Maybe I'll die today.

The sky is this eye-blistering baby blue. It always looks like that in Ylisse when it's sunny.

People always say it's supposed to be really pretty but I think it's kind of boring. In Plegia at sunset the sky would light up in a warm glow of colors with little golden streaks where the edges of clouds were, and it's the prettiest thing in the world. There's a story about a mage who stole a piece of that sky and put it into a stone, and that's how we get the kind of gemstone that's on the throne (I forget what it's called) but frankly I think the sky is way prettier.

Olivia said she'd come watch the sun set with me in Plegia sometime. She probably forgot. It was a long time ago, and anyway, she has a husband and a kid now so I probably shouldn't ask.

Or dunno, maybe I should? Chrom said it was weird to hang around Lissa for more than a month because she was married and pregnant, but maybe it's just a rule for princesses. Olivia's not a princess and she likes traveling and seeing things, so it's not the same.

She probably still wouldn't because of the kid. Everyone has a family now and it's made them all different.

For a little bit, when the kids—the grown-up future kids—were popping up left and right, I was worried that one would pop up calling me dad. It turns out that wasn't a problem. I knew I wasn't dad material. When Lucina said she didn't know my name at all that clinched it.

I totally thought at the time that it meant that after the war was over, I'd be running around wherever I wanted, still getting in crazy good fights without worrying about what it'd do to some poor innocent kid.

I think didn't realize that when a war is over, like completely 100% actually over, you have a little thing called peace and no one feels like fighting to the death.

So now I guess everyone else is busy with their kids and plowing fields and stuff.

I took a job with the Feroxi Arena for a bit but it turns out that they don't like it when you kill the other guy in a couple of seconds, especially since they'd rather watch dark mages lose. Then I tried to be like the Shepherds and stuff and save Ylissean townspeople from bandits, but I think the dark magic freaked them out.

So no one wants me around, I have nothing to do, and I'm bored.

Maybe I'll die today.

Or maybe not. If I get to pick, I don't want to die in Ylisse. It would suck if distances actually mattered and my ghost were stuck here forever.

One good thing about peace is that it's a lot easier to get around. There aren't any armies looking to fight anymore, so going back is a piece of cake.

The thing about easy trips is that they feel too long because it's just all walking, walking. It should only take me four days to get to the border but it feels a lot longer. It's all grass and grass and trees and grass and it goes on forever.

Anyway, if I could pick any one place to die, it'd probably be where I grew up with the wolf. It just seems like the right place to stay forever.

I probably should've died in the think-it-over closet at the institution, but I didn't, so too bad for them.

Or maybe I should've died at some point during the war. The problem with that is I kept getting the nicest commanders—probably because they were the only ones who would put up with me. Or, well, first I was in Captain Orton's squad and I wouldn't call him nice, though maybe it's just 'cause he hated me. He had me transferred a couple months in. Later he'd end up getting his whole squad killed. Too bad.

After that I was with Captain Vasto for awhile, and I think he liked everyone. He was honestly the nicest guy I'd ever known by that point. He actually wanted to talk to me—well, he talked to everyone but that included me—and he always talked a lot, and I think it's partly his fault that I can't shut up anymore.

That's probably the weirdest thing about how things are now. There's no one to talk to. I think I'd gotten used to someone else being around. In the army you're always sharing your space and supplies and everything with someone else, or four or five someone elses. The last time I was alone was those two years before I met the Ylissean army. At times there were some crows who'd come play with me, and at times the plants would have little planty chats, but now that I've had friends in the Ylissean army, just having flowers for company isn't enough.

Verdict's still out on crows. Ylisse doesn't have many crows, and the ones that are left are all scared of people since the farmers here try to kill them off.

Actually, Ylisse is really weird about animals in general, all wolves-are-evil and mountain-cats-are-evil and smite-this and smite-that and I guess now wolves aren't poaching their sheep and it's easy for them to hunt venison so their holy crusade worked out for them.

I guess I can't say too much about it since I helped them smite Plegia.

By that point Plegians had already killed my wolf and Plegians killed most of the other kids in the institution and Plegians put me through pretty much everything bad in my life, so I didn't have any reason to care about betraying Plegia.

Now that I'm headed back though, the whole thing feels kind of weird. Almost nothing good ever happened to me in Plegia but it's still where I grew up and it's where everything that made a difference in my life took place.

It's probably different now. Ylisse smote Plegia and I helped.

The border doesn't look much like the border anymore. There's some crumbling wooden frames where there used to be a checkpoint and in the distance you can still see the forts that used to guard the border, but if I hadn't been stationed here before, I probably wouldn't have known that I'm crossing into Plegia right here.

I think someone said that Maribelle's family owns these lands. It reminds me of her too. Everything is really quality around these parts but it's also really expensive. I bought enough flatbread for three days and it cost practically all my money. At least water's free. The wells in Ylisse are so cute.

