"History is not the soil in which happiness grows. The periods in it are the blank pages of history." HEGEL, George Wilhelm
The Beach Boys - Long Promised Road
...
The doors of Weltall are always open for those unfortunate enough to die with a knife stabbed on their chests, and those fortunate enough to die without any suffering left, though they kept stabbing knives at you anyway, following the rule of sparring nobody with a life.
Clouds of eiderdowns surrounded you, your ears softened by the sound, as you've awaited for your eyes to become mere dark globes while laying above a pillow of winds; now the entire earth does the same, thought you can't feel any warmth from any external source, as much as you can't feel any cold, or the rain dripping at my skin, slipping down from a piece of fur to another. To where your substance may had been gone, the body you've once shared is now meaningless, though the same is the first thing I recall into my memories, or anytime I look at the mirror, or any water puddle I step, distorting my own image with the ripples flowing alongside my nails.
Before I leave, since I do not have anything else to do here, besides looking at what you've become for them...
Lenneth Crescent... 1757-1794. Prepared for battle.
Those were the words inscribed on your epitaph. They aren't even the scratch of the surface that describes you in a few words... Mom. They don't call you this way, but instead, throughout your entire life ever since the day you were born and they looked at you. Besides a mother, you had been tasked to become something else, other than what they had been telling you to become it so on their vision.
Attractive... Yes, not only by the sight of the men. You were so beautiful, but then I remember that I was one of the few who ever looked at something more than your own body, to be listening to your true voice, the same one whom they choked with far more than sharp claws. Do I deserve the same as you?
Someday, someplace, where a warm hand holds mine... From the birth, to the marriage, to the labor and death in itself; life is sustained by a cycle of rebirth and a pain that looks the same when compared to death, but it only looks. "To be forgotten is worse than death…" To be remembered by something other than yourself as well.
A woman isn't born out of the flesh. It's just another man who becomes a woman through life, so does the Dragoon Knights. A job that comprehends a group of skilled warriors trained by a same Jugend of centuries, by common definition.
Common... 'I want to fly and touch the clouds, so I can eat them. There is a whole lot of clouds'; a kid said. It was me... The true common definition of what it meant to be a Dragoon Knight. A life of pleasure, as much as those nobles ones from the past deemed it so to be, when exploring the heights surrounding the world, not this world we call by Burmecia.
In these times, a horde of Ironites still happens to be found on some streets, unlike before, when they could be found anywhere you went, flying atop any corner, in groups. So did the Grand Dragons; to control these invasions, half of the population became part of a militia, using whatever they could as weapons. Broomsticks... We used to spar with them when in the garden, didn't we?
Some may believe in the legend concerning the foundation of Burmecia or not, but nobody that I know denies of its outcomes, as much as I believed that I could fly and touch the clouds, even when you agreed to waste some of your power to do a jump so high that all I could feel was the joy of being there, next to you, besides a need to puke, but I could hold it onto myself, unlike the love I shared for you. Given the implementation of poor defenses, and the disbelief of people after Kain's death, an assembly of peasants to make a sort of defense against these creatures was better than none after all.
The explanation for such primitive techniques of defense could be explained by the fact some people, mainly followers of Bahamut, believed that the rain could protect them from any harm coming from outside. If the rain really protected us, then there wouldn't be any Basilisks wandering around the corners of the houses, but then I look at the sky, which is darkening, just like my bedroom when the night came, and the candle died, instead of me...
That's the only kind of protection borrowed by the rain, besides its water being clean enough to be drunk, but it's part of our nature to keep suspicion with everything, so we do not mind boiling the same water to pour it down our throats, pure or in a cup of tea. The rain as well may had given us prosperity, seeing how fertile the soil of these lands is, and how many crops grow there. Bamboos, eggplants, ferns... But there are also plants that take more time to grow inside Burmecia, given the sunlight which can be barely spotted from atop those clouds.
Floating rivers... That's how many call them by. Some cereals and other plants that grow where there are sunny days only made the way to our tables due to the rediscovery of our kingdom centuries later, with Lindblum and other nations establishing their trade routes, so did Cleyra after centuries of negotiations between the parts, or halfs as they are deemed to be. You may know this story already, knew it before I was even born, but I don't have anything special or important to do, besides going home or at the market, so...
given the improvement of the militia groups into trained pikemen units within time, some trained by the Lord Gizamaluk, the only son of Frigg, said to have the knowledge of the Dragoon skill sets, like others who were once Vastitas, what would become the main concept of Dragoon Knight today was born. Some say that Cyan, grandchild of Kain, was the one who came up with the idea of Dragoon Knights at first place, though only nobles were taught in the school founded by him, the same one who endured with the time, unlike some of the traditions accepted before.
Not only you had been telling fairy tales to your children, as it seems. Lullabies too... now they are scary too, knowing that they are meant to be told by us when young, not grown up like this. Remember a person by the name of Frøja? She was your favorite writer, so much that you've chosen her name and its meaning to be mine. Prior Frøja, only Burmecian males could become Dragoon Knights, and before the arrival of alexandrian emissaries and their betrayal over this land, humans used to have the job of a Dragoon as well.
There are far too many stories to be told and discovered in regards to the Dragoons, and the majority of Burmecia, like a fair explanation of why they 'jump' such high heights. Is it due to magic? The way the bones are enlarged? A sort of ripple flowing through their limbs? Nobody will ever know.
All we do know about are only variants of the same tale, but enough about ancient history, since it's time for me to create my own. I have done so since I was born. So did father, mother, and Jack, who is doing his own history. Someone else had built his new home, in the main city. These houses are far bigger than the ones belonging to the neighborhood where I was raised... Anyone can jump with their feet, but they always end up falling.
Mother, who once fell from the skies... I didn't know it was because of me. I wasn't even alive, but in an instance between death and life, just like mother, before she agreed to stop, cease her job for a while. The cost in gil and respect for other people wasn't enough, never that would mean to be compared with my priceless life, or what was meant to be one.
I had to grow up, interact with people and objects other than mother, to call others by 'you', and to learn each day and agree as well with a nod that those fairytales were creep, despite the sweet and raspy voice telling them to me. That same voice changed to my own with the time...
I don't have any farewells to be said, mom. I know you are within me... Yet, I'll have to struggle a bit if I want to be a Dragoon Knight.
