It Was Like A Little Light

By CrimsonStarbird

Nine – A Responsible Adult

On the fourth and final morning, Zeref woke up first.

It wasn't the sluggish awakening he had come to associate with his body's refusal to accept that he was not, in fact, a growing teenager. He came awake in an instant and was at once fully alert, as if he hadn't been asleep at all. There was no sign of what could have woken him so suddenly – nothing moved in the silent forest; the grey pre-dawn light had yet to penetrate the expensive tent; the boy was, for once, still soundly asleep – but there was only one thing it could have been: danger. It wasn't the kind that hid in the shadows with fangs bared, but that only made it worse. Monsters were easy to drive away. This kind of situation, not so much.

Sitting up, he reached over to shake the boy's shoulder. "Kid, wake up."

"Whazza?" the boy mumbled, squinting up at him blearily. Then he sat bolt upright, eyes the size of dinner plates, and yelled, "Don't break the coconuts!"

Zeref blinked, bemused, as Gildarts looked around and finally realized where he was. "Oops," he said, with an embarrassed smile. "Sorry about that…"

"Don't be. As far as I'm concerned, yelling about coconuts is a step up from trying to tear my body apart, which is what I thought you would do when I woke you up."

The boy beamed at him. "Why did you wake me up, anyway? What's going on? How come you're awake before me?"

"The barrier is down."

"What barrier?"

"The one that stops people from finding this island."

"…Huh."

Apparently, this was news to the boy. Zeref supposed he shouldn't be surprised; it would take many years of training before the boy would be able to see the subtle shimmer of the barrier's magic for what it was. The inner barrier, the force field, was still in place, but if it was Mavis's guild approaching – and in all likelihood, it was – they would be able to pass straight through it.

The boy continued, "What does it mean, that it's down? Is it a problem?"

"It means that your friends are back."

"My… friends? I don't have any friends. Only you. And you're already here."

"The people who sent you to this island. They must have come back for you."

"NO!" The sudden fear in the boy's shout tore through the early morning serenity like… well, like his own magic through the poor island's scenery, so at least the atmosphere now matched the physical environment. "No, no, no! We've gotta hide!"

"…Hide?"

The boy was already gathering up his clothes, intent on heading deeper into the jungle with all his worldly possessions. "Yeah! We've got to hide! They're the ones who abandoned me on this island! They were probably trying to kill me! Maybe they've come back to finish the job!"

"…Yeah, I really don't think that's what happened, kid," Zeref sighed.

"You don't know!" he shouted back. "You weren't there! You didn't see them!"

"True, but I do know Mavis, and I know Mavis's guild. Murdering children isn't really their style." At the boy's excellent impression of a distrustful rabbit, he swept his hand around to indicate the tent they were sat in. "Kid, look at all this stuff they left you with. Magical tents are expensive – not to mention the sleeping bag, clothes, food, and other survival tools we've been using. If you hadn't let your magic run wild and destroy most of what they gave you, you could have lived here quite comfortably for several days. The fact that they're coming back now is clear evidence that they intended for you to survive until they could take you home again."

"But… they left me here, all alone…"

"What else could they have done with you? Going by the state you were in when I found you, you'd been destroying everything that came close to you since the accident that killed your parents. If I had been anyone else, you'd have torn me apart days ago. So, they sent you here, where there aren't any people around for you to hurt – and in the meantime, I imagine they've been doing all they can to find a way of subduing your magic so that they can talk to you."

"Then… you don't think they've come back to kill me?"

"Of course not. I bet they're back because they've found some ancient ritual or something that can temporarily bind your power, and they want to use it to take you safely back to the mainland. They're here to try and save you, not kill you."

After a moment's thought, Zeref added, "This is a good island. Even if I hadn't been here, it would have looked after you. This is the sort of place you send someone when you want to help them, not when you want to destroy them. Believe me, I know."

"I guess," the boy conceded, pausing halfway through a futile attempt to pack the sleeping bag into a holder he would have sworn was three sizes too small. "I suppose it has been a while since I destroyed anything big, thanks to you. Do you think they might have sent me here to meet you, then?"

It wasn't the first time the idea had occurred to Zeref. And he certainly wouldn't put that kind of meddling past Mavis and her troublesome guild, but… "It's not possible. No one knows I'm here."

"Mavis knows," the boy pointed out.

"Well, she's hardly in a position to be divulging that information, is she?"

"Because she's invisible?"

