The more things changed, they more they stayed the same, Marco mused as he watched the ink drip from his quill onto the old paper.
He had been the one to do inventories for his old mercenary group as well. Back then, Marco had readily volunteered for this task—they'd been the rough-and-tumble sort, his old mercenary buddies, not the kind to derive some interest in that kind of chore—and now that he had joined the Alistellian military, it hadn't taken long for him to figure out that he had the best head for sums and figures in their little unit. Sergeant Stocke had shown some promise as well on that count, but Marco had caught him snoring over their ledgers quite a number of times, leaving the young medic as the best candidate for the job. Counting their supplies—making sure they wouldn't run out of rations or medicine or pointy things to stab at their enemies—reminded Marco of simpler times. Back home, he had been the only one among his siblings who preferred helping their mother run the household to working in the fields.
The light of the candles was dwindling down. Marco rubbed weary eyes, yawning. His butt was starting to hurt. No sunlight filtered this deep into Alma Mine, and while there was a lot of coming and going through the small room they used for storage, none of Marco's comrades had thought of stopping by to tell him the time of day. Perhaps it was better to just take a break. Else, he'd be sure he would see numbers and letters floating in his dreams tonight as well.
Marco sighed as he slid out of the chair, massaging the cramps out of his short legs with a wince. He wobbled out of the storage room, smiling and shaking his head as he caught sight of two of his comrades hoisting up a rather large crate. The necks of a few bottles stuck out of the box. Where they had found these, Marco had no idea. Had they stumbled upon a hidden Granorgite cache that hadn't been noticed by the new occupants of the mine? If it was the case, then they'd better be very careful smuggling this from under Captain Rosch's nose.
They flashed Marco unsure grins, and he gave them a subtle thumbs-up. The two soldiers mouthed an enthusiastic 'thanks, man!' to Marco before scampering deeper into the mine, where they had converted a large open area into a temporary mess hall. Marco watched them go with a rueful smile. He made a note to go check on them tomorrow morning with the hangover remedy he'd perfected in the years he'd known Raynie before heading for the entrance of the mines. A bit of fresh air would do him some good.
To Marco's surprise, the sun had not completely gone over the horizon. He inhaled the cold, crispy air of the evening and crinkled his eyes, watching the last bits of sunlight bathe the mountains in a soft orange glow. Laughter and songs filled his ears; his new comrades were drunk with happiness over their victory against the Granorgites, the dull task of setting up camp not even raining down a bit on their parade. Their first victory as a newly-minted unit, Marco realized. He remembered how giddy he had been back when he'd been the one in their shoes. His old friends from the mercenary company had paid for all his expenses for a night, and they'd laughed and exchanged stories until the early hours of the morning. Despite everything he'd ingurgitated, Marco had still ended being the only one able to stand on his feet by the next day. Raynie, in contrast, had seemed half on the brink of death. He had been the one to take care of her, learning the hard way just how legendary her hangovers could be. They had been inseparable ever since.
The memory made him smile, and so Marco set out through the camp in search of his old friend. He found her near a campfire, around which Sergeant Stocke, Captain Rosch and that young recruit named Kiel were sitting.
"Hey, guys, how are y—" Marco's greeting was cut short as he caught sight of what Raynie was doing. She running around the campfire, her mouth wide open with her tongue sticking out. Kiel's cheeks were puffing up with silent laughter, but Rosch was burying his face into his hands, sighing. And as always, it was impossible to decipher Stocke's expression, what with half of his face hidden by his scarf and most of the other half covered by that impossible mop of blond hair.
"Raynie," Marco began, "what are you doing?"
Raynie stopped and gave Marco the biggest, dumbest grin. "I'm trying to catch a snowflake with my tongue! Watch!"
Marco rubbed the bridge of his nose, groaning, before looking down at his gloves. Specks of white accumulated on the soft brown leather. He hadn't even noticed it had begun to snow. Frowning, Marco glanced up and down at Raynie. "You should cover up a bit, you know," he told her. "This isn't Cygnus."
Raynie just grinned some more. "I know. I'm not used to this whole winter stuff yet, cut me some slack." She twirled on the spot and giggled like a little girl instead of the battle-hardened mercenary she truly was. "It's gonna be great when there'll be more snow. It'll be fun!"
"And cold," Marco said. "Like… Alistel cold, Raynie. Alistel winter cold."
Kiel gave a conspiratorial smile "You think this is bad? It gets even worse up here in the mountains. My hometown isn't far from here and you would never believe the amount of snow we get! I was surprised when I first got to the capital. The snowfalls are nowhere as huge."
"Well, I was surprised when I first got out of the capital," Rosch said. "I'd never thought snow could be so… white."
"Yeah, with the fumes it all gets sludgey and brown," Kiel replied, not without some wistfulness. "And there's so little of it! It's sad. Celebrating Noah's Day really isn't the same without a good feet of fresh snow piling up by your doorstep."
Marco nodded. It seemed to snow less and less with each passing winter. He wondered if it was an effect of the desertification process going through the middle of the continent. He hoped not.
"Oh, yeah, Noah's Day," Raynie said. To Marco's great relief, she had stopped pacing like a kid on a sugar rush. "It's a little before New Year's Day, isn't it? Around the time of the Winter Solstice?"