Captain Orton said once that this place was a "hotbed of hostility" or something like that, because Ylisse and Plegia have been tugging the borderline back and forth for centuries and everyone in this area is pretty sick of it. By sick I mean dead or turned into mercenaries. The fish merchant in town said that there are only decent villages on the Ylissean side 'cause the border now is the farthest east the conflict has ever pushed so they're doing okay. They said there's nothing left standing if you go west past the border. King What's-his-face, before Emmeryn, struck it pretty hard before he died and King Gangrel took it back.

In the army we always ran laps in the morning before our drills. Captain Orton had us run them between this half-burnt cemetery at the base of the mountains to the north and this chopped-up statue of King Garré at the base of the mountains to the south. Both of them cast these long dramatic shadows from the rising sun.

King Garré probably cast a pretty impressive one back when he was still standing on his stone pedestal, but I guess his fleshy bits were made of marble or something because someone chopped his torso down from the statue and then away his head and hands. So the headless handless torso of King Garré laid on the ground beside the base of the platform, half-propped up by its elbows. If Captain Orton wasn't looking sometimes we'd stomp King Garré in the chest rather than tag his pedestal. I dunno, it was funny at the time, getting to see this king eternally dismembered and awkwardly fallen in the mud, kicked around by nobodies sent to die for his grandson.

I think I'll go see him. I kinda want to step on his chest again.

It's actually really weird to do this run in the afternoon. The sun is on the wrong side so even though it looks like most of the dead trees and piles of rocks are still the same as they were, it all looks weird.

I think I can see the pedestal of the statue in the distance. It looks like there's just pedestal left, though.

Yeah. I can't see his torso anywhere. I guess the rest of him was made up of pretty decent rock, too. Maybe King Garré is a brick in a church somewhere. Or maybe they cut him up to make weapons in the second war, since the country was pretty low on everything by the end of the first.

Well, until I find out what they did with him, I'd like to think they made him into a latrine, 'cause it would be hilarious.

Guess that means I'm tagging the pedestal, even though Captain Orton isn't watching.

I don't think I ever decided to start running north to the cemetery. I just am. I guess I want to see it.

The truth is that there's more of a story to that cemetery. King Garré's statue just leaves a bigger impression that pops up to the front of your mind. Like I told Libra about it once because sacrilege upsets him in this really funny way even though it's an enemy King representing the dark god who's out to destroy his god.

I don't think I've ever had a reason to tell anyone about what happened at the cemetery because it's just sort of life as usual for me.

I mean, I figured that when someone starts shoving you around and pointing a weapon at you and talking like they're going to kill you, it's probably fair to kill them first. But apparently you're supposed to know that this is some weird normal person bonding ritual and let them keep shoving and pushing and nothing else happens and then in the end you drink some beer and you're friends.

Anyway Captain Orton wasn't happy with me (he had this I-knew-I-was-right-about-you snarl on his face) and considered executing me—I think he didn't because he figured out I'd wipe out the rest of camp first—before sending me up to Captain Vasto's camp up north to get me out of his hair. When I got there I heard them talking about the incident and no one tried shoving me around.

The cemetery now looks pretty much the same as it did back then, though the crows are gone. I guess headstones are too small to be worth stealing.

There are a couple of newer ones off to the right—there should be four of them. It turns out that none of their families were rich enough to get their bodies sent home so they just made a few extra graves in this cemetery where they conveniently died.

It looks like they didn't mark the graves, either.

Could've been that Captain Orton pulled a Father Aldric afterward. "If anyone asks after them, tell them they broke curfew and never came back. I hear the forests are full of wolves."

Okay, I don't actually think Captain Orton did that. Captain Orton was really into playing by the rules. He probably sent their parents letters with a lot of "we send our condolences" and as few details as he could manage. Assuming they had parents.

You know, it might be kind of nice to see Ghost Captain Orton. I'd wave at him and he'd probably just frown at me but it would be cool.

I think I forgot that central Plegia is also a whole lot of nothing most of the time, except that nothing is desert and can kill you much faster.

It's all sand and sand and more sand and it goes on forever. Sometimes there's a shrub.

The sunsets really are pretty though, almost as pretty as I remembered.

Not many people have ever really lived in central Plegia, except in the capital where the king lives. (The one upside to central Plegia is that it's really easy to defend, with swamps to the north and mountains on every other side, so that's why the capital's stuck out there even as the forests gave way to desert.) But thanks to the capital being there, the only decent road across Plegia goes right through the desert, because obviously if you're traveling you're bringing something to the king or leaving the palace on his orders.

Of course there isn't a king anymore, but his roads are still here.

The good thing is that there are villages here and there, and even though all of the people are gone, there are still canals carved way out from an oasis and pipes driven deep into the earth to get water. The last one even had a rack of smoked meat drying in the sun. I don't know how long it's been drying there, but it smells and tastes okay and it was right there a day after I finished the flatbread.

There were some dead horses and dogs and stuff too, tied to posts out in the hot sun and left to mummify when their masters were called to the Table. They're probably edible too, like book covers are edible, but I'm not that hungry yet. Especially since I found a lot of coins no one's going to miss.

