with little fuss, just taking the time to sell his shop and pack some of his belongings. He tells her he has no intention of staying for a great length of time in Frelia, but she gives him a look and says, "Well, I got you here, finally! So you'll stay. At least a little while. Maybe you'll stay a day, maybe a year, but you will stay."
And stay he does. He finds the princess frequently near his side. She still trains with the Pegasus Knights in Walles Forest, and he is showing them how to fight wyvern knights. He continues to carve, trading tips with Syrene, and finds himself a kitten to call his own. Soon enough, the knights have good luck charms, tiny carvings of their mounts, and Tana, somehow, seems to have amassed the most.
It is not enough for him though. He cannot stay here, not when he still has Duessel's spear, and he has yet to use it for good. It's wicked light reminds him of snow and cows, of him and his brother when they were young. He decides he will return.
He does not want to break his vows again, but Tana rebukes him. "You told me anyway, you didn't want it. I said you might stay only a day, right? So go. Fly away." She shoos him away and starts crying, clutching the wooden Pegasus he'd carved for her.
He doesn't know what to say, so he grasps her shoulder, nods, and is gone. Achaeus' cry and Genarog's keening reply stay as loudly in his ears as Tana's tears.
When he re-enlists, Cormag puts Duessel's lance to good use at last. It gathers dust in peaceful times, and he sees no more on its edge. He is content.