#it really gives ffxiii-2/3 the closure they deserve

[buoyfriend]

29 - The Final Days of the Thirteenth Shard

Our world had dragged on for so long. Years after that horrid crack sounded from the earth, we found ways to survive. We found food, we found shelter, we kept each other alive for as long as we could. We had forsaken our gods, praying to one alone. We held parades, we listened to every word, we sacrificed her emissaries to dutifully honor her. Still, we could not forestall the final days.

My village was small, not for lack of trying. I was the last to be born, the very last of my kind. When I was called that, they would not count the one other.

My very first memory was the first of many events where we gathered in the square at the center of town. Every year, our foul goddess would choose to speak to us. Etro's blessing, a young girl, the oracle, trotted out before us to speak the goddess' words to the rest of us. It was never anything of substance, just continued pleas for hope amid the end of things, the final days for us all.

My grandmother told me once before bed about the day they all knew it would be over. For years before that, there was dread. Fighting over resources, petty regional conflicts over land. But one day, a sharp crack met the ears of all. Across our entire world, a crack like a scream coming from the planet itself. Sometime after, the crops began to fail. In a sick twist of fate, it mattered little because there were fewer people to feed.

Children arrived earthside without taking their first breath, many couldn't fall pregnant in the first place. Try and try as they might, no more children were born in our village or any other. I was the very last.

--

I was a small boy, maybe five summers. My mother scraped a comb through my hair to be presentable for the oracle. I scowled, kicked my legs, cried. I didn't see the point of it then, and I would loathe the event more as time wore on. No expense was spared this year. The previous oracle had passed some years before as they are wont to do after seventeen summers. Finally, our new oracle was ready to speak before us.

A band played music too loud for my ears, dead flower petals showered before the priests as they walked ahead of her. Finally, after much fanfare, I spied a palanquin emerging as I watched on from my father's shoulders. A girl, purple haired as all oracles. About my age. She cried and shrieked, frightened by the crowd. She spoke her same speech, a plea for hope at the end of things. Rejection of the final days.

--

My father passed in my fifteenth summer, his body failing him like the world around him. I watched him by the firelight, coughing and straining as he passed from nature into eternity. I didn't cry then, I watched my mother cry for us both.

He trained me with his bow for years before that. I'd had my own, but I took up his after we laid him to rest in the barren fields. I traveled far to hunt. Few animals remained, choosing their odds of survival in the deepest forests away from the ruins of civilization.

It was there that I found the oracle. Purple haired, legs dangling in a rushing river. "You'll get caught up in the water if you're not careful" I said from a few yalms behind her. She shook her head, escaping whatever daydream she had been caught up in. She stood slowly, not breaking her eye contact with me. She was beautiful, her eyes the green of my forests. The oracle backed away slowly as she raised her arms, shaking heavily. "I'm Noel, you must be the oracle."

She wouldn't answer me. She turned to run, but not as carefully as me. She tripped on one of the many traps I'd set, thankfully the least lethal of them. I caught up to her, straining to free her leg from the trap. She shuddered as my skin brushed hers. I wondered if she had ever had contact with a person outside of the temple.

"Let me go!" she cried.

"I'm trying!"

"They'll be angry if they know I left."

"I'm sure. Here, I'll hold it open if you can pull your leg."

She whimpered before her soft sound gave way to a scream as she pulled her limb away from the steel trap. Her leg was absolutely mangled.

"I-I can't go back like this." she stuttered, her eyes welling with tears.

"Here, I'll run back to town and grab some supplies. Let me...hm." I paused to open my bag, but none of my supplies would help in the short term. I took off my sash and wrapped on her leg. She followed my gesture to rest against a tree as I brought her my bag to prop her leg upon.

--

I returned, and gratefully she got to keep her leg! Jokes aside, she returned many times after that. Not immediately, of course. Some months after, she would return to tell me about her ruse to hide her injury. She insisted to the priests that Etro had called her to meditate deeply in silence and solitude for a period of months. She opted to wear long robes in this quest, all to hide her healing injury.

