Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Much as they were a family of found fascination on the worn, well-loved trails of Torna, Lora and Addam and Hugo all knew that they would still go their separate ways, three by three with associates as usual, when all was said and done. No great shame in that, right?

Lora would build the house for war orphans she dreamt of with Jin and Haze, somewhere cozy in Lasaria or Gormott; Addam would go back and on to tending his fields in Aletta, whether Mythra and Minoth came along to help or not; Hugo would return to the throne with Brighid and Aegaeon attending behind him just the same as he had always done, as he had been doing for the past four years.

But all of those were settled tasks. They'd have a ball in Mor Ardain, a tidy country vacation at the farm estate, lazy days at the makeshift orphanage, everyone all together again from time to time no matter how long they were apart, for it was no concern of how far they'd strayed; they weren't really, in the end, going anywhere.

Such plans they struck up, at times with a more ruthless abandon than that with which they chased Malos (I'll leave it to you to imagine which measure was the one that varied, and which was the static constant). Another cooking competition - several, in fact - and craft nights and braiding trains and times to sing songs where everyone had a piano whose key to tune to, they savored the promise of all of it.

We've got plenty more recipes in the vault, Jin, Addam said, and I'm sure you would like to cook in a real kitchen for once - a challenge, maybe, if you're really only used to cooking by a campfire. And Haze, we've got plenty of embroidery material and cloth, so you and Lora can make as many new dresses as you'd like, I'm sure Flora would love to help.

Hugo, you can use the workshop to your heart's content without anyone coming after you for time, and Aegaeon and Brighid, the library's yours, of course - unless Minoth monopolizes it. What of Mythra? Addam implicitly included them with the rest, because what did Mythra even like to do for fun anyway? Architect knew if Addam did.

It was with all that in mind that Addam became conscious of a chattering, a clattering, a ruckus in the next room. Where was he? In the hall, in the between-place. Why wasn't he with everyone else? So into the dining room he went, passing through the kitchen and finding it surprisingly clean and bare as he did so.

The chairs in the dining room were...turned out. They were simple, ladder-back, so one was kept quite close in (Hugo) and another was turned full around (Minoth). The rug underneath one was a little lopsided and roughed up; that must have been Lora's place, and she was flanked on either side by two perfectly, primly, straight chairs. Addam, confused, rotated his head carefully to the window that looked out to the port, where some shadow had flickered.

There, in one corner pane, was Mythra's face. Empty, masklike, their features hung with the pain of rejection, of never having been let in. Milton appeared opposite them, but instead of looking in, he was looking away. He didn't want to be here. He wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. Somewhere he belonged.

And who did belong here? Flora, at least. Right? Flora, and- oh, and the children. Twins, Alexander Hugo and Evelyn Lora. Even if he never saw any of the others again, he would always have them. That was the one sick thing about it, but Addam still gave thanks for them every day.

Across the hall he went, into the bedroom, but Flora wasn't there, reading or darning or humming quietly on the bed. It wasn't as if she never occupied any other rooms in the house, but...the study, perhaps? Ah, no luck. The bathroom was empty as well. And so, the nursery?

As Addam crossed the threshold into the room that had once been a sitting room for the master suite but had been converted into a nursery while he had been away (away, away, away), something began to buzz in the air. Or, no. Not a buzz, but a crackle. A whirring, a pulsing. Something very volatile, very near.

The room was empty. No cribs, no dressers, no rocking chair, no toys strewn about. Still, Addam's foot struck something on the floor - wooden blocks, maybe - that clattered angrily at the disturbance. He looked down to see what it was, and then the stone floor crumbled away.

Closer the whirring came, and closer, and closer, flashing violet and teal and blood orange and proud royal blue--

The Cloud Sea was a soft, cottony thing. Not slimy, but not quite squishy either, like viscous memory foam. Memory indeed did it bring, as Addam struck and tread the not-water furiously, chasing for any sort of mooring shore.

They were dead. They had all died. They had all cracked, crashed, crumbled with the stone. Even if they had not fallen with Torna, her body and her spirit had become their final mausoleum, her water and her ether their last grim blood of communion.

Of all the things Addam remembered in this moment, he hadn't the faintest why it had been so, what the purpose of their sacrifice had been. No cause could have been simpler, more directed, yet the point eluded him. Was it - rather, had it been - for each other? For Torna? For the world? For love, for hatred, for honor, for glory?

Whisper-quiet and deadly empty, of all those things and more, was the shore in Leftheria off of the most familiar beach. It was dawn, but no new light of understanding came. And Addam, lain silent and weak, nearly as those same dead but yet breathing (why, why, why), was all, all, all, alone.