amielleon | a visitor at any hour

Notes for a visitor at any hour.

I had some really long notes written up, but I decided they were extraneous. They were so detailed that they didn't let the fic speak for itself.

So, well.

It's about the sage. It's about the way children experience and cope with hardship, psychological as much as physical. And it's about death.

There's my two cents.

Incidentally, the beginning of day thirteen is inadvertently quite a bit like Hamlet.

This was originally written as the epilogue, but I decided that it was too out-of-place. It was meant to be a juxtaposition, but even so!

So here it is, a ball of cute with undertones of sad.

(the three-thousand eight-hundred and sixty-second day)

“Hey, Soren.”

Soren gives him a look that might promise far more pain than a mended gash across the shoulder and a broken collarbone. “Good evening,” he says.

With his right arm, Ike fumbles to sit on the cot, the tangle of linens and pillows, aware of how inept he appears before Soren's pointed gaze. “I thought Mist wouldn't let anyone see me this evening....”

“I'm your staff officer. I believe I have the authority to see you as I'd like.” He unprofessionally takes a seat at the end of the cot, turned slightly toward Ike.

“I'm not complaining. I'm bored out of my mind in here.” He finally finds a suitable position, his wounded side against the pillows. “What's the news?”

“The news?” Soren repeats. He tilts his head away a bit, frowning to himself.

“Is something else on your mind?”

Soren looks at him again, that stoic look with hints of stress and anger that few people can read, and reaches over. With his pointer finger, he lightly traces a line above the wound, across Ike's neck. “If it had been... less than two inches higher,” he says, “there would be nothing we could do for you.”

Ike glances down at Soren's hand at his throat, the ghostly lightness of the line lingering across his neck as Soren lowers his hand. “Yeah. Guess I'm lucky.”

“Fortune notwithstanding,” he says, folding his hands on his lap, “that was reckless of you. Extremely reckless.”

“Sorry,” Ike says, earnestly but lightly. “It was something I had to do.” Soren doesn't respond to this, his head turned away and his hands curled one on top of the other on his lap. Ike wonders about him. He's hardly a stranger to Soren's moody silences, but every time he only has the faintest clue what brought them on. “What's wrong, Soren?”

“Ike,” he says, maybe just to say his name – Ike gathers that impression sometimes. Soren unfolds his hands and looks down into his palms. “You don't worry, do you? You think you'll never lose.”

In the awkward silence that follows, Ike finally prompts him with, “What do you mean?”

After another pause, Soren says only, “Death.” Ike anticipates perhaps a word on danger and precaution like his newly avenged father would have given him. Greil had spared his last breaths asking him to stay safe – but Ike was certain that he would be proud at how far they have come. Soren regards him with his glinting red eyes and says instead, “I don't want you to die out here, Ike.”

That was all? Ike gives him a hint of a grin. “I won't.” Soren gives the lightest of exasperated sighs. “Relax, Soren. This war's almost over.”

“Never mind,” he murmurs. “Rest well, Ike.”

He sleeps very well, dreaming of his father until midday.

This was from day eleven. It addressed the matter of dehydration, which kills much faster than hunger. However, it was too many words for something that distracted from the focus of the story for only logistic purposes, so I cut it and hoped that people just assumed his waterskin had enough, or that it rained, or something.

...

The sun is high. It shines through big patches where he walks. It is very hot. He feels dizzy. He lets himself sit by a big plant. It is shadier there. He wants some cool water. His mouth is thick. He drank his last water yesterday. Probably he drank too much. It made him cool and filled his stomach. But then there was no more.

Suddenly something shifts. Like it does before it rains. Teacher always brought more water in after it rained. He lies where he is. He waits. The sky grows dark. Then the rain comes. Water falls from the sky. It lands all over him. He has never been in the rain before. It is cool and wet. He opens his mouth. Little by little water falls in. But not enough before the rain stops. There is water on the ground. He pushes himself up, his clothes heavy with water, almost too heavy to bear. He goes to the spot of water on the ground. He sees himself in the water, thin and dirty. He drinks himself full. His stomach is tight. He scoops what he can into the waterskin. It goes up halfway. He doesn't think he can fill it up any more.

After the rain, the world is a little clearer. He keeps walking. His body aches. The water in his clothes makes him ache too. But soon it dries away. He walks.

Little by little, there are fewer plants. There are strange lines pressed into the dirt. He has found something. He doesn't know what. He keeps walking. He is hopeful. As he walks, the birds are quieter. All of a sudden, he hears a strange sound. Like things falling on the floor in a rhythm. It's familiar but he doesn't remember why. He hides himself behind a big plant. He doesn't know what it is. Maybe a beast. The strange sound goes farther away. He peers around the plant. It looks like Teacher's wheelbarrow. He always took it with him to the market. This wheelbarrow is pulled by an animal. It struggles along, mud sticking to the wheelbarrow. They might be going to the market.

He goes toward the wheelbarrow. He tries hard to stay quiet. The animal doesn't notice him. He follows the wheelbarrow. He sees that there is a person in the front. In the wheelbarrow are many crates. Maybe they hold food. The animal moves faster than him. The distance between them grows.

He worries, but not for long. He can see something beyond the plants. They are squares of brown and white. Houses. Maybe a market is made of houses. Then Teacher would get things from them.

...

a visitor at any hour - notes