Chapter 24 - Happy Birthday/And the Next One

Eternal Flame was spread out across the field of Barye- their home. Sy, still trying to hold in his tears, walked over to the main room of the building they resided in.

He stepped forward and pushed open the door.

On the counter was a cake. And next to the cake was a sticky note.

Sy, still shaking, carefully read the note.

“I’ll grant your wish. I’ll see you tomorrow, Zbrke.”

Sy fell to his knees. All the tears that he was trying to hold in came out at the same time.

He began to sob in front of the cake.

______________________________________________________________________________

I unconsciously attempted to crawl over to Ame for a reason I couldn’t understand, but my arms had no structure to them. The bones were shattered from the explosion, and I was almost completely out of RME.

I could feel them, but the pain wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell why. I used my remaining RME to piece the shattered bones together, but they were still broken.

I had to crawl over to Ame using my elbows. Just being in his vicinity comforted me, but Sy was left without comfort. I could see him crying on his knees through the open door. Sy had spoken before about how he didn’t care about his family because they didn’t care about him.

But, when it turned out that they did care about him, he didn’t know what to think.

The sun began to rise as Sy’s tears ran dry.

He looked at the cake.

Then, he looked at the sticky note.

Finally, he turned his head back and looked at himself.

He asked a question. A question that I had thought about my entire life. A question that not even Ame knew the answer to.

“Who am I?!”

Dominic grit his teeth.

Ame looked on in silence.

I tried to speak, but couldn’t come up with an answer.

From behind us, a girl began to walk towards Sy with a slight limp.

It was Kaya.

She approached him and shook him. But, he did not move. His eyes were dead and his pupils were shrunken.

She shook him again.

“SY!”

He didn’t respond.

“Sy Beckwith! You are Sy Beckwith!”

He was silent.

Kaya began to tear up as she continued shaking him.

“You are YOU! The you that gave me the dagger, and the you who ran away from your home! The you that cares for us more than yourself! The one I care about more than anything else! That is YOU! Zbrke, Sy- I don’t fucking care! It’s YOU! YOU!”

He froze. It took him a moment of empty thoughts to take in her words.

And at that moment, his eyes lit up. The mirror inside of his internal world healed its cracks. The image inside the mirror was blurry. He still wasn’t inside of it, but there was nobody else there.

I was rather envious. Kaya was able to describe him with adjectives.

I attempted to do the same.

I envisioned a paper in front of me, asking to list three things to describe myself. The same ones Ame said he always hated in his school.

In my mind, I sat in front of the paper, pencil in hand, unable to think of a single word. Nothing to describe myself.

Not a single thing popped into my head. And yet, Kaya could probably tell Sy enough about him to fill up three of those papers.

Sy smiled softly.

And then he grinned. He crawled out of the room, away from the cake. He looked up towards the still-rising sun with his eyes closed. His shadow was plastered against the grass under him.

And yet, that shadow was him as well.

He came back to his senses and began holding back tears over his broken leg from the explosion. I had exhausted my magic, so I couldn’t heal him. Ame stood up and carried him into his room to fix it.

Now that Sy was gone, Dominic could take Justin Beckwith’s body and put it in a bag to carry to Cittaglia. He threw some air freshener in and carried it on his back.

Dominic spoke to Kaya and I.

“We need to have a talk with Ame. His goal is within reach.”

I nodded, but had a question.

“Are we going to Dionysia?”

Dominic smiled.

“That’s the plan.”

I walked towards the building and busted open the door, but was immediately reminded about my arm when a sharp pain ran through it. It had used almost all of my still-growing stash of RME to heal it, but it was still incredibly broken. I didn’t know if my reconstruction was enough to ever completely fix it.

Ame had healed Sy’s leg and was sitting on the couch.

I sat down next to him and asked a question.

“What’s next?”

Ame paused for a moment.

He beamed softly while looking up through the window.

“Jeti’s military power is gone. Other countries have an excuse to invade now.”

I looked into his eyes as he spoke.

“We can live, Nell. It’s over.”

I didn’t know what to feel. My brain was too confused. This was the only thing I had done since birth. I wouldn’t know what to do.

But, I was happy. I was really happy. It was a comfort I had never felt before.

Tears of joy ran down my cheek as I hugged Ame.

…

…

…

Soon after this, three months had passed. It was an incredibly long amount of time, but it didn’t feel like it. Since I never got a haircut, my hair ended up growing out a bit. Dominic gave me a rubber band to tie the end of it into a rattail. I was going to cut it, but Ame said he liked it, so I obviously had to keep it. We also held a funeral for Little Man. She was too large to bury, so we just put her in the woods. Kaya cried for a bit, and then we left again. We had no means of travel anymore, but Ame went to the city and came back with a car. I wasn’t sure where he had gotten it from. He didn’t even have money for it, and the car was full of another person’s belongings.

It wasn’t automatic, and it was rather run down, so Dominic drove. Soon, we had made it back to Ame’s mother’s house.