He stared at the boy for a long moment. "Yeah," he said, softly. "Because of that." Then he gave a definitive shake of his head. "There's no way anyone knows I'm here. We'd have heard about it if they did. To be honest, I doubt the people who sent you here were intending for you to learn any means of controlling your power; they simply wanted to buy themselves time. You should go and meet them. Show them how much you've learnt."

The boy's horror, which had diminished with the acceptance that no one was trying to murder him after all, sprung back to life at once. "But I don't want to see them!" he blurted out. "I don't want to go back with them! I want to stay here on the island with you!"

"Well, that's out of the question."

"Why?"

Because in a few hours, the power that Mavis has been siphoning from the Tenrou Tree with which to protect you will no longer be sufficient, and you will die at my hands, Zeref thought, but he didn't say it out loud. Instead, he went with the explanation that should have been the first to jump into his mind: "Because I've put up with you for four days now, and it's high time someone else took a turn."

"But," protested the boy, who had redoubled his efforts to pack away the sleeping bag, "I don't want to leave!"

"Look, kid…" Zeref lifted the sleeping bag out of the boy's hands, but rather than helping to fold it up, he paused. Silence fell upon the tent; the kind that was too loud for even a child to interrupt. "You can't stay here. You can't accomplish anything if you don't leave the island. A life spent here is a worthless life."

"But there's loads to do here! I want to explore the whole island, and see all the animals, and play on the beaches, and look for monsters in the tunnels, and go to the top of the tree again and see the stars!" the boy burst out, finishing only because of the need to draw breath.

"That's not the point, and you know it," Zeref countered. "There is no family for you here, nor friends; no one to learn from or to teach; no one to share your experiences with, or to tell the stories of your adventures to, or to care for you when you are sad. There is no purpose to your existence here; no one and nothing to prove that you lived."

"I…" The boy shuffled his feet. "Well, there's you, isn't there?"

An alarming red light burst to life in his companion's eyes, and the boy took a step back with a sharp intake of breath. "Don't drag me into this," Zeref snapped, striding out of the tent.

The boy was frozen to the spot as fear waged war against the certainty that being left alone in the middle of an argument wasn't a good idea. Pulling himself together – running away on his own wouldn't be looked upon favourably by the jury when it came to pleading his case to stay – he gave his head a firm shake and hurried after Zeref, catching up with him on the edge of the clearing.

The Black Mage had stopped with his dark gaze turned towards the sky. He did not seem to notice the boy's presence, and he was radiating such an unapproachable aura that the boy thought it was probably best not to announce his arrival, and instead wait timidly until he was addressed.

"What are they doing?" Zeref murmured to himself, still staring avidly at the sky; focussing on something else in that age-old trick to control emotions that he had elevated from a coping mechanism to an art form. "Why don't they just come through?"

Gildarts looked up too, but he could not see the barrier, so he watched a pair of birds swooping through the brightening blue instead.

After a moment, the other answered his own question. "Oh, I see. They're altering the barrier to temporarily allow people without the guild mark to enter. It's more reversible than breaking through by force, I suppose… still, it won't be quick or easy. They're certainly going to a lot of effort for you, kid."

The boy seemed to take that as an assurance that he was allowed to speak without being snapped at again. In a quiet voice, he chose what he thought was a safe question: "How can you tell what they're doing from here?"

"I can sense the barrier. I see it change as they change it, and I know enough about it to work out what they must be doing."

"You really do know a lot, don't you?"

Calmer now; his eyes, back to their normal reticent black, flicked briefly down to meet the boy's before darting off across the trees. "I've spent a lot of time studying magic. There is so much out there to learn – from the enormous libraries and all the secrets they hide; from the great mages of the world and the creatures of magic; from first-hand experience. You can't do any of that from this island."

"But you know all that stuff, and you're stuck here."

"I travelled a lot when I was younger. This island is more or less my retirement home, for as long as I can stand to be retired. I'm here precisely because I travelled too far and interfered too much, and now I need to be kept away from all the exciting parts of the world before I break something beyond repair. There's more to see out there than you can possibly imagine."

"I can imagine quite a lot," the boy said doubtfully.

"Then why not go out there and prove me wrong?" There was a small smile upon Zeref's face. If it was sad, if it was faint, it was only because it was true. "The world is vast, and it contains so many wonders; far more than you will ever be able to see from this small corner of it. You'd love it, kid, you really would."

