Knowing a Rock and a Hard Place.
Disclaimer: I do not own Golden Sun - which belongs to Nintendo/Camelot - or the quote below.
"I've travelled far and I burned all the bridges,
I believed as soon as I hit land.
All the other options held before me
Would wither in the light of my plan."
Kings of Convenience, 'Homesick'
Chapter 1: Mineral Water
For exactly the six thousandth, three hundred and second time, Alex thought back to the last few words he'd been left with. So if the world swallowed him, he might die? Who'd have thought? True, he had considered himself immortal and invincible for a few seconds, with good reason, but from the next few moments of fear and panic up until now, circumstances had only made this memory increasingly unbearably bitter. Why warn him, anyway, of the trap it had prepared when it was too late to keep that fact from being etched into every empty second for half a century now, and presumably the rest of his existence? That… rock… It was pure cruelty.
Even now, Alex was still surprised whenever his hatred for Vale's guardian surpassed all previous intensity. It had happened thousands of times, though it was the only thing that made him despair too deeply to finish counting exactly. He sometimes tried to stop himself counting every similar thought so morbidly, or noting how every second built up into hours, days and years, but he inevitably picked it up again each time. After all, these were hardly the most depressing distractions available. If he were still a mere mortal, Alex was sure his emotions alone would be enough to kill him, but the only limitless power he seemed to have received was how to consciously bear limitless torture.
Reaching his life's goal had been pure bliss. Few people ever obtained mediocre goals like fame and fortune, while fewer still really accomplished anything, perhaps by founding a town, winning a war, or raising a continent. As one of the last descendants of the ancient Mercury Clan, Alex knew how the world had lost its magnificence. His first clue had been his first view of Mercury Lighthouse, the graceful tower, blue as the sea and sky behind it, making the thatched huts of Imil look primitive in comparison. He'd known Mercury Lighthouse since… Since a time he no longer remembered. Probably the day he was born.
Alex did remember his first time inside. He'd been five, following his grandmother through the glowing doorway for his first lesson in Psynergy, with that girl Mia, six then, following too. They'd both enjoyed their chance to practice forming little mists and droplets in those otherworldly halls. Mia had been glad to leave by the end, though, getting homesick after barely half an hour. Alex had only wanted to see more. As soon as he'd learned Ply, Alex had set off whenever he could get away from the busy village unnoticed, enduring the long and tiring fifteen minute walk to the lighthouse. Each time, he would make the doorway glow, climb as high as he could, then wander through the corridors, always stopping in a room with a balcony and sitting there for hours, watching the sea far below shimmer between the little carved pillars.
For a long while, Alex had paid little attention to the dusty piles of books and scrolls that lay in the rooms farthest from his grandmother's route through the tower. He would have asked her to read them to him, but she gave no indication that she knew of those relics. She never even entered the lighthouse without good reason. Everyone was wary of the tower, seeing it as theirs to guard but not to linger in, explore or feel at home in. Alex didn't get it, but he knew that they wouldn't understand him either, even though he hadn't in those days been able to put his finger on the reason why.
Eventually, curiosity had led Alex to take a longer look at the old texts in search of anything as enchanting as the tower around him. The mysterious designs and vibrant landscapes he'd found had led him to put more effort into learning to read at home, so that he could understand the writing beside the illustrations. He still hadn't managed to get far through the more difficult books, but by the time he was ten, Alex had known enough to start seeing bustling Imil as a bleak remnant of the past. He grew up knowing that there had been a time when Alchemy placed the very elements of reality in humanity's hands, realizing that everyone around him was content to while away their short lives in a land of scattered villages and xenophobic tribes.
When his grandmother had died, he'd let Mia take care of most of the duties of Imil's healer, mainly because the only concrete task in that set of traditions was to guard the Lighthouse. To keep it forgotten and secret. Alex had dealt with other people with vague politeness, not trusting anyone with his opinions, and they'd seemed to assume there wasn't much to him, a quiet boy whom Mia sometimes talked with.