She told me much and more after that. I showed her the locations of my traps, and she found me safely on each of my hunts. I showed her how to use my bow, in return she told me how foul it was to be an oracle. The dismissiveness of her eternal guardian, Caius, the coldness he showed her.

"It's probably not a pleasant experience to raise a child every seventeen years only to watch them die." I told her.

"Certainly. Still, it's so lonely. I wish..." she paused to gaze out at the same river I'd first spied her at. "I wish I really knew anyone. I wish I could speak as myself, not a mouthpiece for some fickle goddess. Even you, you just call me 'The Oracle'"

"You've never told me your name, you just complain about being a pampered prince-oh, forgive me, oracle."

"Yeul. My name is Yeul."

--

Yeul loathed Etro. She loathed the visions Etro showed her, of our skies burning red, of stars crashing into the surface of our world, of every day people becoming foul beasts. She told me her deepest wish.

"If I could end all of this and set the world right, I think I'd live on a beach."

"A beach? How do you even know what a beach is?"

"I've seen them in books. There's a painting of one in my favorite story. I think I'd fish all day."

"I'd fish with you, I'm quite good."

"So I've seen. Would you live with me?"

I blushed at her suggestion. She was truly quite beautiful. Her face was so soft, her eyes so kind. At the world's end, we cast off tomorrow. We had cast off yesterday. I hadn't considered anyone to be a lover, nearly everyone was vastly older than me. I hadn't considered Yeul, she was approaching her seventeenth summer. I knew that she would die, and that she was not mine. She belonged to our horrid little village at the end of the world.

"I would, if you'd have me."

"Then we'd live there, on the beach. And we'd fill the whole house with babies."

My face grew hot. "I-Yeul" I stuttered. She laughed heavily, more heartily than any day past. I softened at the sight of her. "Is seven enough?" I asked. "No, fourteen. Twenty."

--

Our village was small, but not for lack of trying. My visits with Yeul were weekly until they were every few days, until they were daily. She had become skilled at sneaking out of her prison to navigate the forests. We built a small...house is too generous a word. But it was ours. We built a small house in the forest. I met her there every day to insist my love for her, to try to give her all she wanted. I gave her myself, I gave her my dignity as I apologized for my inexperience. She gave me her forgiveness in my fumbles and my overexcitement.

--

Our visits ended with a visit from Caius himself. I proudly marched into our home in the trees to find not my lover, but her guardian.

"Yeul is not as clever as she thinks. Neither are you, boy."

I tensed as I watched the man sit atop our makeshift bed. He bounced slightly, judging the craftsmanship. "I will not tell your parents, nor the priests, nor the village." he said, eyes washing over Yeul's things on a shelf.

"How did you find this place?"

"Like I said, she is not as clever as she thinks. She leaves a clear trail, never thinking how it came to be that she could escape in the first place."

My brow raised, he answered my silent question "How do you think it was that she could leave the temple in increasing frequency? How is it that the windows are left unlocked, that the gate is left attended at the correct hour?"

"Why would you help her leave?"

"Do you really think I'm so cruel, boy? I have watched her live and die. I have watched her take her first breaths and her life a thousand, thousand times. Do you think I wish this? Do you think this was my choice? Do you really think me so stupid that I would choose to be the puppet of a foul god?"

To tell the truth, I hadn't thought much of him at all. He was simply part of the parade that rolled through my town each year, an obstacle to Yeul reaching me. "No, sir."

"Relax, Noel. If you wish to see her again- yes, I would allow you to see her. If you wish to see her again, you must prove that you can do what is required."

"I would do anything."

"I hope for us both that is true."

--

I spied Yeul in the temple. Her eyes widened as she saw me walk with Caius, mouthing words I couldn't interpret. Every day, I trained with him. I thought that I was good with my bow, but Caius proved my inability with knives and swords. I read until my eyes burned, I punched targets until my hands bled.

"When will this be done?" I asked through panting breaths.

"You will receive the Heart of Chaos when you can prove that you deserve it." he replied.

"What does that take?"

"Everything."