I like this hat. It's made out of dried leaves and glossy with polish. It was new, right off a hook at the front of a weaver's stand. Despite being Plegian I'm bad with the sun. My nose is already peeling.

The first time I got something new was when they gave me this dark mage's uniform. I was pretty surprised they didn't just give me a used uniform, but when I thought about it there were probably only so many uniforms that were still usable after their owner left them behind. Mine's pretty ratty now, resewn in all the places I didn't dodge fast enough.

They actually paid me in the army. They paid really well. Back at the Institute I thought that all that stuff about moving up in the world if you survived was just another one of their weird lies but it turns out that it's true. When I got my first stipend, I dashed out to the nearest village and went to the marketplace and got everything I wanted. Some candy, a cute carving of a vulture, a wood rattle, a set of stone buttons, a flowery comb, some dried meat, and a leather knapsack to hold it all in. When I went back to camp the other guys were weirdly angry about it, even though it's not their business or anything, especially Trenton who sent everything to his mom. Trenton's mom was raising three siblings and he really liked her. I don't have any reason to send stuff to my mom, even if I knew where she was.

Trenton probably died when Captain Orton lost at the border pass. His family was Grimleal so they probably died two years later as Grima food.

I felt the call too, but I guess it doesn't work if you're not really Grimleal deep down in your heart.

The next village over looks like it actually has people. Guess they were also secret atheists.

I think I should buy a bigger canteen.

There's a pair of rough looking guys by the city gates. I hear Ylisse didn't really want to keep Plegia after they won, but they didn't want to bother fixing it either, so basically angry unpaid soldiers have taken over.

I'll just go around—the last time I was in a city by myself I got lost for two days until I happened to bump into Sully. And that was without anyone trying to kidnap me. I'm not a city person anyway.

If I'm honest with myself, I think I'm afraid to go home. I tried a year ago, after I was done playing around in the mountains and had no idea what to do with myself. But a couple of miles out, some crows started playing with me and I ended up meeting the Ylissean army. They didn't want to kill me so that was that, I had other places to be for awhile.

It's not that there's anything in particular that I think is there. It's just really weird to think that it's still a place that exists in the world, after I've been so far away for so long being a completely different person.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

The nice thing about half of Plegia being dead is that no one is around to catch me looking pathetic.

There's a road that goes northwest up toward Regna Ferox and it would take me back home faster. But it would only take a two-day detour to swing by the midmire, so I think I will.

Three years ago I decided in those mountains that I was tired of being in the Plegian army. I killed the squad they stuck me in after Mustafa's death and that was that: I was a deserter no one would look for.

It was the first time in years that I was free. I feel like I should've enjoyed it more—not being smacked around by priests, not being made to march here and there under the sun and through the mud. I mean, those parts were great. It wasn't as if I was looking to be ordered around and punished some more. But it wasn't everything I was expecting.

I thought that I could go back to living like I did with the wolf.

Now that I think about it, I think it might've been the only time when I was happy from the bottom of my heart. Olivia made me realize that—that there's a difference between feeling pretty sunny, and feeling like you belong somewhere and all the time in the world isn't enough to enjoy life.

I'm always sunny. But I haven't really have much of an interest in staying alive. Not since the wolf died.

It turned out that the important part of the time that I missed wasn't the freedom, but her.

The mountains here look exactly the same. The villagers also look exactly the same. They all have these little shrines where they worship the spirits and dead people so I guess they were safe from all the Table stuff.

There's a village here called the-village-by-the-gnarled-tree and they all love me here. I probably would've stayed except they kept saying I couldn't understand.

The last time I was here they had some problems with some fugitives hiding nearby. The difference between me (the deserter) and these fugitives is that I walked in and asked them if I could have some leftovers. The fugitives had a habit of killing farmers and stealing goats.

The villagers were nice. They pulled together some leftovers stew with some bones and mountain grass or something. It was good, better than my parents fed me anyway. When I mentioned that I knew magic they begged me to do something about the fugitives. So I slept a few days by the goats. The goat keeper, who was very nervous about the attacks, often came out at night to bring me some extra cheese. He said I made him feel a bit safer.

So eventually the fugitives tried to steal a goat again. I killed them before they finished climbing over the fence. I think the fugitives must've been simple thieves back in the city or something—it was really very anticlimactic. So then the villagers threw a party and killed a goat in my honor and we had roast goat and it was great. I probably would've stayed a lot longer if they didn't get all weird about this bad fortune about a rockslide. They said a bunch of stuff about how they were going to feel the wrath of the spirits if they didn't move soon. Well, I can hear spirits and the spirits around here are always super chill. I tried to tell them but they didn't even argue with me. They just started to move their things when the village slightly higher up on the mountain got angry because they said it was their land, and then they came back to me and asked me if I'd help, and I dunno. I didn't feel like it.

Anyway I'm just passing by right now, so no hard feelings.