Alex had begun to hear what was possible at age thirteen, when the Proxians had first passed through Imil. A heavily bruised pair of warriors came to replace food and medical supplies destroyed in a storm, buying enough for a far larger party. Alex had followed them back to their camp in the woods to the south. From the top of a tree, Alex had watched the strange pair approach a boy, two men and a woman, all of whom were resting in thick sleeping bags near a warm fire, with tightly knotted rope round their wrists. The warriors woke each one up in turn, changing their bandages and making them drink a freshly prepared medicinal potion, but all with an attitude of disdain and detachment. Once their captive patients had drifted off again, the warriors sat by the fire in silence, looking so incredibly grief-stricken that Alex knew he couldn't possibly leave until he'd discovered what was going on. After climbing down as quietly as he'd approached, Alex replenished his half filled water bottle with Douse, picked a hatfull of nuts from the the bushes, and strode into the camp claiming Mia had sent him with a gift for 'the bruised couple from out of town'.
The two Proxians had instantly been suspicious, drawing their weapons and demanding to know who he was, why he'd followed them, who'd sent him, what he intended, what he knew… Alex had been slightly shaken at the time, since he wasn't used to having weapons pointed at him. Fortunately, he'd had less to hide from those with no fondness for Imil than from everyone else, as the Clan itself was no secret, and his opinions on it hardly mattered to these strangers, leaving him free to complain about tradition and hypocrisy. Once they'd had some idea who he was, the warriors had started to consider him potentially useful. They must have thought they were dealing with a more sympathetic and suggestible audience than the people of Vale, since they'd been quite forthright about their efforts to secure help from his village instead.
Saturos and Menardi had told him bitterly of their home, Prox, where everyone had strange powers like him and Mia, but originating from the fiery side of Alchemy; of their lighthouse, built for Mars rather than Mercury, and the fate their leader Puelle claimed was drawing near; of how six had trekked south through the snowy mountain passes, heading for Vale to claim the Mars star that had been taken from its rightful home long ago, its potent Alchemy needed now to protect its corner of the planet; of how, immediately upon entering Vale, it had been clear no-one in the village had the slightest idea what Mt. Aleph really was, and how the mayor had insisted that whatever Prox's situation, prying wasn't welcome; of how the two warriors had led their party's secret midnight expedition, and been the only ones to escape a trap, an eruption of chaos, lightning, monsters, poisonous vapours, spiked pits, shifting stairways, fire and brimstone… All because they had moved a statue. How Menardi had seen her husband die. How Saturos had seen his sister die. Because of a statue.
It had struck Alex that Mia would be serving the same purpose as this trap if there was ever a chance to light Mercury Lighthouse; she would try to keep it from being disturbed. He'd wondered whether she would ever resort to murderous violence, though he'd found it hard to imagine. In the end, she'd defied his expectations...
The Proxians had told him that Mt. Aleph had even attacked the village outside, as their failure had triggered a storm and an avalanche. They'd seen the boy first, Felix, floating unconscious so close to the shore there had seemed little risk in wading out to save him. Then the others had appeared, struggling against the deepest, swiftest currents, and Felix had woken up for long enough to beg them to save his parents. The Proxians had very nearly drowned themselves as a rain of sharp rocks started to follow the earlier boulders. It was like a trap, Menardi had insisted, one where the villagers were the bait. It had almost seemed as if there was something behind the storm, some malevolent entity that would go to any lengths to finish them.
Alex knew now what that had been. The 'Wise One' had caught up with them in the end, and now it had practically finished him, too. He wondered sometimes whether everyone else who had wanted to free Alchemy had suffered a similar fate. Karst and Agatio, Felix and Jenna, their parents, Kraden, Piers, Sheba, Mia, Garet, Kyle, Ivan, Hama, all the soldiers and citizens of Prox… Such a lot of people, but anything that could defeat him could kill them. Someone must have lit the final beacon, and Isaac had apparently survived to be given a share of a dream that only Alex had done a thing to earn. Maybe he should have asked the all-seeing eye for the news before he addressed the weather.
