"Impossible!" The trade master threw his hands in the air. "This goes so far beyond our agreement, I must assume this request is a very poor joke. Is that what High Entia consider humorous? Because I don't feel like laughing."
Melia pushed the document across her office desk until the trade master had no choice but to look at it. This time, she sat at the head of the table and played the game with home advantage. A change in roles that provided her with the slightest bit of satisfaction necessary to ignore the trade master's tone.
"Are unreasonable outbursts then part of what Homs consider a play for time?" she asked. "Because I'm not in the mood to play. This is my request. Will you fulfil it?"
The trade master glared at the document like a Piranhax about to bite his hand off. "What you ask is impossible! No matter what data on ether you keep in the back of your hand, it cannot be worth that much. The last shipload of supplies already cost us dearly. And now you want three times that amount at once?"
"Precisely."
"No! To even ask such a thing…"
"Was it not your aim to entertain neighbourly relationships? I have taken your saying to heart and have welcomed the Indoline as neighbours. They are now citizens of Alcamoth. Which makes them your neighbours as well."
The trade master narrowed his eyes. "Well played, Lady Melia. But these people are your responsibility, not mine. I owe you nothing."
"Indeed you do not. Would you rather say that I owe you?"
The trade master squired in his chair. His smile wobbled. "Ah, I know where you're getting with this. But I won't fall for it. I called our last agreement a favour, and you won't catch me lying. You are, of course, not in my debt."
"Then perhaps you are interested in neighbourly relations after all?"
"I have a reputation to lose."
Melia leaned forward in her chair. "But losing Alcamoth as a partner would put this very reputation in jeopardy, is it not so?"
"I should have known something was up when I received the invitation," the trade master grumbled. "The splendour of your palace halls, the fancy dinner – all to lure me to your office. So that's the famed way the High Entia repay their favours."
"You are right, I have deceived you. Allow me to make it up to you with a favour. A foretaste of the ether data I promised you."
Melia walked over to the window front of her office. Clouds blocked the view on the firmament, but to the right, the edges of the Shoulder peeked through. A rock the size of Junks broke from the formation and plummeted towards the sea in silence.
"The ether concentration of this world is far lower than on Bionis," Melia continued. "Perhaps this fact alone does not seem of great importance to you, so allow me to describe the consequences of this reduction. The ether-based machinery you use in Colony 9 will no longer work in an approximate century. I believe you have noticed a seemingly inexplicable increase of accidents with this very machinery as of late. Some of these accidents have already cost lives, and if business continues as before, the number of casualties will rise. Far sooner than that your ether lamps will shine with a reduced duration until they may not shine at all. And the mining and fabrication of ether crystals – a business you personally invest in if I recall correctly – will lose the important position it enjoys today."
Melia paused to catch the trade master' reaction in the glass reflection. She had exaggerated a few details, but for the sake of the Indoline, she was willing to bend the truth a little. As expected, the trade master lost the remains of his façade. He stared at the document on Melia's desk, and one could almost see the gears turning in his head.
"I believe this explains why I also requested seeds of all kinds of crops," Melia said. "We are repurposing a few of Alcamoth's smaller domes into farm land. Would you not agree that you can benefit from the creative minds in Alcamoth who are doing their most to address the uncertainties of our future?"
Tyrea would be proud of the even tone with which Melia cast out her manipulative net.
The trade master glared at her. Then he took a pen from the desk and scribbled his signature onto the document. "For the sake of neighbourly relations." He spit out each word like venom.
With more force than necessary, he slammed the paper onto the tabletop and fled towards the door. "If we will ever discover new islands, rest assured that I will settle down on the one farthest away from you."
The door slid close behind him so quietly that it failed to drown the curses the trade master hurled at the empty hall outside.
Melia sunk into her chair and buried her head in her hands. The discussion had devoured all her mental energy. She hated to apply such deceptive methods, these power plays and the use of half-lies that shrouded the most despicable corners of her political work. But the desired signature had landed on the document, and for this Melia would have been willing to sacrifice far more than her free evening and Shulk's research data on the Shoulder.
She drummed her fingers on the document. A small victory.
Even though it left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Compared to the mountain of other concerns and requests, conflicts and reports stacked on her desk, this single document could barely hope to balance the scales. The first wave of Indoline had set up camp in the capital, but many of them required a medical attention Alcamoth could not provide. The farmland they planned for the secondary domes – including the imperial villa – would not sustain Alcamoth forever. Fogbeasts already circled them like Volffs circle a dying prey, waiting for a sign of weakness. And once the ether depleted to a point where the teleporters and the Havre fleet malfunctioned as Shulk had predicted, what then? If Alcamoth itself lacked the ether to hold itself above the ocean, what then?
Melia was outmatched. More than ever.
This would hardly convince her to give up. But in the dark loneliness of her office while the Bionis' Shoulder rumbled and crumbled in the distance, she could not help but feel overwhelmed. So many people depended on her to do more. They believed in her.
And the one she believed in the most had left her reach.
She silenced the urge to pull the Collectopaedia out of the drawer underneath the tabletop. The rich pages would not provide her with the support she needed. If Shulk had stayed, she could have drawn strength from his presence, she would have only had to look at him to remind herself of the hurdles they had already mastered, and perhaps he would have – No, there was no point in dwelling. Melia would have to fight and win this war alone.
That mindset will destroy you one day. And a lot sooner if you don't start to let others in on your problems.
Tyrea's voice scolded Melia even when she was not around. Perhaps she had a point. But who could she burden with her responsibilities when the future was this uncertain?
