Oopsie Daisy I'm laty waty! Apologies! Had my 3rd dose of vaccine yesterday and I was feeling quite off, so I kind of forgot about it ^^'
There was something rotten in the state of Scala.
This was a thought Ephemer had every morning when he woke up. And there had been a lot of mornings since he first had that thought. It wasn't that something was inherently wrong with the city in itself. People were happy, there was peace, the whole place looked absolutely beautiful, and he was a good ruler, loved and respected by all. But this wasn't what he had hoped for.
He wasn't born a leader. He was born a boy who wanted to have friends he could have fun with everyday, and for a while, he had exactly what he wanted. Thinking about it, things started to go wrong the day he received the book he had begged for, but it took him too long to understand that. He made some new friends, friends he loved, friends he would die for. How ironic that he was probably the only one still alive.
He built this city from nothing, a safe haven for all who would be lost just like he was. But what he had hoped for was that this place would be a beacon, guiding very specific people to him. Skuld, Brain, Ventus, Lauriam… What had become of them? Had they survived the trip? Were they safe somewhere? He had to believe they were, but some days he felt so lonely he thought of the worst, thinking this was the only explanation why they hadn't found their way back to him, or him to them.
He was an old man now, surrounded by people he loved. He even had a family. But the pain in his heart was still present everyday, and he kept thinking that there was something wrong. Rotten. Not in the city, but in himself. He who lived, he who was loved, yet he who could never be truly happy.
There was a statue built in his honour, and he had asked for it to look like him in his young days. He had pretended that this depicted him when he built the city, but the truth was different. He had wanted it to look exactly like how his friends would remember him, so that they might find it one day and know what had happened to him. What an egotistical ruler. And yet, everyday, he waited to hear from his friends.
He waited.
Next up will be "Lord" :D