"Hi Illuser", a small child stands solemnly before a crude gravestone located in a small clearing surrounded by tall trees. The child is a little boy with dark hair and sad eye. In his small hands is a bouquet of assorted wild flowers, and he lies them on the grass in front of the tombstone.
"I brought Fire and Crewgar. We all came to see you", this final thought makes him smile a little and he repeats it in a happier voice, "We all came to see you! It was so much fun sneaking out!"
Fire rustles around apiece of paper that reads "Yeah until Ruwalk almost caught us!" The boy laughs loudly, "Why? It woulda been so funny! 'Cause you know he woulda told Alfeegi and Alfeegi turns such funny colors when he gets mad! Doesn't he Crewgar!" Crewgar cocks his dog like head to the side, his mouth agape and his tongue out as if he too was laughing.
Fire waves another paper, "No it wouldn't have! We'd be stuck in the castle under supervision!" A strange recklessness shines in the boys eyes, contorting his face into picture of dark mischief, "I'd get out; I always do!"
"You're too much Rath" another of Fire's papers read. Rath simply laughs, his face again that of a carefree child. "Half the fun is in getting out! Plus I know I'll always have you guys to come with me!"
"Hey Illuser" Another version of Rath now stand before the weathered gravestone. No longer a child, time has changed Rath into a tall lithe young man, who now pushes dark hair away from his still sad eyes. He gives a short pained laugh,
"No flowers time… it's just me… sorry 'bout that" his voice trails off "I'm sorry about a lot of things".
Rath stares down at his hands, trying to crack his slim fingers. He silently berates himself for coming, asking why he came, until he says aloud as if trying to calm his thoughts, "I don't know why I came."
He closes his eyes remembering how he used to come to this spot with Crewgar and Fire, how they'd have lunch as Rath told Illuser about his day and the various things that had occurred his last visit and about how sure he was he'd never get caught.
"You're trying to go back", a small voice in his mind whispers, "you want it to be as it was."
"No", Rath says half-heartedly knowing that the voice is right, the reason he's here is exactly the same as the one on that drove him back up to that forever silent white mountain, the one where that damned alchemist shattered his reality.
"Fire and Crewgar are gone. I thought you should know that. Uh, Fire's with his rightful owner, and Crewgar should be up there with you."
Rath sinks down onto his knees to the dirt ground, "But I'm still here".
He reads over the words that his child-self wrote on the maker, their blatant innocence painfully obvious to him now. "All those people dead, those that I've loved with them… everything I've ever cared about is gone Illuser".
Rath rests his forehead on the gravestone, willing for time to reverse and for him to become the child who felt he was surrounded by love, for his world to become the black and white, simple answered version it was. Rath opens his eyes to his scarred wrists, and to the agonizingly quiet empty world surrounding him and whispers,
"But I'm still here".