Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Author's Note: It's been a while since I've posted anything. Blame that on school. It's been overwhelming lately, especially since I've started doing college visits and applying for scholarships.
It's officially been a year since my cousin, Anthony "Chuckie" Rosa, died in Afghanistan. RIP and thank God for our soldiers, for fighting for the freedom that so many of us take for granted.
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"They shall pass from the old shadows of time into the new lights of eternity."
-Saint Augustine (City of God)
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Being around her, it was strange. And painful. Her face was so very familiar, and yet, there were differences. The skin was too smooth, too pale and too unmarred. She didn't stick her tongue between her teeth in thought and she didn't know how to play the flute to fill up the long silences. Those silences were never awkward, whatever it might seem. It was simply there, hanging between them.
"You told Lloyd that there were other people inside of you." Yuan said quietly one twilight as they stared out at the land.
She glanced at him. "Oh yes."
"…Who are they?" Who else had been so trapped, so wonderful, as Martel? Were the traits of these people in the features of this woman (Summon Spirit) who looked so very much like her?
"I don't know." The not-Martel confessed, looking at her hands. The fingers were too long to be his Martel's. She had never had pianist's hands and there was constantly dirt beneath her fingernails and calluses on her palms. "I feel as though my heart has been washed. I cannot remember their names. I know I know them, but the people who loved them are so long ago gone that holding onto their memories is like sand slipping through my fingers."
"I see." He murmured, twisting the familiar ring. He had never stopped playing with it, as if to reassure himself that it was still there. Once upon a time, Mithos had teased him for it and Kratos had laughed at his expression. But that was a long time ago.
"Do you?" She asked, the horribly familiar eyes watching him. "The other Summon Spirits may change their appearance when they like. In theory, so could I."
"But because there are almost no memories left, you're stick looking like that." Yuan assumed.
"Don't be mistaken; the memories I have are powerful and many."
"What would happen if Kratos and I were to die?" It was a morbid question, but Yuan had long ago stopped being afraid of his own mortality. His lack of mortality, however, that he sometimes still struggled with.
The not-Martel looked over at the seedling, small and still so very fragile. "People love this Tree. Their memories, when they make enough, will keep me going. And you are forgetting something very important—you were not the only ones to love her."
He closed his eyes, suddenly not wanting to see the world anymore. It was too bright, too alive, for an old man like him. How could he have forgotten? "Origin."
"Yes. Mithos was not the only one beloved of him."
Sometimes, Yuan wondered what she saw. Did she see the ghosts of memory walking through the world as he did? Or did she see them differently because they weren't really her memories?
"Her memory won't ever leave you then." Yuan said, looking at her.
"No, I suspect not." She stood in a single, graceful motion. It was disconcerting to see it with that body. Martel had never been that graceful. "Then again, I do not think that I am the only one."
As she walked away, new blades of grass and flower buds growing beneath her feet, he leaned his head back against the stone that had been warmed by the sun.
"No, no you aren't."