"I…"

The boy couldn't bring himself to say anything else, so the island picked up the slack, filling the silence with chirps and rustles and yowls; symphonies from a hundred different environments merging into one unique dawn chorus. Zeref was still watching the sky, though it seemed his attention too had turned to the playing birds. He absentmindedly slung the sleeping bag, now lined with dust from where it had been dragged along the floor, over his shoulder.

"Kid," he began, even more softly than before. "Why don't you ask me the question you've been trying to ask for the past couple of days?"

The boy glanced down at the ground. "No, it's silly. You'll just laugh."

"I won't laugh."

Gildarts shuffled his feet uncomfortably. It had not rained for days, and the motion kicked up a small cloud of dust, which settled atop his oversized trainers. It was to these trainers that he mumbled, "Well… do you think that I might be able to use my magic to help people with?"

When there was no immediate response, he added, speaking more quickly and more quietly than before, "I always hated my power, because it caused trouble for everyone, and it's not useful like all the cool stuff you can do. But without it, I wouldn't have been able to free the trapped bird… And then it helped me get the boar away from you when I thought it was going to eat you, and when we were running away from the bear – I know I messed up and destroyed the bridge too soon but if I had been able to control it properly, then we might… No, see, I told you it was silly… You'll just laugh…"

Zeref did not laugh. He rested his hand gently atop the boy's stark ginger hair, and when Gildarts looked up anxiously, he was smiling. "Yes," he said. "I think that is something you can do, if you are willing to work hard."

"But," he interrupted, "I don't know… all I can do is destroy things…"

"Sometimes things need to be destroyed. There are enemies who need to be defeated, and obstacles that can only be removed by force. Yes, yours is a power that can cause great devastation, but, by choosing when and where to use it, it is also a power that can protect those you care about from any threat, just like you tried so hard to protect me when you thought I was in danger from the boar."

He chuckled softly and ruffled the boy's hair before letting his hand fall back to his side. "Once you've mastered controlling your power, you'll have a choice to make. You'll be able to seal your magic away and never use it again, and thus you'll be able to live an ordinary life in ordinary society. But you don't have to stop there. You can learn to use your magic; to make it come at your call and take the form you wish it to; to fight with it and protect those around you. Do that, and you could accomplish incredible things."

The boy was staring numbly at his hands; at the white lines that inched into the air and then faded, like slow-motion lightning. "You really think I can do all that? Not just control this power, but actually use it for good?"

"Is that what you want?"

"I… I think… yes. Yes, that's what I want."

"Then I have no doubt you will be able to achieve it. You have enormous potential as a mage – and that's not something I would say lightly."

The boy's words came out as a bashful, strangled gulp.

"Besides," Zeref continued, "If it doesn't quite work out as planned with your magic, you've always got a bright future ahead of you as a human vegetable dicer."

At this, the boy tried to laugh and burst into tears instead. He buried his face in his companion's robes, sobbing. Zeref patted him awkwardly on the head.

You can't ask a man who wants to die to give you a reason to live, he thought to himself. But if you can find one on your own, I'll give you all the support I can.

When the boy looked up again, there were still tears glistening on his cheeks, and yet he somehow appeared happier than Zeref had ever seen him. "Okay," he said, and although he sniffed, there was resolution in his voice. It was small and it was scared, but it was there, and it would grow with him until titanium resolve and exceptional magic fused into a hammer capable of smashing down any barrier life could raise against him. "Then that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to explore the entire world and use my power to help the people and the animals I meet!"

There was a somewhat anticlimactic pause.

"So, uh… how do I do that, exactly?"

"First of all, you need to find the people who have come for you and leave the island with them." Zeref stuffed the sleeping bag into its pack, tightened the drawstring, and handed it back to the boy, as if the matter was settled.

"But…"

"And there I thought you had made up your mind."

"I have, it's just… I can't be with other people. I'll hurt them. I can control my magic a bit now, but not very well. I'm always destroying trees and things, which is going to be a problem if I end up living in someone's house, and I know I still hurt you by accident before I realize. Wherever I go or whatever I try to do, it's bound to end in me making things worse for people…"

"Alright, kid, you're annoying me now." This came as a terse snap that made the boy glance up in almost-forgotten fear. "Yes, you're going to hurt people before you've fully mastered control, and yes, you're probably always going to break things – but so what? As long as you're trying to be careful – to learn – to improve – what does it matter if you make mistakes along the way? You've hurt me enough times, and I don't care, do I? It hasn't made me abandon you, because I know how hard you're trying! If you want to explore the world, then go out there and do it. Stop running away, and stop acting like you don't deserve to live properly. You have as much right to seek happiness in life as anyone else!"

