Oh, hello. I see fire in those eyes. How do I put it? They've a strong sense of duty. Like whatever you start, you'll always see through, no matter what! If you'll permit me, there's something I'd very much like to show you. But… First, I just need to hear it from you.

Say that you'll stay. Till the very end.

With that done, let's get you on your way!

When Tiz Arrior woke up staring at the sun-streaked ceiling, he thought, for one wild, wondrous second, that it had all been a terrible nightmare. That Til was waiting downstairs, smirk across his face, planning on doing something completely and utterly irresponsible. That the sheep were outside, grazing, like they always were and forever will. That he was safe in bed, tucked underneath his covers, free to live dreaming of adventure and excitement, but only ever dreaming.

Then he came to his senses.

He felt a pang in his chest, and he struggled not to cry, because he was supposed to protect him, dammit! Til, eyes wide, grabbing for something, anything to hold on to, falling in front of his eyes. He was useless! What kind of brother is he, if he doesn't even have the strength to— He flung his arm over his eyes, waiting for his breathing to calm.
When he opened them again, he was surprised to notice that a man had been watching over him that whole time by the corner of the bed. The man smiled gently at him. Tiz quickly sat up on the bed, embarrassed, and rubbed his eyes a bit for good measure.

"Finally awake, are you?" the man asked quietly. "You've been out for a full week."

A week? All that time he could have spent, looking for survivors, looking for his brother: all that time wasted? The rational part of his brain argued that it wasn't as if he could control how long he was knocked out: he didn't even know how he got knocked out, to begin with. The irrational part was screaming to get out of bed, out the house, run as fast as he can to that hill they were standing on, the hill they always stood on every day as they watched the sheep waddle past, the hill they were at when everything went wrong. Alright, Tiz, don't jump out of bed and escape through the window. Panicking won't get you anywhere.
The man, sensing that there was no answer forthcoming, decided to introduce himself. "I serve as the captain of the Caldislan guard. My name is Owen. Can you tell me yours?"

"Tiz," he said, shortly. He voice felt a bit hoarse; that would only be expected, all things considering.

Captain Owen nodded. "Hello, Tiz," he said. Tiz suddenly received an impression that the older man was handling him like glass, as if he would break any moment. "You were found unconscious in a ravine near Norende."

Tiz stopped himself from blurting out his first thought, that there was no ravine near Norende. Because there probably was, now.

"… I must ask you to remain calm. Your village is gone."

The captain went on to explain that a chasm had opened up, that the town fell straight on through. Tiz never doubted his memories, but somehow hearing them be confirmed by another person made the ache so much worse. It really did happen. It really did. He felt his eyes start stinging again and held back the beginnings of a sob deep in his throat.

Norende was always a nice little place. Occasionally, a few merchants wandered in, thinking to do business, a couple of lonely travellers here and there, but the village remained practically isolated from the outside world. It was just too far from the city, without many notable features to attract sight-seers or even the odd adventurous child. It was boring. Nothing ever happened that hadn't already happened before, because Norende would always be the peaceful, happy, uneventful town it was. His mother would be cooking something warm and nice in the kitchen, his father already working in the fields, yelling at him to get his bottom down here, and wake his lazy pitiful excuse of a brother while he was at it.

And now it was all gone. Destroyed. Obliterated. All because the earth suddenly decided to cave in, for some inexplicable stupid reason.

The captain was staring at him, pity in his eyes.

"You were spared, but the others… Pray, do not think upon it now. You need your rest. There will be time for mourning later."

…No. Tiz thought long and hard about the captain's last hesitant phrases, and decided that they could mean anything. He didn't need to get into too much of a fuss about it. They could mean that the others were hurt, missing, lost. Some might be dead, sure. The captain might have meant that he was the only survivor that got out relatively unscathed. Other than the week-long sleep, he seemed to have come out fine. No broken bones or permanently damaged appendages, right?

If there are survivors, then he needed to get out as quickly as possible and find them, help them. Ask them where his parents are, if Til made it out alright. (It didn't look like anything could survive that fall, but Til's a tough guy. He was fine even when he tripped and banged his head against a rock chasing the sheep, that one time last fall. He didn't even get a scratch.) And at least, he needed to see the bodies before giving up hope.

It was his life, his life for nineteen years, that they're telling him to give up. He can't just stop thinking about it.

He had wanted to leave right away, see the chasm for himself, help out the lucky few that had survived (because there were other survivors, he was sure,) but Owen insisted he rest at the inn. He debated on sneaking out, when the innkeep wasn't watching, or on jumping out the window to escape, but it seemed that dog of his always barked when someone entered or left the building, and being up twenty feet from the ground didn't really help matters. And, despite his anxiety, he had to admit that it was foolish of him to just leave the city without even the slightest way to protect himself. Even in Norende, beasts lurked around the edges of the village, and it took six strong men with pitchforks and knives and other sharp objects to shoo them away. A boy like him would stand no chance transversing through even more dangerous areas without a weapon by his side.

So he kept to the inn. On occasion, of course, he would go outside to explore the city some more, find a place where he could afford a dagger or knife of some sort. He often talked to the people and asked if they had met any other person from Norende. But nobody could tell him anything.

Still, Tiz never gave up hope. It was a trait that his mother teased him for. His undying optimism once led him to stay up all night, when he was a little boy, sitting by the doorstep in the cold. His father had gone out that evening to find a lamb that had gone missing from the flock, and had not returned, even when the sunlight faded and the crickets came out to chirp. He sat there, all in the dark, his shadow swollen and enlarged by the window light behind him, waiting, even as his mother tucked in baby Til and came outside with heavy dark eyes and told him that sometimes people get lost, never return, and sometimes you simply have to accept that and come inside.

