Burnout
In fact, nostalgia comes from the Greek "nostos" (to return home) and "algos" (pain, suffering). It is literally "the pain of returning home."
This morning he tripped over the door lintel. Yesterday he bashed his arm into the kitchen table. The night before that he nearly cut himself with his father's sword.
He takes extra care to climb into bed tonight and to fake the deep, even breaths of sleep. From across the room he hears his father's rumbling murmur, then his mother's giggle.
"Poor Yuri," she says. "This growth spurt has been hard on him."
No, Mama, he wants to tell her. But how to explain that he's not growing, he's shrinking?
He's not strong enough to lift a sword anymore. Not that he needs to-everything is peaceful in the kingdom. It shouldn't bother him.
Chelinka slaps the book out of his hands, quickly stuffing it under a cushion as Papa looks over. she giggles a charming little girl laugh, and seemingly satisfied Papa returns to his carving.
"Military strategy for an eight year old?" she asks him, voice low in his ear. "Yuri, the idea was to be as normal as possible!"
As she arranges herself at his side, skirt one way and blanket another, he resists the urge to shout. "That is normal for me," he tells her through gritted teeth.
"Really?" she asks. "I thought you wanted to go back, to start over-"
"I did!"
"-look, I'm having just as hard of a time as you are," she flashes a dimpled smile at Mama. "It hasn't been easy."
It hasn't but he wonders at the truth of her words. She was an eight year old who woke up as a girl twice her age. As far as Chelinka can tell, she has now been restored to her proper timeline. Everything is right for her now.
As for him, he may appear to be a child, but he has lived for sixteen years. Yuri frowns. How can he just forget that?
Some days, though she urges him to go out and play with Chelinka, all Yuri wants to do is curl up on his mother's lap and stay there.
"Yuri darling," she says as she runs long, thin fingers through his hair, "I wish you'd tell me what's wrong."
Head resting on her thigh and body sprawled out on the rug, he looks first at the shirt she is mending-Papa's-then up at her concerned brown eyes. "Please?" she asks.
He has to look away. "It's nothing, Mama, truly," he lies.
"Yuri-"
Pulling his head from her lap he rolls to his knees and stands. "I'm going to go play," he tells her, picturing instead the quiet of the second floor of the library. He can't resist giving her a long hug before he leaves, nor from looking back at her as he walks out the door.
Sunspots dazzle him, he pauses in the yard to clear his sight. When his vision returns, he is surprised to find his father watching him, an unidentifiable look on his face.
Yuri sneers, and is more pleased than he should be at how taken aback his father is. "It's just a phase," he says mockingly. "Don't worry. I'll grow out of it." He stalks off to the library, hating his high-pitched voice, hating how long it takes his short legs to get him there.
They take a day trip to Rebena Te Ra and he is struck by the warring emotions that rise within his heart. Once he was a boy here, eager to explore. Then he was a young man, desperate to save his sister, determined to know the truth, destined to rescue the kingdom.
Eyes on the statue in the town square, he nearly misses his father's moment. Unwittingly he moves to block the hand reaching for his shoulder, but Chelinka's warning glance stops him. If Papa notices, he doesn't say anything.
"Don't get lost, you two," he says instead. "Be here at sunset."
Chelinka wants to see the shops. Yuri knows nothing in those stalls could match the armor he wore or the blade he once carried. Not yet. "Stay here," he tells her, eyes on those westward steps.
"Yuri, no," she whispers, unable to do anything but follow him. But that is how it's always been, she thinks, drawn relentlessly toward that terrible tower.
Trepidation growing, Yuri takes the steps slowly. The door is harder to open, he has to dig his heels in to move it.
No longer is the tower Galdes' personal playground. The stair is open, he takes it, ignoring Chelinka's wide eyes and pale face. What will he find at the top? Does the high priest exist in this world?
He takes the steps at a walk, but his gait quickens and soon he is sprinting up each flight, rounding the corners at breakneck speeds. He bursts into the open air at the top of the tower panting, a few birds taking flight in a flurry of feathers. Chelinka is huffing and puffing a few flights below. He is alone. There is no Galdes.
