The water, calm and unspoiled as he remembered, babbled in the narrow canals and chattered beneath the cobblestone footbridges as he crossed them, one by one, to the easternmost edge of town. Motavia was still a sun-scorched planet, but with the insidious darkness defeated and gone, the moats that typified its oasis towns would soon be rendered unnecessary. Domed, mortar- and stone-masoned houses lined the path, the soft green grass and determined, ground-hugging desert flowers of their gardens inspiring a modicum of comfort in the slouched, downcast man on even this difficult occasion, even if he could see, small and barren off the east coast, the island that birthed the first of the three demonic evils that he and the other Protectors fought in battles to the death.
At this memory he dug his hands deeper into the pockets of his blue jeans, shoulders tensing his tucked white shirt and denim jacket, eyes transfixed as they again looked deep into the Abyss, and this time it was inside him. The resentment for events passed and reconciled was still not forgotten by the body, and would, at times like these, still rise and coil in his throat with the weight of a sandworm, squeezed up by the hammering in his ribcage.
Zio… Black Wave… Dark Force…
With an annoyed shake of his airy golden mop the thought was out of his head, his attention instead turning to face a familiar sight – children anxiously scampering from the door of the village schoolhouse and home of his teacher friend, Hahn, and his wife, Saya. He turned to look at the window, through which he could catch passing glimpses of husband, wife, and to his surprise, baby as they bustled in and out of view, parents repeatedly exchanging roles as dishwasher and caretaker. The baby girl, whose hair was a peacock blue blend of her father's chestnut brown and her mother's sky blue, he'd not heard had been born.
He's got some explaining to do! …but I wouldn't want to interrupt right now. I'll drop by on the way back. He smiled at the scene, and the amusing thought of his bookworm scholar friend learning the unwritten rules of fatherhood.
Returning to the lonely path again, he dragged his feet despite feeling he had already been gone far too long – four years to be exact, in which time he had become the adult that, having survived as a child of the street until the soul he presently sought had taken him into her tutelage, he'd thought he'd been back then. Still only 20 years old, but not so arrogant as to think one would learn all they ever needed to know, anymore; and now, he had a question he could only ask the person he might have called 'mother'.
He stopped. In an instant he was overcome with an urge to turn back, to pretend there was no worry in him, but as he closed his eyes in concentration he saw the panic subside. The field lay ahead, flat and well-tended, but beginning to show an overgrowth of messy grass encroaching onto the path.
No one's been here in a while, he lamented, stepping high over the obstructions like a man afraid to disturb the smallest sanctity of the place. This is the only place in the world for people like us…
All was much quieter here, the only sound the wind as it murmured long-silent words in his ears – of mourning, and of retribution. He approached the centre of the field, where, plunged into the earth, a chiseled laconia blade shone orange in the setting sun behind him, and with it, the sole structure – a block in carved sandstone, smaller at the top and widening towards the base, the inscriptions cast deep into shadow, blackened words whose purport he need not read to know.
Elsydeon, and…
Her headstone …
He beheld both a long moment without a word, standing motionless a few paces from its base, listening as the wind's path cut in two around the sword. Two paths… two possible answers. But could she, from this slab of stone, really speak the true one over the wind? No, it would be from the sword, he reasoned, and she would still be there. The visitor had once had great trouble believing in such things as the afterlife, but he'd seen the memories of lives gone by for himself in that sword, and seen her smile one last time. He had hoped that would be enough to ease his troubled mind, but all these years later, he could still find peace, he could not let her go.
That is why he made the pilgrimage from their old house in Aiedo, and why he desperately wanted to know…
"I don't know how I should begin," he started, with careful concentration. "First, I'm sorry… I'm so sorry I haven't come to see you before now. In truth, I was worried."
No reply but the waves on the shore and the wind behind them. He had seen the lives of Alis, Lutz, Odin, and Myau, of Rolf and Nei, and had realized that the four heroes would always be born into times of trouble… as were Rune, Rika, Hahn, and himself… and that now, thanks to their efforts, there promised never to be unrest again. The Algol solar system would have no further need for Protectors.
"I was worried that when I came back, you would be gone from here…" he said with a rising sense of urgency, words coming fast now, as though his fears might become fact by his speaking them. "I was terrified that you would have found peace, and left me forever, in body and spirit." Tears pricked at the backs of his eyes, a pang of selfishness at his heart, for he did want her to wait to find peace when everyone else already had.
"I'm not ready to accept that, I guess. I want you to always be here, and…"
He thought back on Kyra, Raja, and Gryz, on where they might be, with no way of knowing. To move on with his life, he had to know…
"And I wanted to know if someday, in this life or the next… we might all meet again?"