He wants to go to Glenwood.
There is nothing I can ever say to change his mind.
In the months since he grabbed my falling hand, I've learned many things about him. He woke up on this continent alone over a year ago and took refuge in a university library for most of that time. Resonance is lower here but the scholars still appreciated his presence and often gave him offerings. The books were his to keep when he left. He's just as naive as I remember but just as clever as well. He knows the world's history better than I do-which is not all that surprising since I lived through quite a spread of it outside the flow of progress. He's at ease with motored carriages and even suggests transport on a flying ships. I convince him of the virtues of travel by boat. He thinks I'm old fashioned. He's right. In the end, we head towards the sea.
I often wonder what Maotelus was thinking when he set him here. The romantic in me likes to imagine he is here because this is where I was; that one of the last thoughts my Sorey had was about me and in his grace Maotelus endeavored to make sure we were reunited. The more intellectual part of me thinks it was more a matter of wisdom in putting Sora in a place where no seraphim was likely to know him and even history would only vaguely include mention of Shepherd Sorey as an important figure in another culture's background. I am either the recipient of a great honor or the antithesis of a divine plan. Either way, I'm resolved to tell him nothing. Sorey is dead and gone forever. And in a way, so is Mikleo.
It helps to bury them both even if there are no bodies for those graves.
I've been a long time removed from Glenwood.
Humans use stamped booklets and require identification to prove who they are, where they're from and their permission to go where they're going. Those who can see Sora and myself wave us through, our intentions unquestioned based on our very nature. They're surprised by us, though. Seraphim have no real home but we have territory we like to keep to. I've been considered an oddity in my travels. Without Sorey or Gramps, Elysia wasn't home anymore and my territory became the unknown. I went everywhere. I wrote it all down. I never stood still long enough to question the passage of time. Old things are always old, after all. It's only the new which becomes out of date. Sora is very young and follows his heart and my lead-a terrible combination sure to end in mischief or death. And I... well, we like being the noteworthy seraphim who travel to different continents without a human vessel. We like challenging the stereotypes and observing those who observe us while we're stuck on a boring, floating vessel.
We sleep under starlight. We kiss and caress under the gaze of the moon because it never stopped after that first night. It's never spoken of and it has no name but what we are includes this now and it helps. It helps because it's different. It wasn't like this with Sorey. It could have been but we always thought there was so much time ahead of us before things like this would matter. And then there wasn't. And then he wasn't. And now neither am I.
I'm a nomad with a young traveling companion. And I think I can do this for many more years to come. I think I can continue with this half-truth of an existence in the same way I did with that previous sense of endless waiting that once encompassed my every day. I can but that might not be enough. Because he's curious. Because it's Glenwood. Because no matter how much time has passed, there will be those who remember Sorey and, more than that, those who remember me.
He's going to find out someday. I can't keep him from it forever but that doesn't mean I have to rush him towards Lady Lake where memories have seraphim form and only a handful have the tact to think first.
For that reason, we visit temples and ruins from our once shared past and stay as far away from cities as we can. It's not easy. So much land is covered in houses and markets with many landmarks I once knew replaced by historic markers erected in the memory of things destroyed by time and nature. I see Sora's disappointment when the places he's read about turn out to be wreckage long corded off for the safety of others. I remember the joy Sorey had when we first stepped through now ruble-blocked passageways covered in graffiti and I think, perhaps, I could become a dragon. I'm angry with time. I'm often angry. Sora's excitement and happiness are the only things that make me let go of a past I can't recapture and see the value of what remains. We 'tag' such ruins with our names like so many others before us. We leave our mark on the past in much the same way as the past has marked us both.
"We should take the road through Camlann," Sora says as we plot our further adventures.
I don't know what to say.
He smiles and his face is nothing less than the brightest star in the sky. "Maybe we'll be able to find out what happened to Shepherd Sorey. That mystery isn't as old as most of the places we've tried to go. And I bet the Shepherds and Seraphim worked to keep things in order knowing that the place was so special."
They did. I know for a fact they did. I never returned; I knew how hard it would be to leave again if I ever wandered back, but I was told in a manner meant to assuage my concern that the place were Sorey slept was well guarded even against the encroachment of age and progress.
"Have you ever been to Camlann, Rulay?" he asks me.
I consider my answer then slowly nod. "Just once for a limited engagement a very long time ago," I admit, not wishing to fabricate specifics.
His expression is of a rare excitement. "Then it will be an adventure for both of us," he exclaims. So little of the world is as unexplored by me as it is by him.
I can't say no. I can't explain without giving it all away what the name Camlann means to me. There is almost nothing about Camlann that isn't tied to my very existence. My life was made, taken, and re-purposed there. My heart was laid to rest there. Everything I was and am was decided there. I never want to go back. It is hallowed as far as I'm concerned.
The bus takes us there anyway. Because I can't say no. He thinks my hands tremble because I don't like the way the motor sounds or the smell of its exhaust and he holds them in his own. He is and always has been kindness personified. It strikes me as very cruel for me to not prepare him-not warn him in any way of what he might learn. But I don't want to lose this to a possibility. Sora might travel through Camlann leaning nothing but the fate of a Shepherd he's read about without any parallels drawn. I might still get to be Ruley by the time we pass through into Hyland.
He's going to find out someday, though. And when that happens... I don't know what comes next. But it won't be this just as this is not like what I once had before.
I hold on tight to his hand and he kisses my temple, telling me it will all be alright. It's the sort of pointless platitude I should be admonishing him for. But I don't. Because it's him. And at this point in my life, there is nothing I want more than for something so hopeful to be true.