The two Proxians had known they needed to secure more power to beat Mt. Aleph, and keeping the villagers as hostages had seemed a good start. For that, they'd had to keep them alive. Half crushed and half drowned, the hostages had needed more treatment than their few remaining supplies had allowed. A detour further south had been necessary, to take what they needed from Vault, then from Bilibin as they progressed. By the time they'd reached Imil, they'd taken enough money to buy what they needed, which seemed like a good idea, considering they'd have to stick around a few days to allow the hostages to recover their strength before they started moving through the mountains further north. At that point, waking up and walking for half the day was the most they could manage.
Besides, stopping should give them some time to talk. The three adults seemed to prefer trying to sleep most of the time, probably not wanting to take it all in yet, but the boy Felix had started to talk to his captors surprisingly openly about Vale. Menardi suspected he was trying to make the Proxians empathise with the Valean point of view, despite having heard and understood Prox's story. Whatever the reason, they'd already heard about Kraden, a sage they could have approached for help, considering he was studying Alchemy and had also come from somewhere out of town. The warriors wanted to find out everything they could before they crossed the mountains, in case the journey killed anyone.
"So what's your position now, kid?" Saturos had asked bitterly. "Let me guess. You're sympathetic, but you just don't like us."
Actually, Alex had been impressed. He'd never seen so much confidence, despair or ruthlessness in anyone in Imil. He'd never known there was a star to light his lighthouse, to return Alchemy, to make his secret history a reality. He couldn't lose these people, couldn't lose his part in something big. Alex had told Saturos and Menardi that he'd do research for them here in Imil, then join them before they returned.
"I suppose you could help. We'll probably be back first, leveling that mountain. Otherwise, journey to Prox in a few years, if you find anything useful. You can tag along," Menardi had offered, her voice shaking as she tried to speak dismissively.
"You'll have to prove yourself before we trust you with directions," Saturos had added. "We won't have you sending off some sort of rescue party for the hostages. They'd only get slaughtered in Prox, if they ever made it that far."
Theirs had been a strange way of caring, Alex thought. Such a hostile way of worrying about more Valeans getting hurt. Alex had been able to convince people that he was far more considerate, if it suited him.
All that the Proxians had wanted him to do was steal food for them throughout the week they'd stayed. Very easy. He was the healer's assistant, the Mercury Clan, above suspicion.
He'd taken every opportunity to hang around the camp and eat with the warriors; they were better company than his neighbours, as well as more informative. They looked like demons, and they never moved without purpose. In contrast, Alex had found Felix equal parts fascinating and repulsive; he'd been a couple of years older, but he'd acted far younger, snivelling about his family and complaining about problems beyond his control. Talking to him had been like watching a fish suffocate on dry land; Alex hadn't been able to tell whether he'd rather nudge it back into the water or poke its eye out with a stick.
Two more years of study had told Alex all he needed to know. He'd spent more time in town, helping Mia with her healing, trying to develop his Psynergy and improve his reputation. He'd wanted to practice telling people blatant half-truths without making them curious, getting them to trust him instead of letting them avoid him, in an effort to prepare for life among strangers whom he needed to impress. He'd been accustomed to overhearing conversations that painted him as a black sheep who would come to no good; after a few months, he started to hear his neighbours talking about how well he'd shaped up, crediting the change to either Mia's efforts or her assets, and predicting that he would someday wish to marry her and help her lead the town. Mia never appeared to wonder whether the rumours were true. Since the gossip didn't cause the two of them any problems, Alex counted it as a success.