The main street looks exactly the same. The elder's hut has a different cloth covering the entrance—that might be the only difference.

—No, actually, there's also a lot more harpoons.

"Henry? Henry!"

Oh, it's one of the village's best hunters. I say hi to him and somehow I'm caught up in a conversation where he explains (way too fast for me in their mountain dialect) about how they're about to go to war with the-village-slightly-higher-up-on-the-mountain (for some reason I didn't catch) and that they were really happy I came.

It sounds like they're still angry at each other. I think he might want me to annihilate the other village for them. Or just threaten them into giving up on a good hunting area nearby. I have a Ruin tome with me—I could.

"Sorry! Blasting a bunch of villagers with sticks sounds pretty boring. I'm headed somewhere, so I think I'll be off."

A year ago I probably would've taken that opportunity as some kind of entertainment in this half-peaceful half-dead world. Actually, if someone asked me right now if, hypothetically, I would go wreck a village for fun I'd probably say I would.

Somehow I'm not in the mood right now. I don't know if hanging around with the Ylisseans did something to me or if it's just this whole trip. This trip has me in a weird mood.

The village is half a mile behind me and now I realize that I should've restocked on food back there. I have maybe two days of dried meat and nuts left.

Oh well.

In hindsight, it could be because I'm so close to where General Mustafa died. General Mustafa always wanted me to be a kinder person.

Actually, he always insisted that I was a kinder person. That used to annoy me, because I'd wiped out a village of a hundred people and killed a couple dozen orphans plus four Plegian soldiers by that point and it felt like he wasn't taking me seriously. And he'd say stuff like, "You're still young. After the war's over, you'll have a chance to make your own decisions. Think about what you want then." Then he'd break off a piece of a sugar crystal he kept wrapped in his satchel and press it into my hand.

I still have no idea what I want. General Mustafa would be disappointed.

If I start climbing down here, there's a passable trail that leads to where the battle was fought.

You know, I think I had a tiny piece of happiness, the real kind, when I served under him.

Captain Vasto wasn't bad or anything. We got along until the end. I was transferred to General Mustafa's command after Captain Vasto's squad was ordered to go off on a top-speed emergency aerial mission—I wasn't one of the few ground troops he brought with him when his entire squad was annihilated by the Exalt's personal guard, shortly before the Exalt just came and turned herself over.

General Mustafa was just different. His parents came here from Ferox and he married a ruined woman who couldn't give him babies so he adopted a son from the Church who got in trouble a lot for stealing. So I guess he didn't mind weird.

Hopefully his son is doing better than I am. They worshiped the old fire god—they still do that in some places in Ferox—so his family could've made it.

He said all the time that I reminded him of his son. I used to be frustrated about that, because if he could pick out a kid who was a thief and couldn't understand people and liked killing things, and take him into their home where he could potentially kill them and make off with all their stuff, why did I have to claw my way over tons of kids like his son just to be here? I had to prove that I could be a good kid useful to the Country of Plegia if I didn't want to die slowly and in horrible pain.

I think I was still hung up on the idea that it should've been fair somehow.

By now I'm just resigned to the fact that the world doesn't make sense. The way things worked for me—it wasn't the way things worked for anyone else. I wish I figured that out sooner, so I could've spent less time trying not to like General Mustafa too much. I think he really did like me. I think he really did care about me.

He knew that he was going to lose here in the midmire. He put me in a group sent off to the mountains to catch any Ylissean stragglers who "might" try to run away in that direction. By the time we got back they said he was dead, and some new commander who just arrived put us in new groups and sent us off to the mountains to find Ylissean stragglers for real this time. I didn't even get to see a body.

I'm headed back from the mountains now, three years later.

The armor is still here. That's so weird.

It's been three years and it still looks like a battlefield here. There's broken armor and broken piles of bones and broken weapons all over the place. Someone must've scavenged the good pieces for the second war, but didn't bother to clean anything else up.

It figures. No one lives down here. No one has any reason to come here. The trade route to Ferox is a ways west and it doesn't run through here. No one in Plegia would bother with this place.

I wonder if his body is still here.

I doubt it. He was a General. He was rich and everyone liked him. He died before Plegia had completely descended into chaos. They probably had his body put in a casket and shipped back to his family to bury.

Anyway, I'm sure his axe would've been looted and it's not like I know what his skeleton looks like. If his is even whole.

I keep looking really hard at these skeletons and it's kind of dumb. I don't even know what I'm looking for.

If I really wanted to know, I could go back to Ylisse and ask Robin to take a look at the records for me and that would settle it for sure.

But I don't want to do that. I just want to go home.

Thinking about it some more, I could catch up with Ghost General Mustafa after I'm dead and I can tell him all about how the world kind of sucks but at least Grima is gone. And also that I do like him and I'm sorry I kept saying mean things about his son and threw a peach back at his face that one time.

Also, I think I know what bugged me about that village: They didn't actually like me as someone in their village. They thought I was useful, just like the Country of Plegia did. Just like Ylisse did, until the war was over.