The sound of the door sliding open startled Melia. For a moment she feared the trade master had returned to renounce his decision. But it was Aaron who toddled into the office. With a look he asked for Melia's permission to enter before he made his way to her side. In his tiny hands, he clutched Shulk's puzzle box.
"Should you not be asleep by now?" Melia asked and pulled Aaron onto her lap.
He contemplated the question but gave no reply. Instead, he held the puzzle box up to her.
He had solved the mechanism. A compartment at the box' centre stood open and inside nestled a piece of blue chain. It shimmered in the office's dim light. Melia could not say whether the blue chain carried any significance, if it perhaps had been a gift from a person from Colony 9 to Shulk. Still the chain struck something deep inside her. And when the chain links jingled in her grip, she had to blink away a traitorous tear.
"Mother?" Aaron asked. "The man who visited you was shouting. Did he hurt you?"
Another tear got caught in Melia's eyelashes. "No, Aaron, I'm the one who did him wrong. I should have tried harder to make peace with him. It is a lesson I should have learned years ago from your father."
Aaron turned the puzzle box in his hands. "The man was important for the future of Alcamoth."
"He should have been. We could have helped one another. But now I'm afraid I have destroyed the opportunity to connect with him forever. I did it for the Indoline and for Alcamoth, at least this is what I will tell myself to justify my harsh words. But perhaps I made a mistake. Perhaps I was once again too weak…"
"Why do you want to connect with someone if it hurts you?"
"It does not hurt. Sometimes connecting is as easy as reaching out a hand for someone. Is there not someone you want to help and understand? Someone you want to call friend?"
"I think so." Aaron paused. "Were you and father connected?"
Melia clutched the blue chain. Her eyes burned. "Yes. We still are."
"But he still won't come back. Even though Alcamoth is in danger, he won't come back."
"Even if your father is heading on a different path, it does not weaken our bonds. We can lend each other strength as long as we remember. I still believe in your father, and if my trust in him, however distant it may be, if that gives him strength as he has given me strength, then I will be glad. And perhaps he will find a way to once again change the future to make it a little less bleak."
Aaron stroked the edges of the puzzle box for a while. A faint thunder shook the office when another piece of the Shoulder broke apart.
"How much time does Alcamoth have?" he asked then.
Melia's chest contracted. She had feared Aaron would learn too much too quickly. But the feeling ebbed as soon as it had arisen. She had been naïve to think she could shield Aaron from all worries and that his thoughtful eyes would never see the reason behind the refugee camps and the hardened faces of its residents. No, Aaron, like his father, could not look away while others worried. He deserved the truth.
"I do not know for certain," Melia said. "This world does not seem to work in our favours. Yet I have learned to believe in a tomorrow, and I will continue to strive towards this tomorrow. Perhaps we will face hardship with High Entia, Homs, and now Indoline under one roof. Perhaps the time is limited. But Alcamoth can be our Elysium."
"Elysium…" Aaron nodded. "If there is a tomorrow, I want to give Liza the drawing I made. Like she gave me hers."
Melia smiled and hugged him tighter. "I think she would like that."
For a moment, they sat together in Melia's oversized office chair and found comfort in the slow breath of the other. Melia stroked Aaron's hair, thankful. Thankful for this world, for this life, and thankful for the future, no matter how uncertain it may be.
She did not know it at the time. But when she gazed through the window at the Bionis' Shoulder, not a single Fogbeast remained amidst the fields and caves and spires, and the darkness there became a little brighter. By tomorrow, she would be thankful for that too.
Aaron shifted in her lap to look at her with these bright, solemn eyes. He had carried the question that followed with him for a long time.
"You won't go away too. Right?"
"Aaron, we are not fated to live forever. Not even High Entia. Someday I will have to leave you. But not anytime soon." Melia smiled. "How can I go away when you give me the confidence to look forward to the future? A future where you will make your own decisions and forge your own connections – it gives me hope. I just… needed to remind myself of this truth. Thank you, Aaron."
He nodded, and maybe he was beginning to understand. One day he would.
Side by side, Melia and Aaron listened to the faint sounds of Alcamoth going to sleep. Fewer steps pounded on the marble floors, followed by the soft chimes of teleporters when the servants headed for their quarters. Conversations faded. In the distance, an Indoline sung a mournful melody, part of a ritual Melia did not understand.
Our eternal land is keeping us in warm embrace
Some must carry on god's will
And some must face the dark, it's in father's wishes we live
Let us come together, we must never give up…
Melia pressed Aaron to her chest. A small piece of Elysium.
Aaron showed no sign of fatigue. With a new fascination, he turned the puzzle box in his hands, as if it offered a physical tie to his father. In a sense, maybe it did.
The stacks of paper on the desk had not shrunken. Melia had all but given up to bring order into the chaos. Somewhere within these piles of forms and requests hid the list with the trade master's associates who Melia wanted to contact tomorrow to redeem a few favours and ensure that the supply transfer proceeded without complications. She was best advised to search for the list now.
Melia reached for the nearest paper stack, but stopped when her hands closed around the uppermost file.
She looked down at Aaron, and he met her eyes.
"Would you mind helping me with this?" she asked.
31/08/22: Yeah, yeah, you all want to know how Shulk's doing against the Fogbeast amalgamation. (Commenter Garaichu called it the Fog God, and I'm stealing that one.) But I wanted to conclude Melia's arc first. The final line is key. And we will get back to Shulk soon, I promise.