His time alone at Mercury Lighthouse was far more valuable to him. Sometimes he'd practiced his other Psynergy there, the jets of water he'd started to use against wild animals in the forest, a way of fighting that he'd need in the mountains. Sometimes, on the most unreal of days… Alex would never forget how warping had come to him… Mostly, though, piles of old volumes would sit by him on the balconies as he worked through them, making notes and memorizing everything. A few, the least ancient, talked of wars and plans to seal away the power that inspired them. The stone of sages would be as far beyond human hands as the stars above. Alchemy would be drawn into the four glass 'stars' that had previously only been infused with white light atop the four celebratory elemental Lighthouses. If Alex could find a way to light all of them, not just Mars, it would all be released again, meeting in the centre where the stars had been stored as a golden ball of light condensing into pure reality and potency… On that mountain, he could effectively become a god.
He'd burned all of the books on the night he left.
Travelling to Prox had been easier than convincing Puelle that they needed all the Lighthouses lit to save the town. It was probably true anyway. Venus was lacking if the land was falling away. Alex hadn't needed to worry about respect and privacy. Prox was loud, lively and honest, a fiery town acting up against the cold landscape, not like slow, calm, snowy Imil. The Proxians didn't know what to make of Alex, so polite and helpful. He could twist anyone's words against them if they weren't doing what he wanted.
One year of preparation. He'd watched Saturos and Menardi training with the other warriors. He'd helped Karst and Agatio research routes to and through the other lighthouses. He'd seen Felix trying to practice his Venus Psynergy on his own, trying to get the others to teach him how to use a sword, and trying to read all the books Karst would lend him.
When everyone had thought the next expedition would only be to Vale and back, it had been assumed that Felix would stay in Prox with the other hostages, so that Vale could be pressured into handing over the Mars star. With the change of plans, it was assumed that being given all four stars was too much to hope for, and Felix had asked to travel with Saturos, Menardi and Alex, to accomplish the mission through stealth. He'd argued that if they were going all around the world, another sort of Adept might be useful, and he wouldn't run away, because he truly wanted to help this desperate town.
Felix's sincerity was obvious to everyone except the two warriors he was trying to convince. The older Valeans were a part of the community by then, missing their family back home, but unable to hold a grudge against anyone except those two, who'd insisted their hostages weren't taken home until Prox was saved. Felix hadn't fitted in half as well, since the youths of Prox were considerably more suspicious of the world they were getting so isolated from, and he was quite desperate to start making a difference somewhere. Saturos and Menardi had agreed that he could come along and help out, but he had to follow their orders or his parents wouldn't be following him out of Prox. Felix had agreed, as long as he got some say in how they treated Vale; they had to avoid involving anyone except Kraden, and refrain from hurting innocents or taking further hostages. What a handshake that had been.
Alex had taught himself some swordwork, out of sight of the others. It didn't amount to much, but he'd never planned on using it, and he'd never had to. He had simply needed a sword at his belt. Even Felix had carried one. Alex had been the youngest of all of them, at the start, but he'd never worked for anyone else. Only with, and then in the end, without. Throwing all those warriors at Mars Lighthouse had almost worked, but he didn't know what more he could have done…
At the peak of Mt. Aleph, Alex had expected an exhilarating future. Throwing his hands in the air, calling for thunder, wind and rain, for catastrophic storms, he'd imagined the elements roaring and shaking, rejoicing with him the power running through the skies and through his veins. He'd wanted to laugh and shout and tell the world he was here at last. He could have battled an army, run across the oceans, flown to the sun, blown up the moon, and then started to really explore the limits of his power, determined only by his eternal imagination. He could have had forever to do as he pleased, could have reinvented the world however he chose, and he had been about to remove the obsolete, poisonous little village below him… Then the world fell apart in his hands, and the universe shoved him to his knees.
However long he lasted down here, the mountain's collapse would always be his most vivid memory. As he was lying there, paralyzed by the Wise One's attack, the ground had started to sway and shiver sickeningly, and Alex had felt that first chilling, creeping fear. When he'd started to fall back down the mountain he'd climbed, feeling the pain with newly sharpened senses, it had been the first time he'd ever experienced total terror. He'd always assumed his new powers would be accessible in an instant. His old Psynergy had been burned away, though, lost to a vast new power with unknown restrictions. On that mountain, still thinking like a Mercury Adept, he'd tried to break through the lingering paralysis, to erode it, swamp it, smash it into fragments, but nothing raised the slightest flicker of power from within.
