Dias remembers the river, just as he remembers the way the Shingo forest seemed to stretch out forever, deeper and darker than anything he'd seen until the day he'd learned just what suffocating depths the darkness of the forest could hide. Now the forest was just a little farther away and much less dense than he'd left it. It had been much closer to the other side of the bridge, and the patterns of light fallen from the canopies of the treetops hadn't been half as inviting.
And there was the village, too. Little things, like the way Rena's house needed a repainting and every other house except the Mayor's was one long, blustery storm away from collapsing as completely as if they were made from playing cards. What could he expect, though? He'd gone from walking along the beaten roads of the Arlia he'd kept locked in his head to the Arlia of an odd old man who'd never set foot on Expellian soil, to say nothing of Dias's hometown, which was small enough to merit exclusion on most maps of Cross Kingdom.
"So what are you thinking, Dias?" Rena said, smiling beside Dias as she looked up at him, changed like everything else but more familiar than his own reflection. He couldn't afford to be so careless as to not hear Rena Lanford beside him, he thought sullenly, and mentally assigned a few extra training exercises to his morning routine. "You haven't been home in years. Everything must look so strange."
Dias made a noncommittal noise that he knew Rena would take as assent. He wasn't sure how she did it; she was really the only person alive who could translate grunts as complete, meaningful sentences. Rena's smile lost a bit of its joy, but none of its warmth. He still hadn't a clue as to how she managed that, either, and he recalled with dismay that Claude still seemed to harbor the ludicrous delusion that he was good enough for Rena. He would have to do something about that. Rena said, "Everyone's been moving away. There's not a lot of fol to spare since you left. In ten, twenty years, Arlia will be gone - after it comes back, of course!"
Dias glanced at Rena, and said, "What will you do after Arlia is restored?"
Rena was closer, subconsciously leaning into him; Dias watched her carefully, suspicious of the spark of peace that rose in his chest at the movement. Rena glanced up towards his eyes, then lower, then away from him completely; "I'm going to find everyone I've taken for granted and let them know I really do care. I've been a little callous towards mother recently, you know? I was such a brat. But she's my mother. Alen, too, and Yuki - they're all getting hugs."
Dias nodded, watching the descent of a leaf as it sighed ever closer to the river below. Rena said, "What are your plans?"
Dias heard the unasked "When will you come home?" It wasn't hard - Rena wore her heart for everyone to see.
Dias frowned as the leaf filled with water, tipping and sinking as easily as it had landed. "I have no plans. It's pointless to plan that far ahead."
It was disconcerting, Dias thought, that everything in this fabrication was as real a place as he'd ever been to, but it was less Arlia than the map of the past in his own memories.
"You're not alone anymore, you know. You never were," Rena said, and smiled through an onset of embarrassment - and what for? - cheeks pink as the halo engulfing the sun as it dipped below the skyline, and -
- and she hugged him, the feel of her smile an oddly welcome and pleasant sensation against his chest, as she said, "I'll see you soon, okay? We're all meeting back up at the town gates in fifteen minutes."
- and then she was gone, her shoes clopping delicately against the solid, steady wood of the bridge.
Dias wondered at himself for being caught off-guard not once, but twice, then dismissed the thought; perhaps Rena would always be able to take him by surprise. The prospect was unexpectedly welcome.