Good to know I'm useful to someone in this age of peace. But if useful is all I'll ever be, I'd rather hang out with ghosts.

Oh.

I think the Institute is somewhere along this road.

I can see two watchtowers in the east now, their platforms pointed toward each other.

I'm kind of hungry. I think I'll have the last of the nuts. I can always hunt something later.

I don't know where the Institute is, exactly. I was dropped off there by my parents and a long time later I was picked up from there in a carriage.

But there are these two watchtowers that I saw as the carriage cleared the forest and I looked out window into the rising sun. I remember them because I thought they looked like two fists pumped into the air in triumph. Like they were saying "You did it!"

I don't know if I want to see the Institute again.

I mean, they were definitely all devout Grimleal so Father Aldric and Brother Geraud and Sister Giselle and all the rest of the adults must've answered the call and headed south to either feed Grima or die in the desert.

It's probably empty now. So.

I don't think I want to see the Institute again.

There's a little path leading from this road into a thick grove of forest. There's a sign that says "North Border District Institute for Children →".

So, as long as I don't go down this path, I won't see the Institute.

But the Institute's right there.

So why shouldn't I go drop by and make really sure that Father Aldric is dead?

Wow. The Institute looks a lot cleaner from the outside.

I know this has to be the place, but it doesn't look familiar.

I guess that'd happen when you're kept inside the whole time.

It's not that hard to open the door.

It's the main room. Empty and quiet. Like a normal church, with an altar and pews. A statue of Grima at the front. Hail Grima. Thanks for eating Father Aldric. Probably the only help you've ever been.

We used this room for graduation ceremonies and executions. It's weird for it to be empty and smell like fresh air. If you look for it, a whiff of incense is still in the air.

There's hallways leading to the back. I think the adults and the students slept in these rooms back here. We weren't allowed back here.

The rooms are nice. Though they don't live up to imagination.

Some big ones with four beds each. For students probably.

This room's a mess. Probably Brother Geraud's. He wore reddish belts like that one on the floor.

He keeps everything on the floor. Three sets of robes. That's too many robes.

Why am I back here anyway? It's stupid. There isn't really anything I want to do here.

Everything important's under a trap door behind the altar.

Since I'm on this side, I can just grab the key from under the altar and push the podium aside. Unlock the hatch. Easy—

Wow. It reeks down there.

Bet it's the kids, rotting. It's not like they would've let them out when they heard the call.

Can't see a thing. The adults always had a lamp. Where'd it go?

Do I really want to search for this lamp? It seems like kind of a pain in the butt. I should just get going.

Maybe it's in Father Aldric's room.

The bed?

The curtains?

The desk?

No.

Out by the incense?

Here. Here it is. With plenty of oil left.

Time to head down.

Twelve cells in this room.

I guess they're not skeletons because nothing's down here to eat them. If there were rats down here we'd eat them first.

So that's what it looks like when bodies rot out of the sun.

Twelve cells in the next.

Father Aldric said that before Ferox there was another country to the north and Plegia went to war.

Plegia used to run an intelligence operation here. Then they discovered that if you keep someone shut up and scared for a long time, dark magic starts brewing in them like hot thick syrup.

One big room up ahead. For lessons most times. For fights when our numbers pushed twenty-four. Furnished with chairs, closed ceiling-windows, whipping post in the corner.

Three closets: supplies, weapons, and think-it-over.

They're locked. Same key?

No. Oh well.

Twenty-three occupied cells.

Right. That's it. That's all there is down here.

The lamp can go back by the altar.

The air is awfully fresh.

Will I be a ghost?

Does anyone really know how it works?

There are some ghosts. That's for sure.

But who? Why? How much do ghosts hold on to?

If the wolf turned into a ghost I've never felt her around.

Will I see her again?

Will all of this disappear with me?

It's a pretty rotten life. No one would miss it much.

It's mine, though. It's everything I've ever had.

The problem with being bored is that you start to think too much and then you can't stop.

There were four kids who were there for most of the time I spent there. There was the horse-faced one who tried to eat the books, the loud one who always got in trouble, the angry girl, and the quiet one who got away with everything. I also remember the guy in the cell next to me who never slept and woke me up all the time by scraping at the walls—I think he was drawing something.

I don't remember any of their names. It's not like we talked to each other much. It wasn't worth making the adults mad. And besides, we mostly got on each others' nerves.

It's weird to think that they've been out there somewhere, living or dying, and I've got no idea what's happened to them.

Wow. I'm still thinking too much.

I should've looked for the stockroom back at the Institute.

There are a couple of nut shards left at the bottom of my satchel. They taste great but it feels like eating nothing.

Guess I'll shoot a few birds down with this tome. It's an awfully good tome to waste on hunting birds, but I'm almost home so it's going to waste either way.

Thanks for the lesson, Father Aldric.

The main road continues north to the Longfort, which Ferox has kept shut for decades. Somewhere near here there's another road that forks west. That one goes to Carrion Isle.