"It's the day the Prophet declared Alistel's independence," Kiel said; his eyes were a little starry. "It's the best day of the year! I remember as a kid that they'd get us fruits—like fresh fruits, oranges and lemons, I mean, we never got this stuff otherwise!—and we'd eat meat pies and sausages and there's the big winter market and—"
"I remember some people celebrating Noah's Day in my village, too," Marco said. His memories were nowhere near as cheerful as Kiel's. The longest night in the year was a time of remembrance for the people of his town. They would hold a mass under the stars, standing in the cold and the snow with only a couple of bonfires to warm them up, praying for the souls of the recently departed. With each passing year, the services had gotten longer and longer and the prayers, a little more desperate—the last few times, Marco had found himself unable to stomach the growing list of names so he had just stopped coming altogether. He shivered. He wondered how many people they would honour this year.
"There wasn't a lot of people who cared about Noah's Day back in Cygnus," Raynie said, bringing Marco out of his recollections. "The Winter Solstice was a big deal, though. The fruit merchants gave us street kids pomegranates and watermelons and we'd eat and eat until we all got sick to our stomachs. And then the adults would read poetry." She rolled her eyes. "It would get so boring, but they forced you to stay awake 'cause else the bad spirits would get you."
"My mom thought the same," Rosch said. "Except she made us pray instead of, y'know, read poetry." He snorted. "I think I'd have preferred poetry. Less rough on the knees."
"It's not so bad," Kiel said. "It wouldn't feel right otherwise. I'd rather have sore knees than have evil spirits going for my soul." He gave a visible shudder at this.
Raynie shook her head, a smile teasing her lips, before she turned to Stocke. The Sergeant, of course, had been conspicuously silent throughout all this reminiscing. "What about you, Stocke? Did your parents force you on your knees to pray the bad spirits away?"
For a moment, Marco thought Stocke had dozed off, but to his surprise the man appeared to be awake. He could see Stocke's shoulders moving in a shrug.
"I don't remember much," he mumbled. "We didn't pray to Noah, but I recall that the people in my town celebrated something called the Festival of Light. For three days and three nights, we'd light up candles so the sun could be born again after the solstice, and then we'd—" He frowned and stopped abruptly.
"And?" Raynie prompted him. "What else did you do?"
"My family didn't care much about Noah's Day," Stocke said. "My… father wasn't keen on the Prophet. And he wasn't one for superstitions." Something strange had slipped into his tone. There was nothing odd about seeing that kind of expression on the Sergeant's face—he frowned far more often than he smiled, after all—but this time, there seemed to be a chink in Stocke's apathetic facade. A second later and the ripple of emotion was gone. Marco wondered if he had imagined it.
Rosch ran a hand alongside his jaw. "Lighting up candles, eh? I remember the Granorgites doing something alongside these lines around the time of the Solstice too."
Kiel stared at Rosch with big eyes. "Really? Why would the Granorgites celebrate Noah's Day? Aren't they just a bunch of…?"
Heathens, Marco helpfully supplied in his mind. The word you're looking for is heathens.
Rosch chuckled. "They don't recognize Noah's Day as a holiday, but they do celebrate the Winter Solstice, that much I remember. There were a couple of Granorgite families living in the Third Ward, not far from where I grew up. I don't think they had been there for long. I guess they had fled the tyrant king." A weariness seemed to weigh down Rosch's next words. "Around this time of the year, at best their houses would be pelted with rotten eggs." He sighed. "And at worse…."
Kiel's eyes had grown large and horrified in the firelight. "That's terrible! Why would people do that?"
Rosch's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Same reason why we're killing them."
An awkward silence followed. Kiel shifted on his spot, obviously miserable, while Raynie kicked at a rock, her features settling on a serious expression that was at odds with the Raynie Marco had grown to know. To him, her troubled look was worse than Rosch's words, in a sense. He almost wanted her to chase after snowflakes again.
"My hometown was close to the border," Stocke finally said, cutting through the tension. "That's why we followed old Granorgite traditions. They aren't that much different from our own, really."
"Yeah," Rosch said half-heartedly. "I guess that makes sense."
"It wasn't so long ago that our two people were one," Stocke continued. "Things have changed, but in a way, we're still very much the same."
Kiel was hugging his knees; he suddenly seemed very small and young to Marco's eyes.
"But we have to beat them, right, to win the war?" the kid said. "Or else they'll just kill us. I don't want them to get to my hometown. I wanna celebrate a bunch more Noah's Days with my folks. I… I wanna see everyone again…"
"You will," Stocke said. "We'll put an end to this mess and get you home. You'll see."
"Y-yeah… I believe you, Sarge. And after it's all over, I'll—I'll invite you guys." Kiel's voice had gotten a little wobbly. "Back home, I mean. We'll have a true Noah's Day, like when I was a kid. We'll eat meat pies and we'll—we'll get some pomegranates for you, Raynie, and we'll play in the snow and we'll spend the night reading poetry if—if that's what you'd rather do, Cap'n. If it's not this year, then we'll do it the next. Or the one after." Kiel rubbed at his eyes—had he been crying, Marco wondered with a start? Still, his smile did not take long to be back in full force. "It doesn't matter when, really. It'll be fun."
Raynie shot Kiel back a grin. "Sounds like a plan to me. You in, Marc, Stocke?"
"Of course," Marco replied. It would be better than going back to his village, that much he knew. He had a lot of dead people to answer for, now…
"I don't see why we can't," Rosch said. "It'll be something to look forward to."
"Something to look forward to," Stocke repeated. The words had been said so softly Marco could almost not believe they had come out of the Sergeant's mouth. "Yeah. Something to look forward to, after the war is over. That's good for me."
Marco looked up to the sky, feeling the snowflakes melting on his cheeks. Yeah, he thought. That's good for me too.
Written for Quicksilver-ink for the 2015 Radiant Historia Fanworks Exchange.