I loathed his riddles. When I thought he might not be watching, though I'm sure he always watched from some distance, I explored the temple. I found my way to Yeul's chambers. Incense burned, hanging thick in the air. I found her paintings, paintings of me as I nocked my bow in focused determination. So many paintings of me, of my village. One of a cottage on a beach.

I heard her footsteps rushing towards me as her door slammed shut. She held me tightly, arms wrapping around me from behind my back. "How did you get in here?" she said in a bitter whisper.

"I came with Caius."

"Why?" she begged.

"I'm going to...I'm going to take on the Heart of Chaos. To be eternal like him."

"I-I just...Noel, why would you do something so stupid?"

"To free you from this."

"He's been alive for an eternity and he can't."

"Because he won't, because he hasn't tried everything. Yeul, if I had that kind of time, I would...I would do anything."

--

Our world had dragged on for so long. Years after that horrid crack sounded from the earth, we found ways to survive. We found food, we found shelter, we kept each other alive for as long as we could. We had forsaken our gods, praying to one alone. We held parades, we listened to every word, we sacrificed her emissaries to dutifully honor her. Still, we could not forestall the final days.

I trained from sunrise to sunset every day. My grandmother passed, my mother passed. I vowed that Yeul would not. The sky began to burn red, the laws of nature twisted as the gentle animals of our forest became foul beasts. Soon, our remaining people would find the same fate, our dread made manifest. They grew fearful, descending into madness before they transformed. The land buckled, our village burned, the waters ran red with blood. What little we had left fell away, naught was left but the temple.

On the final day, the beasts began to breach the walls of the temple. I dragged Yeul behind me as we ran to the crypts. I felled beast after beast, friend after friend. Neighbor after neighbor. I begged that I would not fall to my despair, that I could remain to protect her.

It was too late. Yeul had begun to lose control of herself for some time, I prayed that some way, some how, she could hold on longer. Perhaps she was special, perhaps by sheer force of will, I could keep her from the fate that had befallen every oracle I could.

She collapsed as I sealed the crypt's door behind us. I ran to catch her, to hold her as the light began to leave her. I held her tightly in both arms, begging her not to leave. I begged her not to leave me here at the end of the world. The walls of the crypt began to crumble around us, rocks falling from the ceiling.

She looked into my eyes, and I caught hers. Deep forests, piercing through me. She sang softly, "Valhalla is calling me to the end, I can hear now the beating hearts of lost friends" I promised her, I would see her alive again. I would find her. I would break this cycle, and we would find our home on the beach.

A splitting headache overtook me, I lost my vision until I found myself somewhere else. I thought perhaps I'd died, that a rock had hit my head. I was weightless, swimming in a sea of stars before a crystal as tall as the buildings of old. A voice called out to me, "Welcome and well met, my brave little spark. She heard your promise and the gods heard it too."

"The gods?"

"Yes, my poor, suffering dear. I would offer you another chance. Another chance to make good on your words."

I searched for a face, a body, anyone. Anyone to unleash my fury upon. "Another chance? I will not-I will not hear this farce. Now you choose to offer help?" I struggled, to no avail.

"Do not struggle, my sweet child. I will take your soul to the beginning of things, to the days before this madness. l will give you another chance and bear you to a perfect world, a world unsundered. Your souls together, whole, you can stop the Final Days before it ever begins."

I weighed her offer. How could I trust Etro, foul and fickle? How could I trust this god that would birth new oracles, throwing them into the fire since time immemorial? She spoke to me again, "If you fail, the world will be sundered once more. The tragedy that has befallen this star will take place once again. You will be caught in the same cycle of time, like Yeul, like Caius. You will live and die, struggling against fate."

I would not fail, I could not. Even if I tried many times, I had promised her I would break her cycle of death and rebirth. I would give her peace, fishing on the beach, a house full of life. She asked me "What would you do to make good on your promise to her?"

I had trained, I had given all I had. I had given Yeul all of myself. Still, I would do more. I would have done any task Caius asked of me, I would have hoped against hope to give Yeul her wishes.

"I would do anything."