Ame got out of the car as we walked to the door. She must have been surprised to see us, because she almost fell down when she opened the door.

Ame and her began to speak.

“It’s done. We killed Justin Beckwith.”

Her eyes widened as she began to sob and hug him.

Ame continued speaking.

“You should evacuate. Jeti is soon to be annexed. I would suggest L’eau. It’s nice there.”

She pulled back.

“What about you, Ame? Where will you live?”

Ame smiled softly.

“Cittaglia. I promise I won’t fight anymore. I’ll come visit you in L’eau eventually.”

She hugged him again.

“Oh, yeah, where is my car?”

Ame’s heart dropped as he stared at her.

Sy spoke up.

“He broke it!”

“I-It wasn’t me-”

Ame’s mom started yelling at him as he ran out the door. He stood in front of the doorway and looked back to her, with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face.

“I love you!”

“I love you too. I’ll see you soon.”

He nodded and closed the door before taking a deep breath.

We began to walk through the city. I had never truly had a chance to observe it like this. It was rather nice, but it would soon be taken over. I wondered what would happen to all the people. All the families inside these houses. Every single window I looked through had another life, with a value unknown to me.

It was beautiful and unsettling. The stars were hidden behind the sky, and yet their observation did not cease. If Ame’s goal was to do the same to all of these people, then why did he want to?

I turned to him as he grinned at the buildings. He must have been thinking of something similar. But, he was grinning. It was as if he didn’t see himself as a part of these people. Like a separate realm. Detached from reality.

Would that be considered a sin in the eyes of a creator? It was considered one to me. But, if it was Ame holding them, I wouldn’t hesitate to forgive it all.

…

We dropped the worm off at her doorstep and began to drive back. We picked up our luggage and drove over to Cittaglia.

We entered the border, and Dominic began to lead us to a house.

He opened the door, turned on the lights, and spoke while wiping the dust off the cabinets.

“This house belonged to the relatives of a girl I once knew. She barely knew them and still managed to take ownership of it. She was a smart one.”

He continued cleaning as Kaya and Sy rushed to separate rooms, unpacking all of their belongings.

I decided to do the same and took the room next to Ame and Sy.

Everybody was too tired to do something before the day ended.

…

Throughout the first of the two months, we did whatever. I wouldn’t have considered it normal, because the “normal” for me was fighting the Jeti army. It was incredibly enjoyable, though. I could do the same activities beforehand without needing to worry about the life of my friends.

Soon enough, the day of Dionysia was upon us. It was a festival held in Cittaglia, honoring the King of Hell. It was what I was waiting for throughout over half my time on this planet.

Dominic had previously cashed in unclaimed paychecks from his time in the military, so we had enough money for the festival.

We waited in line after we bought tickets. There were no weapons allowed, but Dominic had kept his sword on him always. The security let us in without a problem after they recognized him.

The air was more lively than any place I had been to for a while. Small lights hung around each and every stall on the paved floor. Cittaglia was a slightly warmer country in the city, at least.

We paused in front as Dominic handed Kaya and Sy money.

“Go have fun. Don’t be afraid to spend it. This is what I’ve been working for.”

They nodded and grinned before running off into the distance. I was slightly worried they would get lost, but I believed in them.

I was too excited to sit still, and thankfully I didn’t have to. Ame grabbed my hand and dragged me over to a stall.

First, we got food. I had always wanted to try grilled Pixxispad, and now was the perfect chance. I didn’t have any money, so he bought it for me. It was rather underwhelming, but I didn’t care.

He grabbed my arm and led me to the next stall.

He had me hold up the toy gun and aim it at the target. He held my shoulders straight as I shot at the target… and missed. Horribly. I almost hit the worker.

I tried again, and missed even worse. I was starting to get irritated, so I asked to play again without paying the extra money.

I aimed the gun and prepared to shoot, but my eyes began to glow.

The God of Time had used RME on my eyes. Normally, I would be angry about this, but all I could do was smile. I didn’t want to be negative today.

I aimed the gun again and hit every target. Ame clapped in a way that I couldn’t tell if it was sarcastic or not.

The worker lined up four prizes that I could choose from, and all of them were stuffed animals. The first one was a bear, rather large compared to the others, but it looked incredibly soft. The second one was a beetle. It was a small beetle, small enough to wonder why it was even a prize. The third one was a worm. A dark red one, also rather small. And the final one was a squid. I honestly couldn’t decide.

I looked over to Ame for help. I saw his eyes focused on his game. Detached from the world around him.

BANG!

He shot the target as his light-ocean-surface hair swayed back in the wind.

He smiled softly as he chose a black cat plushie from the prizes.

“Look Nell! Doesn’t it look like you?”

I smiled softly as well before turning to the worker.

“I’ll take the squid.”

“Alright. Here you go.”

I took the squid as Ame dragged me to the next stall.

And the next one.

And the next one.

And the next one.