"Sometimes people get lost," Tiz had said, staring out into the empty pastures. "But Daddy's going to come back."
And he did, just as the sun rose up, when the birds began to sing and the sky turned into a faint blinking shade of blue. His father had limped home, over the hills, a staff in one hand, carrying the sleepy lamb with one arm. Tiz had rushed toward him to take the burden off his arm, and grinned. "Good morning!" he said cheerfully, as if the previous night had not occurred.

So Tiz refused to think that everybody else in the village was dead. He asked everyone he met about the living remainders of Norende, and was never discouraged by the answers he found. After all, Caldisla was a huge city, full of bustling crowds and merchants and travellers. Surely, he's bound to hear something good eventually?

On the second day of his awakening, the inn keep had place a bag of 150 pg next to his bed. "I can't accept this!" Tiz had said, both touched by the generosity and absolutely certain that he didn't deserve it.

The inn keep had shook his head. "You need it far more than us, boy," he said, not unkindly.

Now, as he walked down the streets, one arm raised to block out the sun from his eyes, he reflected that he owed the inn keep and his son the captain so very much.

On the streets of Cadisla, merchants were yelling out their products on the streets, girls were giggling, boys were laughing and pushing each other about. Men cloaked in black robes were screaming about the end of Crystallism, accompanied by jeers and boos from interested passerby. A bard was crooning sweet serenades to a gaggle of young girls. He shuffled around another chattering group, weaved his way through busy harassed-looking individuals and tried very hard not to get lost. Fortunately he was lucky enough to have a good enough sense of direction to remember how to get back to the inn. All of these people and sights and sounds were starting to make him dizzy.

He was only a block away from the inn when someone tapped his shoulder. Startled, Tiz turned around to find a tall young man with the fluffiest bleached blonde hair he's ever seen. It was actually curled a bit, around his forehead, like a cloud. Tiz thought, quite spontaneously, that hair like that would get knotted with branches and twigs very easily, and was probably not very practical for all intents and purposes.

"Hello," the fluffy-haired man said. He had a strange lilting accent that Tiz had never heard before. "I was wondering if you had spotted a beautiful young lady with short yellow hair, like corn? You would recognise her immediately: her face is smooth and fresh, like a baby's, and a cleaner, paler complexion I've yet to see! Well then?" he demanded, striking a pose and flicking the front of his hair. Tiz watched as it jiggled slightly up and down. "Have you seen such a maiden? She claimed to be a florist."

"Um… no…" Tiz stammered. The strange man sighed dramatically and placed two fingers against his forehead.

"Ah, pity. I suppose her father forbid her from going out, after all. And she was such a beauty…" He looked up, briefly: Tiz could see the smirk tugging the corner of his lips, before it slowly faded into a frown. The man shifted positions and appraised him more closely. Tiz inched away. "I'm sorry, is something the matter?" he asked nervously.

The man leaned back, as if he were thinking. He patted his pocket absentmindedly. "I know this may sound strange, but do I know you?"

"Huh? Oh, uh, no, I don't think so. I don't recall ever meeting you in my life." And Tiz was sure he would remember someone with hair like that. Though his face does seem inexplicably familiar…

The fluffy-haired man shook his head, and the resemblance faded away as he put on a smile. "Well, then, perhaps I was mistaken. It is not as if my memory is the finest." He chuckled softly, as if he had just said a joke only he understood, then gave a shallow bow. "Good-day to you! And kindly do inform me if you see my lady around!" He sauntered away, leaving behind a somewhat confused Tiz, who wanted at that moment to do nothing but to go back to the inn and stay away from the strange unknown people for the rest of the day.

Ringabel was still mulling over the encounter as he flipped through pages of the black journal, at as sun set beyond the horizon on his usual perch on the tower, overlooking the forest beyond. Head propped up by his arm, he hurried through the sections he had already memorised by heart until he found what he was looking for. A sketch. A sketch of a young boy with scruffy hair and a plain tunic. Perhaps it was not the greatest portrait, but there is no doubt. The boy he had met on the streets of Caldisla is Tiz Arrior, the Miracle Man, the only survivor of a great disaster. The one who would soon meet the vestal of wind and the lovely girl of his dreams, and set off on an adventure to close the Great Chasm. The one the journal's owner had saved from a great pillar of light, only ten days ago, by this journal's reckoning.

So the journal had foretold events that were yet to happen.

Which brought up entirely new questions about this mysterious possession of his. When he had discovered that the dates read for the future, of course he had his suspicions. But how was he to tell what they truly mean? For all he knew, the journal's owner might have written the whole thing using a different calendar system than the people of Caldisla use. Or they were misprints, or of the previous year.

But what was the likelihood of the earth shaking, of Norende falling, of Tiz Arrior appearing at the same time, same place, two years in a row?

A journal that tells the future. Must be magic, he decided. He had yet to encounter any spell that could create such an object, or had read such a thing from a book, but who was he, an amnesiac, to deny whether or not such a thing is possible? Perhaps it is a time mage spell. He's read about time mages, in his spare time; is it too much of a stretch to assume they can predict the future, if they can control the flow of time?

So many questions. He has much work to do! Plans to make, an identity to uncover. A beautiful girl to meet!

He could hardly wait.

Author's Note:
Ringabel is right there, on the tower observation thing on the right, at the beginning of the game, waiting for some florist. For some reason I find it difficult to believe Tiz wouldn't talk to him. He just… stands out so much, doesn't he?

I might get some of the names and terms wrong, so apologies in advance.