Part II - Epilogue (3)

They talked a lot that night.

When he finally hung up the crystalphone, the predawn light was just starting to creep in through the windows.

He still had to go to work in a couple of hours.

He lay in his bed afterward, trying to get at least a quick nap in before he had to leave. But it was no use. Their conversation replaying in his head. Sound of her voice. Her laugh.

When his alarm went off at the normal time, without him having slept a wink, he braced for what was sure to be a long day at the office.

*

They talked more, after that first call.

No scheduled day or time, or anything like that. Nothing arranged beforehand. She would simply call from that Embervyl phone, and he would pick up. Sometimes a week or two in between calls. Other times only a few days.

He filled her in on the years since that summer. His job. The projects he worked on. Heinrich's wedding.

She told him about the Reliquary. Day-to-day stuff as the priestess. Mama and Papa were doing fine. Garden looking beautiful. Elegia's doing well too, he got a few articles published in some literary journals.

Life in Lazumere was as slow-paced as ever. They expanded the school a bit, so that elflings from other small villages in the area without schools of their own could attend. What else …? Oh, they opened a cafe on the main road, a proud first for Lazumere.

Just mundane, everyday things.

And aside from the news about his parents—to which she offered her sincerest condolences … they had always made her feel welcome in their home—they kept the conversations fairly light.

They never talked about the awful things he had said to her.

They never brought up what she had said, at the very end.

… Honestly, neither cared all that much about it, anymore.

It just didn't seem like that big of a deal.

They joked, they reminisced. They laughed.

And he realized he'd missed her.

He missed her so much.

*

In the days, sometimes weeks, between calls, he wondered how different things might have turned out, if they'd only met when he was slightly older.

As he aged, he found himself being less emotional. He still felt all the negative emotions he had when he was an undergraduate, but he learned to control them. Not suppress, as such, but accept—to let the feeling pass without acting.

It wasn't always easy. It was a skill, one he had to develop over many years.

He even learned to control his overthinking. All the troubling thoughts were still there, but he knew better now, than to chase every mental rabbit down every single hole.

Nothing about Cameron himself really changed. He just understood his mind's patterns now.

It was something that had come with time. With age. With maturity. With experience.

When he looked back at the child he had been in Lazumere, he shook his head. What had he even been angry about?

He began to wonder if they might still have a chance.

*

But she stopped calling.

A week turned into two weeks. Then three. Then a month. Two months.

He wondered if there had been some executive order to sever the crystalline lines connecting to the Embervyl area. But Cameron had checked CryCom's node network—they were still online.

When the crystalphone first came out, relations between the humans and elves had been fine. They weren't great, but there was still trade and travel and business being done between Crystal City and the Elfen Lands.

As such, CryCom helped install repeater nodes all throughout the Elfen Lands, establishing crystalline lines connecting Crystal City and the elfen territories.

… They weren't actual, physical lines. That was just the term CryCom used, to refer to the uninterrupted resonance path formed between the crystal repeater nodes when they were all linked together.

When the war started, the government had ordered that the connections to the Elfen Kingdom be shut down. Along with various villages across the south.

However, smaller, more remote places—like Embervyl—slipped through the cracks.

Most people had never even heard of Embervyl, or Lazumere.

He tried calling the Embervyl crystalphone a few times, but all he heard was the steady beeping that indicated an invalid node. He figured the village must've had an older model—incompatible with the new resonance patterns the repeater nodes used these days.

… Meaning Embervyl could still dial out—they just couldn't receive calls.

Left with no real explanation, Cameron took their brief, crystalphone reunion for what it clearly was.

A nostalgic indulgence, for the both of them. A trip down memory lane together. Pretending they were young again, fresh-faced undergraduates studying at Crystal City Academy. When the world had still been full of possibilities. (… Well, for him, anyway.)

It had been a fun distraction, but now they had to go their own separate ways again.

Back to reality.

*

… Did worst-case scenarios enter his head during this time?

Visions of Lazumere, Embervyl, the entire elfen countryside, wiped off the grid? Nothing left but smoking craters?

Of course they did. He'd be lying if he said otherwise.

But, as mentioned, he had learned how to deal with those kinds of thoughts.

He realized them for they were—the product of an overactive mind. So he let them go.

… And he probably would have been fine letting them go, if he hadn't walked by one of the rallies near the Mother Crystal plaza one day, and overheard the military propagandist boasting on stage about the army's recent campaigns around the elfen south.