Astonished silence followed this outburst. Even the island agreed that this was the appropriate response.

Zeref didn't seem too happy about it either, because he folded his arms and added crossly, "Or, that's what Mavis says, anyway."

The boy blinked at him. "…Mavis said all that?"

"Yes, she did," he snapped, as if daring the boy to contradict him. "It's hardly the sort of thing I would say, is it?"

"Well, actually…" the boy mumbled, but he didn't quite dare to finish that sentence.

Zeref shifted uncomfortably and looked up at the sky again, though the boy suspected there had been no change in the barrier. "Well," he relented, "It's what she would have wanted to say to you, if she were here, and I'm sure she would have kept pestering me until I'd said it for her, so… Anyway, you can tell it's from her because it's utterly useless advice. Let me give you some more practical advice, from me this time."

Thoroughly confused, the boy just nodded.

"If you get the chance, stay around other mages as much as you can. You've still got a lot to learn when it comes to magic, and they'll be able to help with that. You'll struggle on your own. More importantly, though, you're a lot less likely to do serious damage to mages if your power goes out of control. They'll be more resistant to magic and better able to defend themselves from it. At the very least, they'll be used to getting hurt; it's an occupational hazard for those of us who deal in magic." He gave a faint smile – a sign his intense mood was dissipating once again, as it always did when the boy was around. "You will find it a lot more difficult to accidentally hurt those who are strong in magic, just as it is impossible for you to do any lasting damage to me."

"Stay close to mages, okay, got it," repeated the boy, with a determined nod. "I can definitely do that! Though… how do I find mages? There weren't any in my village, and I've never met anyone like you before."

"Guilds are the best place to find mages. I imagine most major cities have one by now. Honestly, that's the sort of environment you'll do best in – at least until you're capable of looking after yourself."

"What is a guild? Uncle Robin mentioned them a couple of times, but… what do mages actually do there?"

Zeref gave a sigh. "I'm not really the person to ask."

"But there's no one else I can ask," the boy countered. "Except Mavis, but she can't answer me… though, you're good at knowing what Mavis is saying. Do you know what she'd say, if I asked her what a guild was?"

"That's not how it…" Zeref began, before tailing off. Because sometimes that was exactly how it worked; sometimes the words he had no right to know came to him as surely as if she were right there saying them. Swallowing, he started again. "She'd tell you that it's a place to come home to. When your adventures have taken you to the ends of the earth and back; when you've returned with long-lost treasures and new regions filled in on the map and a thousand and one tales of heroism… that's where you go to tell them. It's family. It's home. That's what she'd tell you… she's sentimental like that."

"That sounds amazing," the boy breathed, his eyes shining.

Yeah, you're definitely one of hers, Zeref reflected ruefully. In the interests of balance, he added, "Well, there are a lot of different guilds out there. I'm sure there's one that will consider the risk to their guildhall worth it to acquire a new member with such huge magical potential."

"Really?"

"Absolutely. Go and explore. You'll find somewhere to belong, and it will be a hundred times more exciting than this little old island. Oh, and I have something that might help you not get thrown out straight away."

Zeref held out his hand and there was a burst of light, which receded to leave him grasping a sturdy wooden staff. It was slightly shorter than the boy, and every square inch of its surface was carved with runes in a language lost to all but the most learned scholars. At its end rested a small orb of crystal. In the absence of any proper crafting materials, the crystal had been fixed to the staff using a clumsy cradle of vines.

"You fixed it!" the boy exclaimed, leaning in for a better look.

"I only finished it late last night, so I haven't had the chance to test it yet," he warned, but he seemed pleased with himself nonetheless.

Gildarts gazed up at him bemusedly. "You know, if you didn't stay up so late creating magical objects, you might find it easier to wake up in the morning."

"Don't get smart with me, kid," Zeref scowled, rapping the boy on the head with the crystal-free end of the staff. "Go and stand over there. I want to see if it works."

When the boy had scrambled to the edge of the clearing, he pushed the end of the staff into the ground, so it stood upright, and then lifted his hands away apprehensively. Nothing happened at first. But the boy was watching with undiminished anticipation, not doubting for a second that something fascinating was about to take place, and despite himself, Zeref had to bite back a smile.

