Miles "Tails" Prower, a young mobian fox at fifteen years of age, sits quietly in his bedroom and stares out through the window into the clear night sky… He tries counting the stars he can see in his head, but cannot seem to pass the number two…
There shouldn't be just him leaning out that window in that moment… There should be another creature there with him, sitting right next to him, the two of them leaning into each other and just enjoying the serene silence, disturbed only by the sound of their own breathing… But as it was, the utter silence felt like it was closing in on Tails, choking him…
He shook his head to himself and closed the window abruptly, closing the curtains behind himself. He shouldn't be such a bloody softy! It had been seven years now, to the day… to the very hour… He should be over her…
Tails let out a sigh of defeat. "You know when you're in love when years can't tear your feelings from you…"
Looking across his bedroom towards his dresser he saw two things: A flowerpot containing a pure, white rose. Standing next to it was a framed picture.
Tails looked at the flower as he walked closer. As it was night the petals had retracted, like if the flower was asleep. But when it blossomed, like it would do every day at noon, its white was so strong and pure it might blind someone. It was a simple, yet spectacular sight to behold.
Arriving at the dresser, Tails picked up the picture to look closer at it… It was a group photo, including himself and some of his closest friends, taken more than seven years ago. Also in the picture was a young girl… The red rosebuds in her hair might be mistaken for accessories, but they were in fact a part of her body, something which amongst her kind was an equal part of identity as a face. Her image brought tears to Tails' eyes.
"Cosmo…" He wiped the tears away as they began trailing down his cheeks. "Mother Gaia knows that I miss you like nothing else."
Tails put the picture down on his dresser again… He remembered the adventure he'd met Cosmo in like if it had happened yesterday…
"Those accursed metarex… I would face all of them alone if it meant bringing you back Cosmo."
Tightening his fist, he slammed it into the bed behind himself. The softened sound of fist on cloth was hardly fulfilling, but it was enough for Tails' anger to be dispersed.
"But then again… it wasn't by their hands that you died."
Looking at his open palm for a second, Tails clenched his fist again and shut his eyes… His anger towards himself was strong.
"It doesn't matter how long I wait… Time can't heal this wound I have inflicted on us!"
Tails raised his fist to strike his bed again, but he couldn't make it fall… Instead, his entire body fell onto the bed. Wriggling in the bedding, Tails muffled his cries with the pillow.
"I shouldn't have fired that shot… There must've been another way to stop them!"
As he kept crying into the pillow, Tails hardly noticed how he started to feel the fatigue and sorrow claim his consciousness. Before he'd realised it he'd fallen asleep, still sobbing in his sleep… Even his dreams this night seemed to be of Cosmo and their adventures together, and he experienced their time together once again…
As Tails saw the end of his and Cosmo's adventure, the final blast which was aimed at the metarex and Cosmo, and heard the thunderous sound of the impact, he soon realised something… He was awake. The sound wasn't just part of a dream.
"What the…?"
Jumping out of bed and parting the curtains, allowing in the early light of dawn into his bedroom, Tails saw a small fire in his backyard surrounding some strange object…
"Holy smokes!" Tails rushed out of the bedroom and down into the kitchen where he kept a fire extinguisher. Had a meteorite struck just outside his house? It made little difference what was going on, he had to put out that fire before it spread!
Scurrying outside with the extinguisher in tow, Tails made quick work of the still small fire. As the smoke settled, Tails leaned forward to investigate a hole in his garden, no doubt made as a result of whatever sparked the fire. It was hardly a half foot deep, but it was wide, indicating a large object…
Waving away some of the smoke which had settled in the crevices of the hole, Tails began to see a shape of some sort… It was a deep black, almost like obsidian glass.
"Is it a volcanic rock?" The theory was soon dispelled. This thing, whatever it was, was too smooth to be rock. It felt more like it was made of leather…
Leather… or maybe it was skin? Tails leaned into the hole and was almost poked in the eye when some sort of spines bounced out of the hole. They were of the same black surface as the object, only with red stripes running across them…
Black with red stripes…? Tails had a suspicion, and he needed to have it confirmed quickly.
Reaching down, Tails felt the shape of the object. There was no doubt: This was a mobian creature, probably someone he knew… He pulled out the creature from the hole with little effort. As he saw the face of him there was no denying it. It was Shadow the Hedgehog, someone who'd been on his adventure with Cosmo, among other things.
"You never cease to amaze…" Tails murmured to Shadow as he picked him up and carried him inside the house. Once he was there, he put Shadow on the couch in the living room, allowing him to rest and recover. "I wonder what sort of story you'll have this time… It'll be something about the Chaos Emeralds at least, I'm quite certain of that already. Or maybe it's about the Master Emerald. Knuckles wouldn't be happy if that was the-"
Stopping himself mid-phrase as he noticed a glimmer coming from Shadow clenched hand, Tails decided to investigate. As he was still unconscious, there was no trouble in retrieving the object in Shadow's hand… It looked like some sort of jewellery; a brooch… Shaped like a flower, it had all the colours of the rainbow within its encrusted gemstones, and had been neatly polished.
Tails needed only take one look at this elaborate trinket to know what it was, and from whence it came… Shortly before the picture in his room had been taken, Tails had returned a brooch to Cosmo which looked exactly the same as this one, having found it at the crash site where he first met her.
Tails looked between the brooch and Shadow with a flabbergasted expression. Why would Shadow hold on to this thing? How did he even get his hands on it in the first place?
"…Whatever your story is, I really want to hear it."