While he fell, his injuries triggered his first useful ability automatically. A soft warmth had started to heal him slowly and protect him slightly, though it did nothing for pain or paralysis. Feeling for where this energy was coming from, Alex was quickly able to boost it, before mentally exploring the rest of this unfamiliar Alchemy.
As far as he could tell, some of the golden sun's powers seemed to be shared proportionally with that boy Isaac, such as his extended lifespan. But the missing pieces of his prize were mainly destructive powers, which Sol Sanctum's guardian must have considered too dangerous for his hands.
This did still leave him many of the abilities he'd expected, considering how much more it takes to create than destroy, but he couldn't fight with this power, couldn't set things alight or bring them crashing down. He couldn't summon weather more chaotic than a sunny day or a light drizzle, couldn't tear two things apart, couldn't eradicate anything, couldn't wield a force large enough to crack an egg unless he did it by hand. When he'd attacked the guardian, he could only have been gently wobbling it… The only way he could have escaped would have been to constantly put enough energy into moving to cancel out the effects of the guardian's curse, without ever permanently ridding himself of it. With only a finite amount of power available, which could prove to be insufficient for the task, Alex had hoped he wouldn't have to match too great an effort.
Before he'd even begun to attempt escape, though, scraping down one last crevice had brought Alex within sight of the gaping fissure Mt. Aleph was rapidly sinking into. In his last few seconds above the surface, Alex dropped everything else without a thought to power the shield protecting him, an act that barely saved him from being ground to dust. Caught up in the cataclysmic shifting of rock deep inside the planet, he was carried down for miles, desperately hoping not to be crushed but believing himself doomed every second of the way. He didn't even notice the broken bones he hadn't gotten around to healing. Being swallowed by the earth was beyond terrifying. Alex knew this was how the ancient guardian of Alchemy hoped to kill him.
Eventually, he came to rest between a slab of submerged sandstone cliff and a vast expanse of granite, both of which were dented where they'd scraped past him. For the next few days or weeks, he didn't remember thinking a single thought. He finally found himself staring blankly ahead in total darkness, having by some miracle maintained his shield even while in shock, but he was in an awful condition physically. After diverting even the little healing power that had been automatic, his body felt like it belonged to some impossible corpse. It certainly hadn't helped that, although starving would never kill him now, it could have every other effect. Despite the pain, Alex was too scared to weaken his shield any more than he had to in case it failed him, and so with the patience of a brave coward, he dragged out his healing for seven years. During that time, he'd been able to distract himself from other concerns.
Once all his wounds were reduced to bruises, Alex hadn't been in enough agony to avoid thinking of the world above. Alchemy would have been unleashed on the world for seven years then, fifty by now, and he still didn't know what had come of it. Could everyone wield Alchemy, or only the Adepts, descendants of the ancient and powerful people who knew it last? Were the great civilizations of old being rebuilt? Did any of them even deserve it?
While Alex had always had the patience to avoid unnecessary conflict, he had no real respect for the common villager. The people of Vale were a perfect example; so closed minded they didn't understand the power they withheld from the world, mankind's ability to grant every human wish; stubborn enough to refuse the Mars Clan any aid when another village was threatened by destruction; low enough to send out two ignorant children to fight against Prox's last chance, sending them into a death match against those who should have been their allies. Isaac and Garet had killed Saturos and Menardi then taken up their cause! If that didn't illustrate perfectly the sort of self-defeating stupidity and short sightedness that governed most people's behaviour, nothing did.
Still, Alex had allied himself with those he didn't care to know any longer than necessary. As he had once told Felix, it had quickly become apparent that Saturos and Menardi's aggression outpaced their intelligence. Besides, they hadn't felt pressed to act until their family and friends had been threatened by Gaia Falls. Despite all the knowledge that had been left to those of Mars Lighthouse, Alex had been the only one to want to return Alchemy to put back what should never have been taken away; the others saw it as the only cure for one problem or another. He'd hoped to see the world changed for the better, most specifically to give himself the chance to live an outstanding life, after working so hard for that chance.