Then a warm violet light sprung to life in the crystal. It poured forth like viscous liquid, slipping down the staff and filling each row of runes with ethereal purple. The whole thing was shining, that crude, hand-made artefact; a fusion of broken technology and an unrivalled knowledge of magic, no weaker for having lain unused for so many years. From nowhere, there was suddenly a barrier around the clearing: a four-foot-high wall which formed a ring centred upon the staff. It was translucent, a magical shimmer rather than a physical shield, consisting of the same soft violet that still radiated from the crystal.

The boy let out a cry of delight and ran towards the barrier from the outside – only to skid to a halt just as quickly, remembering at the last minute that he shouldn't touch it, in case he broke it and ruined all the other's hard work. He settled for staring at it from so close that he went cross-eyed. "Whoa. It's so pretty. And it'll stop monsters from getting through, right?"

"It's hardly a perfect defence, but it should hold up well enough against any animal not big enough to step over it," came the cool response. "But that's not all it does, now that I've modified the runes. Touch it."

"But I'll break it."

"Do it anyway."

"Well, if you're sure…" The boy pressed both his palms to the wall and pushed. As he had feared, it didn't take long before cobweb-like cracks of white blossomed from his fingertips, their curiosity piqued by this semi-substantial wall of light.

"I told you," he said miserably, and that concession was the cue for those cracks to race across the entire violet wall with their usual merciless speed.

But the wall didn't shatter. It sat there quite happily, pulsating faintly, heedless to the great jagged lines traced across it. As the boy gaped, the crystal at the centre shone a little brighter, and the violet light seemed to flow together – sealing the cracks and leaving the barrier unharmed.

"Whoa," he breathed again, with even more feeling than before. He backed away from the barrier with eyes brighter than the lacrima. "You made a barrier I can't break!"

"I worked out a counter to your magic, and wrote it into the runes," Zeref said, as he tried not to look smug and failed. Four decades of inactivity, no runic dictionaries to hand, and nothing but improvised tools – and he still totally had it. "The barrier won't hold out for very long if you really try to break it down, but at the unrefined level that your subconscious uses your magic at, it appears to work fairly well."

The boy wasn't listening. He seemed to have taken the wall's resistance to his magic as a personal challenge, and was now attempting to break through by hurling his whole – though admittedly unimpressive – body weight against it. "This is-" he panted, flinging himself at the barrier, bouncing off, landing on his backside, and jumping straight back to his feet, "-so cool!"

"This time, I think you've got that right." Zeref plucked the staff out of the ground, causing the barrier to vanish just as the boy threw himself towards it again, with the completely unintended result that he landed flat on his face. "Anyway, you can keep this. Even if you end up in a place without monsters, it might not be a bad idea to sleep with the barrier up around you for the first few nights. Waking up in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar people, is exactly the sort of thing that is likely to set your magic off, and the less destruction you can do to other people's property while they're in the process of deciding whether or not they like you, the better."

And with a faint smile, he added, "After all, they might not think of throwing you in the sea."

"I don't think I'm going to suggest the sea option to them," came the grave response.

"Good idea." Zeref handed over the staff and the boy held it reverently. "Be careful with that. The barrier can repel your magic but the staff itself is just a lump of wood; if you break it like you did the last one, the whole thing will stop working."

"I'll be careful," promised the boy, although his earnest words were somewhat undermined by the way he immediately tossed the object over his shoulder. With his hands now free, he launched himself at his companion and wrapped both arms tightly around his waist.

"Alright, alright," he grumbled, trying ineffectually to prise the boy off him. "So, you're going to go back with them, aren't you?"

"I… I guess…" Affirmation came at the cost of jubilance; the anxiousness he had forgotten returned in full force.

"Then pick up everything you want to take with you," Zeref instructed, as if he hadn't noticed the change in mood.

The boy cast a longing glance his way, but when his companion did not react, he did as he was told. He scurried around the clearing in silence, gathering up his borrowed possessions. The best-fitting clothes were shoved into a mostly intact rucksack, which he slung onto his back, and he picked up the staff and the sleeping bag.

"I don't think I can carry the tent as well…" he said doubtfully.

"Leave it here, and you can always lead the people you meet back to pick it up later."

"Okay." Gildarts took a deep breath, mustered all the courage hidden within his tiny body, and asked, "Will you come down to the beach with me?"