Carrion Isle isn't exactly Plegian when it comes down to it. It's Plegian territory, which is why there's a big castle by the water looking all weird next to the miles and miles of swamp and forest. But there's no sand dunes and it's always wet. We've got poison frogs instead of scorpions. And the King doesn't bother giving us orders.

My home is somewhere on this island.

It's a big island.

Last time I spent two or three months wandering around, trying to figure out where I'd grown up. I asked some crows if they knew where I could find the ruins of a village, but they didn't know any place like that. They said the other flock might know. The other flock didn't know either, but they did know that some people were making a ruckus up north so we went to check it out.

That's when I met Chrom. They were in the thick of some pretty interesting stuff—fighting Risen, sailing across the sea, fighting all of Valm. Going with them on boats and into volcanoes and up giant trees to fight master Valmese swordsmen was a lot of fun. Even if I knew that it'd all stop once the war was over, I'd still want to go.

Except at the time, I really thought they were different somehow. Like Ricken, he had this way of looking at you like he'd want the best for you even if you killed his family. Like you could hang out without fighting about anything. I'd just say stuff and he'd take it all in without yelling about it.

I thought he could see into my soul. For some reason. For some stupid reason.

The more I think the dumber it sounds.

Looking into souls. Turning into ghosts. Going back home. Like life is some tidy story.

Somewhere inside me, I still want it to make sense. I want to be part of a world where you can count on good things to happen. Where anyone who's most important to you thinks you're the most important too. Where you can stay in a place that makes you happy for as long as you want.

This isn't even a world where you can stay free from pain.

I know that. I've always known that.

When I looked at their happy innocent faces I kind of hoped that Ylisse was a different world from the one I knew. So much for that.

No crows around here anymore. Maybe they moved.

I used to be so good at jumping pheasants. I've seen three today and they've all gotten away.

I think the problem is that my uniform is too heavy and jangly. Probably smells too.

Well, I don't need it for anything anymore. I'll just dump it here. It's warm out. I'll wash off in a stream when I find one.

Let's see—the Ruin tome, a knife, a bunch of coins... and a key? I guess I took it with me.

I'm dumping the coins out but I'll keep the rest and the satchel. The straps for the satchel and the canteen feel kinda rough but what can you do.

Lissa used to lay on me and say I was softer than a pillow. The problem with being soft is that you get to feel the rough bark on every twig you scrape by.

I have this clear memory of this one time for no good reason. I was waiting for the wolf to come back and I started picking at some skin on my shoulder from a healing sunburn. The skin around it was brown and rough. I poked around at my arms and legs to see how the rest of me felt. The backs of my arms were pretty scratchy from all the times I'd reach out from prickly bushes and grab lunch. Though it wasn't enough to keep from bleeding if I didn't stun squirrels fast enough and they started clawing.

Well, for the last few years I wore a uniform with sleeves so soft and billowy that they'd tickle the hair on my arms. The only thing scratchy about my arms now is the hair. Even my scars are soft. It's like my body's already forgotten how I used to live.

Clothes get in the way around here. They pick up burrs. Bugs grow in them. They snag everywhere. Plus it's already hot and humid. You don't need clothes making you hotter and stickier. And unlike the desert, there's plenty of shade here so you don't need them to shield you from the sun.

At the same time it feels weird. I guess I'm not used to being naked anymore.

Maybe it'll come back to me after awhile.

It smells pretty familiar here. Weird, how feeling the air against my body made me notice that.

Could be that I'm close to home already. Or it's just because the same kind of trees and flowers and stuff grow all over half of Carrion Isle.

Still, I have a hunch. I'm getting close.

Yeah! Dinner!

Man, it's been forever since I've had squirrel. We caught squirrels sometimes in the army, but the squirrels from the mainland are different. Not as tasty. Also the other soldiers refused to let me have any until it was boiled into stew.

It's much better raw. The meat is all juicy and tender. If it's really fresh, it's still warm and the blood is salty and tangy. And I think it's fun fishing out the weird bits like dessert. The lumps near the butt taste horrible, but most of the stuff in the back is pretty good.

This knife is pretty handy for skinning. Humans got that part right.

The wolf used to bring me whole squirrels and I'd get stuck gnawing on their gross fur. She'd sigh at me and take it back, ripping the skin off for me so I could get at the insides. Afterward she'd clean my face off with a good lapping.

She treated me like I was a helpless pup who wouldn't last a day without her. She'd sigh and nip my arm disapprovingly, nudge me back to the den, and let me curl up against her side. I'd feel around in the dark for her soft stomach to lay my head upon. We'd sleep there together, surrounded by the warm smells of the den.

I wasn't that helpless. I didn't have her speed or her bite, so I learned how to catch food all by myself. She was so amused when she came back to find me with feathers sticking to me and pheasant bites all over my hands. (Catching them was only half of the problem.) She showed me how she shook her prey so it couldn't put up a fight.

I haven't used what she taught me for so many years. I got so good at hunting prey and finding shelter in the forest.