Is the feeling in his chest relief or disappointment? Yuri should feel happy the bastard's gone, right?
Papa meets them in the square around sunset. As Chelinka runs forward and leaps into his arms, Yuri is frozen at the sight of his family bathed in sunlight. He swallows, but the lump in his throat is as big as ever.
"Yuri, come quick!" Mama shouts, eyes wide with excitement. She points toward the palace. "The King is coming this way!"
Chelinka has her hands clasped together, grinning as she bounces up and down on her toes. She begs Papa to put her on his shoulders and he obliges. Yuri stands quietly, basking in the warmth of his mother's arms looped loosely around him.
The guard approaches first, clearing a path for the king. then come the King's Knights, glorious in their armor. Yuri glares. They weren't so brave and chivalric when they were most needed.
Then there he is-King Kolka, their uncle-waving to the gathering crowd, and smiling when he sees them. Yuri cocks his head to one side. Though he doesn't wave, Kolka's eyes find his anyway. The king bows his head, then straightens and winks.
Beside him the crowd is clamoring. Who was the king bowing to? Papa growls under his breath and mutters, "Damn it, Kol."
He hates the way Mama is frowning, eyebrows drawn together. "It's all right," Yuri tells her, patting her hand. He doesn't want her to worry. "He was bowing to me."
Chelinka glares at him, but he ignores her warning. "Was not!"
"Why would he do that?" Mama asks, humoring him with a ruffle of his hair.
Why is he saying this? Why is he even bothering? "I saved his life, once."
Though Mama and Papa are quiet, Chelinka sticks out her tongue. "Did not!"
He refuses to rise to her bait, to lower his words in any way. "Don't worry about it. It was another lifetime."
That night he hears Papa mention an 'overactive imagination' and he bites his pillow, muffling a groan of anger and desperate sadness. They would never understand. They could never understand.
Heavy sword clutched in both sweating hands, Yuri moves into the second crescent of the butterfly sweep. Papa shouts for him to halt.
"Yuri, what did I tell you about following the drill?" he asks, voice dangerously quiet.
Letting the sword drop slowly to his side, Yuri protests. "I was just doing what felt natural." And it is a natural follow-through, part of a strike combination he'd taught himself early on.
Latov sighs, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. "Just because something feels natural doesn't mean it's right, son.
He bites back a retort, keeping his eyes on the ground. "May I return to drill?" he asks, tone formal.
"Yes. And keep your arm up, you're getting sloppy."
Silently and simultaneously, father and son realize that puberty is going to be hell. Latov is thankful he'll never have to experience that again. Yuri curses Galdes and his starsinging twin over and over.
Listening in to his parents' nightly conversations has become routine. Chelinka breathes slowly and nearby-she sleeps so easily. He envies her.
Tonight, a word and a name have his mind racing. 'Changeling' and Alhanalem. Can it be possible that the lich exists in this world? Fear constricts his chest.
As he finds out within the fortnight, Alhanalem was never in danger. The changeling his parents referred to was him.
"I will admit, it seems a plan most diabolical," Al says, examining Yuri in the library, "Yet having spoken to you, I see a fear nonsensical."
Perhaps Al will understand. Yuri still isn't sure how different this reality is. Obviously Mama's survival means the rules have changed, but how much history has been altered?
"Al," he says, slouching back into an armchair, "Let's pretend, for a moment, that someone was pretending to be you and fooling the king."
The magician pauses, then attempts to mimic Yuri's posture. Seeing his long, lanky body stuffed into an armchair makes Yuri smile, eyelids crinkling at the corners. "I perceive this idea to be rather fantastical," he admits.
Yuri steeples his fingers contemplatively. "Would you use the relic hidden at Rela Cyel to prove your identity to him?"
"Perhaps, your solution most practical," Al trails off, and Yuri fearlessly meets he dark gaze of his helm.
"I'm not a changeling. I'm still me. I'm just...different, that's all," he tells the Yuke.
Leaning forward, Al seems to pin Yuri down with his invisible stare. "Is this an effect of the starsinger's power astronomical?" At the boy's nod, he shakes his head. "Then in the future I look forward to hearing tale phenomenal."