Alex knew there were enough smart and powerful people around to appreciate Alchemy now that it had fallen into their laps, even if he couldn't guess what they had done with the planet by now. It truly stung that he ought to be the one shaping the world up there, but now that he'd finally become the most powerful man in the whole of Weyard, he was trapped, amounting to as little as the mud beneath humanity's feet. For years, aside from wishing he was in their place, this bitterness made it hard to care how the populations of the world had prospered or suffered in his absence. Inevitably though, just as he despised the poor state of the lands he remembered, Alex could only hope people had achieved something decent by now with the power he'd left them. There were even a few people he'd known who had potential.
The events leading to the firing of the final lighthouse had not included much of a role for his old acquaintance Mia, but it was in her nature to get swept along whenever change was too rapid. She would settle into slow moving times and work with them to the best of her ability, no doubt becoming one of the most valuable members of any community. Alex had once thought that as another member of the Mercury Clan, she might share his interest in their Clan's lost golden age, but despite how much she tried to achieve with the hand she'd been dealt, she had shown no interest in learning anything but caution from the past. He'd kept his distance even from her since then, and she'd respected that without really understanding why. Now her ability, should she have survived, would be much increased, she might well be one to try to fully use it, ending up in an influential position even if she didn't naturally seek out status.
Felix, too, might have accomplished a lot by now. Alex hadn't spoken much with the boy from Vale while they were both travelling with Saturos and Menardi. It had been clear he hated what he was doing to the people of his hometown, a pointless sort of sentimentality that made him seem less reliable than the Proxians. Felix had seen them through Venus Lighthouse, but until then had served as little more than a babysitter for the other hostages. Felix's time in Prox had shaped him more effectively than Alex had first suspected, though, as he'd proved by taking control of his group after Saturos and Menardi's deaths and actually making good progress, even recruiting that boat's owner rather than simply managing to take the boat as Alex had planned. By the time Alex had run into more Proxians, they hadn't really been needed, but anything that sped things up was to some extent worthwhile. After all, Felix's big disadvantage had been his tendency to dawdle, to get distracted. If he had truly found enough strength to lead his group successfully to the end, then he must have made a name for himself by now.
After the first two decades underground, with so much time spent considering such issues, Alex began to realize that he missed these people. In all the years he had been surrounded by others he had vastly preferred his own company. Now, for some reason, he wished other people were around so he could see their faces again. If a mere twenty years encased in solid rock could do that to him, Alex feared for his sanity now after fifty. Suppose he lived out his full, probably thousands of centuries long lifespan down here? What sort of wreck would he be by the end? Once he had realized where thoughts of other people might take him, Alex had tried to avoid them, often going for months thinking only of himself.
Focusing on his present situation seemed the most constructive thing to do, even if it was similarly frustrating. When he'd first finished his healing, Alex had started to explore his Alchemical abilities further, since his shield seemed to be working fine with a little energy spared. He'd been altered more deeply than he'd initially realized by the golden sun. When he focused, he could recall anything he had actively thought or seen in the past perfectly, he could feel the state of every organ in his body and consciously adjust automatic functions (on a whim, he once stopped his heart for a week and moved the blood around his body himself), he could sense the exact density of the rock for half a mile around him, and he could concentrate on about ten different thoughts at once. The really useful ability in his situation would have been a way of getting out, but as he couldn't do anything to remove the rock above him, these powers seemed pretty much useless. He had even considered simply letting himself die, but he couldn't really bear to give up, so he had turned ever more to his thoughts instead. After the rather disturbing twenty year landmark, he renewed his search for any possible escape with fresh desperation.
