call me deacon blues
The ruins of Torigoth are not dusty, anymore. They're no longer ruined, after all, and Minoth never saw them when they had been, so the reconstruction is not his to reclaim.
That said...what is? He was a spectator, a side character. Does he even get to call himself a tritagonist? It's self-insertion, projection, if he'll act like it's his own story to tell.
Too, it'll be no choice of his own to pull away from his old friends now. They're all dead, whether their lives were taken from them by another or whether they took their own.
Should he do the same?
He wants to reinvent himself, wants to be better than he once was. Anything would be an improvement, that's plain for anyone to see (is it?), but a blank slate would still help.
Does he need a new catalog? A new oeuvre? Does he need to detach himself at the hip from the old casts, and refine his interpretations such that nothing he creates could ever be unpalatable to a single solitary soul?
Solitary soul. That's you, old man. You write for yourself just as much as you write for others. You've never told a story you didn't want to tell. And there...there it is.
He wasn't really a playwright, hadn't been yet, after all. Just a storyteller. A raconteur, an orator, a pontificator. Different levels of pomp to each circumstance, and all of them inconsequential, notwithstanding. You are who you say you are, and then again you are only what you show yourself to be, and no more.
Who do I say I am? Who do I think I am?
This name...I've always had this name. Minoth. Short enough to say without too much trouble, but long enough, weird enough, to give the addresser pause. What's a Minoth? What's a Blade who looks all too human but whose name matches the genealogical etymology of exactly none of Alrest's Titans? No Indoline was ever named Minoth, and no Ardainian or Urayan or Gormotti either. Maybe a Tornan...?
Still. With a body that was initially assigned female upon resonation, he's well and truly unorthodox. A woman named Minoth. What were they thinking? That'd be like...a man named Emily. It isn't done. It doesn't happen. To be sure, it could, but no one assigns a male child that name, and if one raised in femininity grows up and decide they're in the mood for a change into masculinity, then like as not they'll choose a new one.
(Quite possibly, he wouldn't be as steadfast in his conviction if the name in question wasn't his own - there's something to be said for affirmation, especially when it's hard to come by and even harder won.)
Do I need a new one? Old Man Minoth doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, there. I won't always have the energy for this big personality, this attitude of a winner. I'm not one, anyway. None of us were. Addam, Hugo, Milton, Mikhail, Jin, Lora, Haze, Aegaeon, Brighid, Mythra, Malos...we all lost.
All except me, maybe. Me and Amalthus - his friends are dead too, if you can call Baltrich and Rhadallis that, Stannif as ever creeped away in a corner.
Minoth chews on his lower lip, worries at the notion that somehow, through it all, he's come out better than every more deserving soul he met along the way. He and Amalthus, there on the cliff on Coeia - the most revisited memory in his index, above even the silly, silly family photo - were watching before the calamity. After it all, three Titans are sunk and there's no telling what happened to that child. All the other variables are, more or less, equal. Equalized, anyway.
Is that where I should go, now? Back to him? Back to my Driver?
He's Minoth. Quaestor Amalthus's Blade.
No. No, no, no. Amalthus is the only one left alive who'll call his name, so he should not, cannot, will not be called by it anymore.
So what's here? Gormott, of all places, is somewhere the newly-appointed, newly-anointed Praetor has not touched.
Panda Pansies, but Minoth's no...well. That doesn't bear thinking about. He knows his history, and though the word might be used in more friendly circles simply to mean a coward, one who backs down from a challenge or goes weak-kneed at the sight of the same, it originated as a slur. Chuck that consideration off the table wholesale.
Sunflower Rogues aren't particularly plentiful here in the flower patch, but they crop up with abandon by the Coolley Lake camp, from whence he had just come. And sure enough, he is a rogue. A standout, a maverick, a cowboy, he'll always be. Truly, he can't change that. He'll be no one's doddering grandpa, old man or not.
Rogue. Another type of common flower is a rose. Rose...no. That belongs with Emily, to a certain extent. Common, indeed. Of a similar sound is the all-important "role", and though it would be an inane choice of self-professed moniker, something about the blunt yet round syllable grips him.
Eh, what the hell? Cole. He'll be Cole. By the same qualifying rubric, it's short enough to say without too much trouble, but distinct enough that it'll be remembered. And isn't that what he wants? To be remembered?
Rather, he wants his friends, his family, his loved ones to be remembered. Oh, he writes for them, and that is the personal thing about it. The spectators may come, the critics may go, but he still has stories left to tell. There is still magic left in his pen.
Maybe he'll try new styles, new voices, new points of view. Isn't that what he's got time for? There's no rush. No one's watching. Take your time. The audience will take their seats eventually.
What's that they say, about winners never quitting and quitters never winning? So maybe Cole doesn't want to win, per se, but he'd at least like to have a little fun, a little fame and fortune, a little glory, when he loses.