For my Flik...
I never really understood what he saw in the dawn. Me, I always slept through it, since for so many years seeing dawn generally meant we had a lot of ground to cover before nightfall, or last night's ale had got me in a bad way.
I don't think it was until the Liberation Army days that I noticed. I'd wake up and see him gone while it was still mostly dark, when we were staying at inns before that, but I figured he was down having breakfast or something and just went back to sleep. But when you're running a rebellion out of a secret hideaway beneath a town that's trying to pretend you don't exist, you don't just casually go to breakfast. So I went looking for him, and found him aboveground, on the outskirts of Lenankamp. That was after I checked Odessa's bed, of course - he'd been trying to deny that for awhile.
So that was when he told me he liked watching the dawn. He didn't tell me more, at that point - we'd known each other for awhile, but we weren't so close. That part came after the bit where there was no use checking Odessa's bed, because I knew it was always going to be empty from there on out.
I finally got it, at the castle we raised over what used to be North Window. Every time I woke up early, he'd be gone. I couldn't sleep so well there myself some nights, so I took to following him. He'd be down by the pond sometimes, practicing those sword routines of his, but a lot of times he'd be out on the cliffs where Yoshino did the laundry, staring out over the rocks and the ocean below.
I never said anything, just kind of wondered. I'd been keeping an eye on him ever since Odessa died, because that really tore the guy up. I didn't want him to do anything stupid out there on those cliffs. And then after Anabelle, something just made me want to keep him closer still.
But it was a dream about Daisy and Wil that woke me up one morning, and a headache like the dream was trying to pound its way out of my skull. A glance outside told me he was down by the pond today, but for some reason I headed to the cliff instead. It was still mostly dark, and I sat down on the bluff to look out at the ocean. Everything was grey and black - not really my favorite colors, but it seemed to fit.
But then the sky started growing lighter, and the beginnings of sunlight came filtering through the mist that always hovered around the bottom of the cliffs in the early morning, snaking around the jagged rocks that poked up through the surface of the water. I'd known this place since I was a kid - I grew up here - and I'd seen it a thousand times. It was just too grey for my taste.
That morning, though, something let me see it through his eyes. As the sun rose, and the sky went from black to dusty indigo to pale blue and gold, there was something reassuring about it. I'd always been comfortable with the dark, and I was fine with the light too, but seeing the one turn to the other...
Well, I can't really explain it. It seemed like a promise, that the light was going to come and little by little make the world reappear. Even the mists that clouded everything down below seemed to be a part of it - a curtain to be drawn back when the show was about to start. And the really incredible part was that it happens every day.
The sun was well over the horizon, and all the mist and the magic had burned off when he came and found me and asked what I was doing out there. I shrugged, and we went inside for breakfast at Hai Yo's.
He went off to talk to Apple once he was through, and I headed back out to that cliff. I'd seen plenty of sunny days at North Window, but this one was different - I saw it created before my eyes, and in every shadow I could see the whole process over again, the sun pushing the darkness back where it belonged so it could shine again.
I still keep late nights, and I still sleep into the morning if I get the chance. But if I happen to be awake, sometimes I join him.