None of it would help me once my parents dumped me back into the world of humans.

When I first got there, I could already sense that it was a bad place. I bit and struggled. There were woods all around where I could escape. I thought that if I could make the white flash happen again I would be safe—but I didn't know how to control it. So they just hexed me up and dragged me in, my parents apologizing for the way I was.

She never would've left me in a place like that.

But they killed her. That's why all of this happened to begin with.

I wonder sometimes: If I hadn't gone back to my parents' place now and then, if I'd just stayed with her all the time—if I hadn't still felt like I was human and had to go back to where other humans were to live up to all of their pointless expectations—if I didn't give her a reason to come into the village when people were waiting to kill her, would she still be alive?

Frankly, my parents were never going to love me. If I'd realized that sooner, maybe the wolf would still be alive.

Because she did love me.

But I wanted people to accept me, so she died long before I realized that I'd never have someone like her again.

(Crying while eating squirrel makes me feel like a kid again. I was a very weepy kid before the Institute.)

So, I guess that part of my life is a story that makes sense. As a comeuppance story. Henry got greedy so he got to have nothing. His life was miserable and eventually he died.

What I don't get is what all the rest of it was for. Why I survived the Institute, why I ran laps every morning in the army, why I served four commanders and met people in the mountains and all of that. When I was in the middle of it, it all seemed so important. Now that I'm almost home, it's as if I could've not lived through half of that stuff and things right now would still make the same kind of sense.

Well. Life doesn't make sense after all.

Neither will death, probably.

Though I still wish there was more of a point to everything I've had to endure.

It's started raining.

The wet season picks up about now. Though that's a silly name for it. "Wet season." It's always wet here. The question is whether there's so much water that streams turn into flooding rivers.

The rain's nice and cool. Once it's over I'll be squeaky clean.

I found it.

There was an old wooden sign where the overgrown forest path met with the main road into town. The wolf used to warn me away from crossing the main road into the other part of the forest. I think the rest of her former pack was there. I could hear them howling sometimes.

So whenever I ventured out and saw this sign I knew I shouldn't go out further. Sometimes I dared to go past out of curiosity, but I always stayed within sight of the sign.

This sign.

It says "Morbihan," the name of the village. I don't remember it saying that, though I'm sure it must've. Probably because I usually saw the back of the sign.

Yeah. Looking at it from the back the view's terribly familiar.

To think—when I was a kid, this was the edge of my world. Everything I knew, all contained in this patch of forest and a small, cold village.

Here's the forest path. It was already filled with grasses back when I used to walk along it, but now the only difference between keeping to the path and wandering off is that there aren't any trees in the way. There are whole red berry shrubs here that have grown as high as my waist.

If you follow this path, there's this spot where three trees grew gnarled together into one. And if you head west from there during the dry season, weaving around and fording a stream, you can get to the den.

The rain is still coming down, so trying to cross the stream is probably a bad idea. Instead I'll keep going to where the village used to be. There's a bridge over the stream, and you can enter the woods on the other side to get to the den.

That's where she came to meet me the day she died.

I knew I'd leveled the village, but wow. It looks different. The village is this big empty space with no trees, so that the light from the sky illuminates all the rubble covering the ground. It's like a carpet of fallen boards and shattered ceramic. There's moss and ivy starting to creep onto some of them, but there's a lot less growth than I would've thought. The forest hasn't taken it back or anything. It still just looks like a wreckage.

In the outskirts, there's a single building standing. My parents' house.

They had warded the house. Sure, they never cleaned up, and there's a part where the roof fell apart that they never got fixed, but they were conjurers and there was no way they were going to let bad magic touch their house.

I guess there was a point to it after all. They survived their bratty kid's explosive anger.

The door is locked. Of course it is.

In there is a sacred place where my father spent most days staring into space, my mother grumbled about him while sipping at brew, and I wasn't supposed to be around. "Boys should be outside playing," she'd say, locking me out.

Not that I had anyone to play with—the only kids around my age in the village called me stupid and chased me off with rocks if I stuck around.

When I was little I'd cry and pound at the door, and at least she'd open up for a moment to grab me and yell at me to shut up. Eventually she ignored me entirely.

In hindsight it was for the best. That's how I met some crows who'd play with me and share their seeds. A bit later they'd bring me to the wolf. She still had wounds from some kind of fight, and her nipples were swollen with milk. Both of us probably looked pretty ratty, but she didn't act like she was wounded. She sniffed me over and decided that she was going to feed me. So that was that.

I wonder what happened to her pups, her flesh-and-blood pups.

In any case, there isn't anything left for me here. This isn't my home. I'll never be let in again.

Her skeleton is right here.

I would've buried her, except my parents dragged me away before I could.

Her bones have been laying out here, picked clean by the crows, rained on for years and years.

They aren't that heavy.

I know a spell to keep her whole skeleton together, so I can lay her somewhere nicer than these ruins.

Look. I'm not so helpless. I can carry you now.

It would've meant more if I could've saved you instead, I know.

