Part I - Summer - "We stepped off the train ..."

"—ask her to marry me," Cameron said one night, lying in bed, a few days after having confirmed his decision to spend the coming summer in Lazumere with Miyu—just after the Crystalline Circuits exam, and a few days before his Crystal Energy Fields final. "I really think I'm going to pop the question."

"…"

"… You awake, Heinrich?"

A loud sigh from the other side of the dormitory room. "… I am now."

"Did you hear me?"

"Yeah. I heard you."

"And what do you think?"

Heinrich answered, a hint of bitterness in his voice, "I think that you asking for my opinion, given the fact that I've yet to even hold anyone's hand at our age, would be like me asking a street beggar if I should have roast beef or glazed ham in the cafeteria tomorrow for dinner."

"Well, gee, if all you want is someone to hold your hand, I'll come over there right now and do it."

"Oh, what a gracious offer. Your girlfriend would be thrilled, I imagine? Or … your fiancee now, I guess …"

"You know, I'm not even sure she would be that upset," said Cameron, who was playing it cool, pretending that Heinrich's usage of the word fiancee hadn't caused his face to burn up; and who also knew that, if you wanted to bypass any initial Heinrich-isms and get some kind of straight answer, all you needed to do was simply try again; and so Cameron did precisely that, asking, "… Okay, no really. What do you actually think?"

Heinrich sighed. "I think that … we're still pretty young? And we're not even out of school yet. We—you and Miyu, more importantly—still have another year before graduation."

"Plenty people are still getting married at our age," countered Cameron. "And I mean, just a few decades ago, we would be all but expected to be married by now."

"Yeah, well. Times change, I guess. Anyway, what about money? Jobs?"

"Crystal engineers are more in demand than ever. I would have to try and not have a job lined up after graduation."

Heinrich turned on his side and faced the wall, his back to the rest of the room. "Great. So it sounds like you've made up your mind then, Cam. So what are you asking me for? (Now, for the love of the Mother Crystal, let me sleep …)"

Heinrich was right. Cameron wasn't being honest, and his roommate had seen right through him. The engagement, the proposal—Cameron's doubts lay not so much with his own actual following-through of it (what was Miyu going to say … No? … although looking back, maybe he should have taken that possibility a bit more seriously … b-but, wait, hold on … what would end up happening in Lazumere at the end of the summer couldn't possibly be his fault, right? … well, if not his, then whose? … that same refrain, in the aftermath of That Summer, the sleepless nights ruminating on who wronged whom, flipping back and forth on where—with whom—the fault actually lay, contemplating what he could have done differently, dwelling on the immutable past …), but with everything surrounding Miyu but not Miyu herself.

… Meaning, in short, the invitation to Lazumere, coming when it did, almost seemed like—… what, providence? Destiny? A sign from above? Not that Cameron had ever believed in anything like that. But hey, then again, Cameron was only half the equation here, wasn't he? Miyu was certainly a believer. (And in just how much, Cameron never even cared enough to know the half of it, before Lazumere. A-and … if he had only tried to understand just how important all of it was to not only Miyu, but the Nocturnes, and their elfen village as a whole … Would things have turned out differently that summer?)

Anyway, to get down on one knee, he had to first earn the right. And the invitation to Lazumere had come at just the right time. Cameron knew what he had to do: he had to win over Miyu's parents. Her relatives, her extended family. Her village, which was, according to Miyu herself, so tight-knit that everybody knew everyone and nothing could happen without the entirety of Lazumere knowing instantly. Cameron may not have known much about the world outside of Crystal City; but even he knew, in a community like that, one which still valued old-fashioned traditions, it would be downright rude not to ask Miyu's father for his daughter's hand in marriage.

And surely, the fact that he was at least aware enough to realize, and side-step, ahead of time, this potential pitfall, this would-be insult to the Nocturnes … well, that ought to earn him some amount of goodwill, right?

Uh … maybe?

But, then …

"But, then … I mean, like … what if they don't like humans, Heinrich?"

From the other side of the room came a sharp snort, the involuntary inhale of one suddenly jolted back into the world of the waking. "… Zuh? … Now what?"

"What if we're not welcome there?"

With a derisive scoff—or maybe it was an annoyed groan?—Heinrich said, "If that were the case, Miyu wouldn't have invited you. Invited us. Plus, you've been dating for like, almost three years now. Has there ever been the hint of her family not okay with you two dating?"

Okay, yeah, sure, Heinrich wasn't wrong there. But tensions between humans and elves in the realm had increased since they started dating. (… All the more reason to get married as soon as possible, right? How soon would it be before Crystal City rid itself of its elfen population? … Before elf-human marriage was made illegal altogether?)