Whatever Al reports to his parents seems to work, for while on occasion he gets an odd look, they whisper about other matters now. Chelinka, however, is not so easy to pacify.
When she catches him with some magicite he filched from the caves, he swears she sees red. "Yuri," she hisses, ripping the magic from his hands, "You're going to ruin everything!"
"Why can't they know?" he demands, seizing the magicite back. Mama's a starsinger, she'll understand!"
"What makes you think they'd even believe you?" she asks, sneer odd on her pretty face. "Just another little boy telling tales!"
"Not if you backed me-"
"You chose this world, Yuri."
He looks at her familiar features, their same jaw line and nose, the identical arched eyebrows, and thinks he doesn't even know her. "I never had a choice," he tells her, the phantom ache in his chest only memories of his heart failing him.
Red suffuses her cheeks, her eyes narrow. "You can choose to accept it."
How to make her understand? She's his twin, she's known everything there ever was to know about him. How can there be this barrier between them? "Chelinka, you fell asleep at eight and woke up one day and you were sixteen. Do you remember that? Wasn't that strange, and hard? Now imagine the opposite. I fell asleep at sixteen and woke up and I was eight again."
Something in her softens a bit. "But aren't you glad to see Mama and Papa again?"
"I am," he assures her. "I missed them so much. But things are different. I'm not the same person I was eight years ago. Those years didn't just pass in the blink of an eye for me. I lived every single day of them."
"No, Yuri, you didn't," her voice is soft, pitying. "This is reality. You are eight years old. All that, that other life, was just a dream."
She walks away, taking the magicite with her. Yuri is left empty-handed, bereft.
How could it have been a dream? He didn't imagine what happened. He didn't imagine those years.
"Your Majesty, I would ask a boon of you. In favor of services rendered to yourself and to the Crown, I ask that you foster me in Rebena Te Ra as one of your knights."
He doesn't ask as a favor from uncle to nephew. He's better than that. Besides, he's proved himself as a warrior. That must be worth something.
The reply is short. "Perhaps when you are older," the short scrap of parchment reads.
Yuri can understand the age difference between himself and the other knights as being a problem, but the perhaps is a slap in the face. He's not a spoiled child begging for sweets, he's a man who saved both the king and his daughter.
Chelinka watches him with knowing eyes as he crumples the note into a tiny ball. "Let it go," she tells him softly.
When he drops the letter into the fire, she nods approvingly and rubs his shoulder. He shrugs her off.
"You were right," he says. Then he heads outside, behind the library, and forces himself to do press-ups until his muscles are screaming for him.
Eyes closed, Chelinka makes a wish and blows out her half of the candles. Yuri huffs, eyes wide open.
Mama cheers and Papa grins. Meeth makes her way around the table to worm her head under Yuri's hand. Patting her obligingly, he watches as Al hands out two oddly shaped gifts.
Ripping the paper from hers, Chelinka crows with delight. It's a pot and ladle. Meeth skips over to her. "So you can practice your alchemy with Mee-thy!" she tells her.
Thoughts anywhere but in the room, Yuri opens his present. It's heavy, yet familiar. He rips the last paper.
A sword in a black sheath rests in his hands. Yuri knows this blade, knows its feel, remembers the way it felt in his hands as he fought Galdes. He looks at Al in wonder; the Yuke nods regally.
"Al," Mama whispers, horrified, "What about the books?" Papa looks ready to strangle his old friend. Chelinka is stunned. Meeth winks knowingly from the other side of the table. And Yuri...Yuri could not be more grateful.
"Thank you," he says, then rises from his seat and runs outside before they can take the sword back. From the training yard beside the library he hears their voices raise, an argument begin. He can't care less.
The blade is heavier in his hands than he remembers, but that will change soon enough. He unsheathes it, runs his fingers down cool steel and memories, then swings it in a controlled sweep to his left.
Together boy and sword dance under the light of the crescent moon. Alhanalem and Meeth find him out there in the yard, sword at his side and smile on his face.
"Happy seventeenth birthday, Yuri," Meeth says as she wriggles under his arm.
Together they watch the pale moon rise higher in the sky, and it is almost like the old times, and he is finally at peace.