The mud sucks at my feet with squelching sounds and forms footprints behind me. Her skull lolls back against my shoulder.

Was she always this small? When we first met, she seemed twice as big as me.

Maybe I'll dig a grave for us both.

There's a hill halfway between the village and the den. There's a spot near the top where there aren't any trees. There, sunlight breaks through the canopy, lighting up a small clearing where some flower bushes thrive.

It's probably the prettiest spot around.

And it looks like it's still just as I remember, with the flower bushes just starting to wither with the season. Once it stops raining, the sunlight should come down from that patch of cloudy sky up there.

There's a patch of ground next to the bushes where only little weeds are growing. The ground is soft from the rain. I wonder if I can dig with my hands now that I've grown up.

The mud is soft and slick. An inch gives way, easy.

—The next inch isn't so easy. I just can't get under the dirt. My hands just glide off the surface.

I don't think this is going to work. My human fingers are skinny and my nails aren't good for anything.

She could've done it. If I were her pup by blood, I could do it.

In my satchel I have the Ruin tome, a knife, and a key. The Ruin tome could blast a hole, but it'd also destroy how pretty this place is.

I could go back to the village for a shovel. I've been away for so long. I can leave her side for just a few moments.

I had this great idea that I would make a grave with my own hands big enough for the two of us, and I'd lie in there together with her until the rain flushed the mud back into the hole and drowned me.

Now that I'm trudging back for this shovel, I don't know if I want to do that. I don't know if I can lie in a wet muddy hole waiting to die. It sounds nerve-wracking.

That's the thing. That's why I'm alive.

I've thought over and over and over that I'd be better off dead, but whenever I think about making it happen, I start worrying about whether it'll hurt and what will happen to me and then I chicken out.

The lovely thing about war was that death could catch you out of nowhere. One moment everything is real and exciting and chaotic, and the next, you could be brained by an arrow and dead before you know it.

Except it didn't work out that way. Two wars are over and I'm still alive.

I guess in a way it's been nice, getting to come back here. Being able to give the wolf a proper burial. Tying up loose ends.

Okay. Time to start digging.

The shovel works great. Of course it does—that's why people make them.

It might be harder digging in the rain. The water makes everything heavy and sticky. At least it seems to be letting up.

There. I think that's big enough.

—Now that I have her bones in my arms, and I'm looking down at this hole, I don't know if I want to put her in. It's muddy and wet. I feel like I'm leaving her behind here. I don't want to leave her behind. It feels like I'm wronging her.

Maybe if I get in. And sit down in it with her.

Even this feels a little wrong.

She shouldn't be a bunch of bones. She shouldn't need a grave.

None of it feels right.

It's getting very bright. Maybe Naga's whisking us to heaven.

Oh.

It stopped raining at some point. The sun's coming out.

I just don't want her ghost to be lonely.

And—I don't want to be alone either.

But I guess that's just the way it is. It's the way it's been for awhile now.

I guess I might as well lay her bones here, in this pretty place. Tucked in with shovels of softly laid dirt. No one will know she is here, but the sun will shine on her grave every day.

The den is close by. There are a few hours of daylight left, but I want to turn in early today.

The woods look so much the same. The trees have been around a lot longer than me, after all. They wouldn't change so much in a few years. They'll probably still be like this long after I'm gone.

Why am I still carrying this shovel? I can just toss it.

Grass has grown all over the entrance to the den. If I didn't know its location so well, I would've missed it.

The den is quiet and dark and smaller than I remembered. It smells like earth, too clean. Her smell and mine are gone.

Putting down the satchel here feels wrong. I shouldn't have a satchel. I shouldn't be this big.

This isn't really my home anymore.

But the ground is soft and cool. I want to keep laying here for awhile.

Maybe I don't want to see her again. I don't know what she'd think of me now. Whatever it is that I am now.

With the way things are, she only knew me when I was young and sweet. I don't want to ruin that.

So if I see her again I can be happy to be with her again, and if I don't, I won't have to disappoint her. It's fine either way.

There's sunlight leaking in from the mouth of the den. The shadow of grass waves back and forth. The sun used to fall in one solid stripe.

There's nowhere left to go now.

And there's no point in staying.

I don't need the satchel, but it doesn't belong here either.

I don't know where this path leads. It must go somewhere.

There are some crows in the trees. I smile at them but they don't seem to recognize me.

How long do crows live?

Could be that all the ones who knew me are dead.

The tome is heavy. I don't need it anymore.

What do you think will happen to my body after I die?

After a little while it'll be bones. After a long while, nothing.

That's weird. Guess it's why kings want to keep their bodies forever.

The trees end here. The road continues up to a town by the ocean.

I continue on the road.

Just think:

There's going to be a moment that will be the last time I look at the blue of the sky.

How weird.

There are guards. They look at me and take their spears in both hands. Sure—I'm naked except for the satchel. Imagine the sight of me. Hahahaha.

Look. I've got a knife. And a smile everyone's always called crazy.

Look—