Zeref grimaced. "I really shouldn't…"

"Please?"

"Alright."

He didn't protest as the boy timidly held onto his hand, not even when those painful white lines, a symptom of the boy's nervousness, began to creep up his arm. They walked towards the only cove on the island where it was deep enough to moor a ship.

The boy asked, "Are they, umm, through the barrier now?"

"Yes."

"Oh," he responded, dismayed, as if that invisible shield had been his last hope.

They walked a little further. The trees were beginning to thin. The boy thought he knew where they were; he was learning the layout of the island just in time for him to leave it.

"Are you sure they're not going to kill me?"

"Quite sure."

"But what if they don't like me?"

"What does it matter? You won't have to stay with them if you don't want to. Kid, no one in the world will ever be able to hold you against your will, and if you spend long enough travelling, you'll find someone who can accept you for who you are. No matter how unlikely it seems." A small smile, a sad smile, and he fought it down before any unruly emotion could run away with him. He had to be the stoic one here. He was the responsible adult. "Though, I'll tell you this – you're a lot easier to like when you're happy and cheerful and excited than when you're gloomy. If you're ever in doubt, smile."

"But you don't smile very much."

"That's because I don't care about being liked."

"I like you."

"Well, you're a peculiar child, aren't you?"

The boy did not respond to that. He probably considered it a compliment.

Other voices reached their ears at last: distant; unfamiliar; shouting out the boy's name. His grip on his friend's hand tightened, the only sign that either of them had heard.

The safety of the forest was far behind them now. Without any trees to hide behind, the boy felt suddenly exposed. He pressed himself closer to his companion, as if the wind were amongst the monsters he feared and adored in equal measure, and they approached the edge of the cliff from which Zeref had first observed the strangers' arrival. From here, they could see down into the cove – which, sure enough, now played host to a dozen people, each of whom was calling for the boy.

"I'm scared," said the boy, suddenly and quite unnecessarily.

"There's nothing wrong with that."

"But if I'm scared, I might start breaking things again…"

"If that happens, stay calm, take a deep breath, and control your magic. It's perfectly acceptable to be afraid of meeting new people, but there's no need to feel the same way about your own power, especially when you know that you can control it if you try. That magic is going to take you places, kid. Don't lose sight of that."

"I won't," he promised, and he looked a little happier.

"Now, you should go, before they start trampling all over my island in search of you. That path there will take you to the cove-"

"You're not coming down with me?"

"I can't," Zeref said, softly. "There are those down there who will know me for who I am. You have to go down on your own."

"But… if something happens…"

"I'll be right here."

After a moment's consideration, the boy gave him the broadest smile he had ever seen in his life. "Yeah."

"Then go."

"Are you gonna be okay here on your own, though?"

Zeref blinked. "Why wouldn't I be? I was doing fine before you came along, wasn't I?"

"I don't know," answered the boy truthfully, tilting his head to one side as if to turn his full powers of deduction towards the problem. "You didn't smile at all when I met you, but today, you've been smiling quite a lot."

"Maybe I'm just happy to be finally getting rid of you," Zeref grumbled. "First thing I'm going to do when you've left is go straight back to sleep." In more ways than one, he added inwardly. Before I can get too carried away with being alive again, for everyone's sake. Yours more than anyone's.

The boy gave him a dubious look that he conceded his half-hearted tone fully deserved, and he sighed. "It's been fun, kid, but I need to be alone. And you need to not be alone – you need a family and a home."

The necessity of it made it easy; easier than he had feared. He removed his hand from the boy's grasp – yet still the kid did not leave. There was a strange expression on his face as he searched for the right words and failed to find anything sufficient to convey his feelings. "I…"

He could stay, Zeref thought suddenly. Half a day. Maybe a whole day. Mavis's guild won't give up so easily; they probably won't leave until they find him, and I can evade them for that long. We could go exploring again. We'd find so many monsters in that time. The Tenrou Tree's protection hasn't run out yet. I can push it right up until the moment it expires; it won't be that much of a risk if I'm careful-

"Go," he said.

The boy looked as though he wanted to argue, but he seemed to realize it would be easier for them both if he did not. He took a step backwards, reshuffled the bag and the staff tucked under his arm, and nodded once – and then he was gone, tearing off towards the cove, his unstoppable enthusiasm disrupting the sedentary life of Tenrou Island for one final time before the twisting trail took him out of sight.