If there had been a crumbled fragment of a seed case down here with him, Alex was fairly sure he could have figured out how to gradually rebuild the seed and give the plant the strength to grow, introducing another variable. There was nothing. He felt for water, hoping to divert its flow to someday erode through to him, a river in which he could form ice and expand pebbles to speed things up, but he was too far down to find anything. He tried making a patch of rock immediately above him grow, thinking it might cause a fissure, but he ended up almost crushing himself.
Six years ago, growing incredibly frustrated, Alex had tried to divert slightly more power away from his protection to see if he could feel further, even though his instincts told him that his shield was at its limit. A fraction of a second of intolerable heat and pressure had nearly killed him, before he restored his shield to its usual strength. Having a little more healing to do was always painful, but still a welcome distraction. It had been a relief and a disappointment when he had finished a year or so ago.
Since then, he'd been thinking through the elemental powers that had been accessible through Psynergy, reasoning that as the elements were the building blocks of Alchemy, this might remind him of some aspect of his powers that he hadn't tried.
He was on to Jupiter now, going through the Psynergy he'd seen Sheba and Ivan using. The wind controlling abilities wouldn't do much good down here, and he didn't imagine he could fly through rock, so that mainly left telepathy. Though he could block them, Alex had no idea how those kids actually read minds and didn't have anyone here to try it on, while the only instances when he had heard telepathic communication had been in the lighthouses (from unidentifiable elemental guardians), and in his meeting with the guardian boulder of Vale.
Hatred once again flared up in Alex at what that rock had put him through. He seemed doomed to die down here, as it had hoped. Alex knew he was crying again, another thing that never used to happen, as he pictured that rock slowly and painfully imploding for the seven thousand five hundred and fifteenth time.
Bringing himself back to the subject of telepathy, only as dispirited as usual, Alex wondered how he might try to broadcast a message. Did he even want to contact anyone, to plead for help? Was it worth being stuck here forever if he never tried? Was anything worth anything when every last hope he'd ever come up with had failed? At least he had failed in private until now, with no witnesses to spurn or deride him.
What if he told Mia he'd spent almost his entire life missing the blue of the sea, and her eyes, and the sky, and the sound of her voice, and his own, and the crunch of footsteps in snow, the swish of fabric, the smiles that followed in her wake, the loose threads in her favourite tablecloth - and even then, she met him with festering resentment, unable to see past the hostile terms on which they'd parted? What if he found himself begging for aid from someone who'd never felt any fondness for him in the first place? Could his situation still get worse...?
Alex decided to try asking for help, and if that failed too, he wouldn't make himself live with another humiliating memory. His existence was pathetic enough already. If this didn't work, then at long last, he would let himself die.
Giving it his best guess, Alex mentally yelled, #Hey! People! Can anyone hear me? Do you know who I am? I only… I have to ask. Someone please help me…#
He'd really done it. He was finally leaving, one way or another. With a million regrets, he was about to finish with it all, when he got a horrible shock. An answer.
#Eh? Is that… Is that Alex? How in the world did you...? This is Isaac. What's going on?#
He'd actually received an answer. A real person replying. And somehow, Isaac sounded almost as young as he had in the old days, when they had all talked together and everyone could see what everyone else looked like. When there had been a sea and a sky. Overwhelmed by violently mixed emotions, Alex ended up sending Isaac the mental equivalent of an exclamation mark.
#I'm pretty sure that's you, Alex. Where are you? If you're alive, what have you been doing all these years?#
Alex sensed a hint of fear in Isaac's mental voice. What did Isaac have to worry about? What exactly did everyone up there think had happened to him?
#Where? Drowning in rock. Nothing, or as good as. That's all. Rock, and only rock!# Alex carved out the words into the silence as if he were violently swearing.
#Right… Hold on, I'll get the others. We might be able to help you, Alex, but you've got an incredible amount of explaining to do.# Isaac broke the connection and gazed around his bedroom in Lemuria Palace, totally bewildered. This was the last thing he'd expected at three in the morning, fifty years after Alex's miraculous death.