The man didn't say Lazumere specifically—nobody knew where that was—but Cameron couldn't help … but wonder …

Nah. Couldn't be. … Right?

The next day, he found himself unable to focus at work, distracted.

Before he left for the evening, he had made up his mind.

He left Crystal City the next day.

For the first time in nearly a decade, Cameron gave in to his compulsive over-thinking.

… And he'd been making such good progress, too.

*

It was the first time he'd taken the crystal rail in years.

The last time had been before the war, when he'd been sent to work on repeater nodes near the human-elfen border.

Civilians were barred from traveling to the Elfen Lands now.

But luckily for Cameron, he worked at CryCom, a government-backed company that just happened to maintain repeater nodes all across the continent. The elfen territories included.

It hadn't been too hard to forge a work permit. As far as the officers on the train were concerned, Cameron was an engineer, on his way to repair repeater nodes that had been vandalized by elfen troops. (Which did actually happen quite a bit, even with the City's army sending human soldiers sent to protect them.)

Getting past the border was easy.

The question was, how would he make the rest of the journey …?

He supposed he would have to try one of the few places he knew of, where humans were still tolerated inside the elfen territories.

These were stops on the line that normal people usually avoided. Close to certain black market towns, where anything could be found, for the right price. …

Even someone willing to drive him where he needed to go …

*

"This is as far as I'm takin' ya. You'd have to be crazy to head any closer to that place right now."

Cameron handed the elfen driver, named Walter, the rest of the cash he promised, and hopped off the carriage.

"You know," said Walter. "It'd be pretty easy just to kill you right now, and loot whatever else you got. Not a single elf here would care about a dead human, this far away from Crystal City."

Cameron began reaching for the dagger on his belt.

The driver laughed. Ugly, phlegmy noise. "Relax! … Like you know how to use that thing, anyway. Just saying—you should consider yourself lucky you picked the one decent elf in that pisswater hellhole of a town. Most of those wretched fools in that bar woulda just cut your throat less than a mile into the journey."

"Maybe I'm just a good judge of character."

Nasty laugh again. "Whatever you say, human." Walter pointed to his left. "Lazumere'll be that way. Just keep walking until you see—… Well, you'll know it when you see it."

And then Walter was off, leaving Cameron alone.

Cameron started walking.

He had set out on the crystal train in the morning.

It was dark now.

*

It took him another two hours of walking to finally reach the village of Lazumere.

He had noticed the blue smoke rising up into the night sky long before he actually arrived, so he was prepared somewhat for the sight that greeted him.

The entire village covered in crystalfire. Blue flames that refused to go out. They would burn for years, if left alone.

From the looks of it, the fires had been burning for days by this point. If not weeks.

Houses and shops he'd visited that summer, burnt and crumbling. The Nocturne estate, gone.

He did his best not to breathe in the fumes, holding his sleeve up to his face.

Everything tinted blue, awash in the eerie, flickering glow of the crystalfire.

He wasn't alone.

All around, elfen villagers worked together to pour water and shovel dirt on the flames. All too busy to notice the human standing around, out of place.

Cameron knew it was a futile effort. Who knows how long they'd been at it already. What they needed was marrowdust. They needed saint's ash. Without those to properly douse the flames, the crystalfire would just keep coming back.

Among the elves helping out with the fire, Cameron spotted a familiar face.

He ran to her. He called her name.

She looked up, face covered in blue soot, blue ash. Burns on her arms and neck.

Her face froze. Eyes widening in disbelief.

"… C-Cameron!? What are you doing here? How did you even—"

"Yuka. Yuka … Listen to me. Where's Miyu?"

At the mention of her name, Yuka Yuuni's lips started to tremble. Her face crumpling. "Miyu-Miyu … The Nocturnes … Poor Mr and Mrs Nocturne … It's so horrible …"

Images of that summer flashed through Cameron's head. Mrs Nocturne, stirring a pot of stew in the kitchen. Her gentle smile. Half-moon eyes. Mr Nocturne in the garden, tending to his flowers. Cameron's throat tightened. It … couldn't be …

Cameron grabbed her by the shoulders. "Yuka … Is Miyu alive? Please. I need to know."

Tears streamed down her face. "Y-yes … She's alive …"

Cameron let out a small exhale. "Where … Where is she?"

"But …" she said, voice trembling. "But … she's …"

"… What? What is it?"

Yuka collapsed into Cameron's arms. From physical exhaustion, or emotional, he didn't know. Both, probably.

"What is it, Yuka?"

"She …" sobbed Yuka. "She's—"