"You are catastrophizing," said Heinrich. "You're talking like we're headed for the Elfen Kingdom or something, not some sleepy remote village in the countryside. So no, Cameron, we're not going to get executed on sight for setting foot in Lazumere. And no, Crystal City is not going to banish all elves within its walls. And Miyu and Elegia are not going to be expelled."

"Hrm," responded Cameron, who couldn't help but linger over recent events, and the news of increasing tensions between the two races. Anti-human sentiment increasing down south in and around the Elfen Kingdom … Anti-elfen rhetoric rising in the Crystal City … (Luckily, Miyu hadn't been subjected to much, if any, sort of abuse …) … And! And w-what if … Wasn't there always the possibility of—…

"—and no, Cameron," said Heinrich, pre-emptively, as though reading his roommate's mind. "War is not going to break out across the realm between humans and elves."

Ever the cynic, Cameron pointed out, "I mean, technically, we've always been at war. If it started again, it would just be a resumption, if anything. … Which is ridiculous. We both descended from Lillium originally, anyway. Human and elves really not that different, when it comes down to it …"

Which comment, right here, this very one, Cameron would often, in the years following, play back in his own head—even going so far as to force some imagined recollected ghost of himself as he was then to watch the very person they were in that moment, the post-Summer Cameron standing with one arm around his freshly-evoked pre-Summer (imaginary) self, pointing at their mutual other self in bed, the future one saying to the evocation, "Look. That's us. That's you. What did you even know back then? You knew nothing. We knew nothing," as they stood and loomed over the oblivious Cameron who was trying to fall asleep so he could study hard the next day—as evidence of just what a naive, ignorant, idealistic child he had been then … and really, would always be … still was …

"Cameron."

… drifting off to sleep …

"Cameron, wake up."

… so he could study for exams …

"Ca-aameron …"

… and then after exams … Lazumere …

"He's muttering about exams …"

… Miyu … proposal …

"WAKE UP!"

Cameron jolted awake. The train had stopped. The other three passengers stared at him, with expressions varying from amused to annoyed.

"Dreaming about exams, eh?" said Heinrich. "You know, those never really go away. Decades later, you're still gonna have dreams where it's the day before an exam and you haven't even opened the textbook yet. … At least, that's what my dad says. Supposedly it's a sign of PTSD."

Cameron nodded, slowly. "Uh … huh." He turned to Miyu. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

Miyu wiped the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. "What, and miss the sight of your sleeping face?" She cocked her head to one side, closed her eyes, and stuck out her tongue, jaw slack. "That's what you looked like. You were drooling. It was cute."

Cameron blushed. "I couldn't help it. The rocking back and forth of the train … It just knocked me out." Which admission subsequently tickled the engineer-leaning parts of his brain, prompting him to explain his idea of—

"—an automatic rocking machine, you see. A cure for insomnia. Your bed rocks back and forth in the cadence of a train. Perfectly doable with modern crystal technology. Hard part is playing back the sounds … Not sure how we would reproduce the sounds of a train. Suppose we'd have to do it with machinery, to replicate the sounds … Well, there's talk these days of encoding sound information into crystals—but the hard part would be to play it back somehow. Not to say there hasn't been any advancement on that front, matter of fact there's plenty of people working on that kind of stuff. Rumor being that we'll be able to communicate and transfer real-time sound through crystal lines … Imagine that, maybe soon you'll be able to talk to your parents in Lazumere while you're in school in the City."

And when he had finished talking, Elegia nodded very slowly, and then stated, simply, "We've arrived."

Cameron looked out the window. The few remaining passengers that had ridden all this way to the end of the line had already disembarked, a few of them wandering out on the platform, waiting for whatever.

Once the four of them had gotten all their luggage they wheeled it out onto the platform, the sudden humid heat and floral, earthy smell of the elfen countryside hitting Cameron all at once the very moment he stepped out of the chilled traincar, at which point his brain realized that he was indeed no longer anywhere near Crystal City.

Over the strident buzzing of cicadas in the nearby trees Cameron Callihan looked around, confusedly, and then said:

"Err … There's … nothing here?"

Miyu tilted her head. "Oh, did I not mention? The train only takes us about halfway there."

At which revelation Cameron, non-plussed, stared at Miyu for a good ten seconds, before he felt the imaginary objective observer that had captured every moment of his life up to now (and whom Cameron most strongly felt, for whatever reason, whenever he did something embarrassing, such as when he spent a bit too much time pulling doors labelled 'push'; or whenever he responded with, "Thanks, you too," when the dormitory cafeteria lady handed him his meal with a friendly, "Enjoy your meal!") tilt its invisible gaze up to the cloudless sky above, while Cameron provided a drawn-out and unnecessary:

"Ehhhhhhhh-hhhhhhhhhh!?"