Work Text:
A Rabbit By The Roadside
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She first met him while wandering through the streets of the eastern port city she’d been passing through for several years now.
Snowy white hair, rubellite eyes, standing twitching on the spot with his head flitting skittishly from side to side and the tense panic pouring from every ounce of his being, he reminded her instantly of a white rabbit. A winter snow bunny that’d come down from the mountains, that had gotten itself lost and trapped within the thrum of civilisation.
As it turned out, she wasn’t far off.
Normally, she would have just kept on walking, just like everyone else around him. She may not be the same as someone like Hestia who would always want to reach out to all and sundry around her, but she had always wished to do right by the children, to help them as she could. Even so, she knew well enough that mortal problems were as infinite as the Gods themselves, and the plight of a single lost traveller was hardly anyone’s concern but their own.
But he was just a child.
And there was no missing the dismay and fear in his expression, or the confusion in the words he kept muttering to himself. Or maybe it was just the way she kept hearing the word “Orario” falling from his mouth, a name that still stirred her heart even after all this time.
There was no lying to the Divine, she could see his character and that his worries were genuine just as clearly as she could see him before her.
And so, she stepped forwards, she greeted this panicking rabbit -as softly as she could manage, lest he flee- and she reached a hand towards him.
He told her his story, his full story and all the details, far too willingly and much too openly. A country bumpkin overawed by meeting a Goddess for the first time, he wore his heart freely on his sleeve, not even thinking to keep from talking about how much money he was carrying on him, or how much he’d already paid for what seemed to be his wayward journey here.
It didn’t take long to discern what had happened. A charitable interpretation would be -as the boy himself told it- that he had simply gotten on the wrong wagon, a somewhat more reasonable interpretation was that he’d been tricked by someone who’d taken him for an easy mark. Whatever the truth of the matter, the result was that he’d spent some time stumbling in a daze through the city streets and by the time he’d realised this was not the famous dungeon city, the man who’d delivered him here was long gone. And while his situation wasn’t anything as dramatic as being as far from Orario as it was possible to be, he had spent several days and a good deal of his money travelling entirely in the wrong direction.
The fix, on the surface of it, was simple. All roads led to Orario, and she knew her way around this city, it would be a simple matter to lead him to the merchant caravans and arrange actually reliable travel for him to the Dungeon City, she even had enough funds she could pay for his journey and put his worries completely behind her- to show him that the outside world wasn’t so scary or so full of rogues as he might come to believe.
But she hesitated.
She knew Orario well.
Orario was where she’d been destroyed and where her children’s bodies lay.
It was the centre of the world, the most wonderous city of the world and the heart of any tale of adventure. All men and Gods looked towards Orario in one way or another. And that included evil Gods and foul men. Someone as pure and innocent as this boy, walking unaccompanied into that nest of vipers… she had no doubt that Orario would chew him up and spit him out.
Further queries did nothing to ease her mind. Any hopes he might have a guardian attending to him, or somewhere reliable he was at least heading to, were swiftly dashed then the boy, Bell, freely and naively told her all about his situation. He was alone, he was travelling completely without assistance or supervision, and he had no-one at all that would be looking for him in Orario or who would miss him if he never arrived.
A drop of sweat ran down her spine despite the cool spring air, and she became glad that it was her he met on the road this day.
If there was no-one expecting him there, why was he even travelling to such a dangerous place? She knew the answer even before she asked. He wanted to be an adventurer- the same reason anyone like him was travelling to the Labyrinth City.
Well, almost.
It seemed there was more than that. He told her about his grandfather’s advice, and how he was looking to become a “true man”, and “have an encounter in the dungeon.”
She didn’t bother trying to hide her laughter at that. Only someone who’d never seen the dungeon could say something like that. It was a reminder that he was just a child after all, one who knew nothing of the world. If he wanted to meet women, he could do that anywhere at all.
But there was even more than that. It seemed, almost more than anything, Bell wanted to, if he could, if it was possible, he wanted to become a Hero.
She smiled.
She couldn’t help it. All the Gods loved Heroes. Even the Evil Gods whose schemes and plans were foiled by Heroes still loved them. Heroes made life interesting, heroes made Mortals interesting. But there hadn’t been a true Hero in a long time.
But he was too young to be a hero, and too weak and too unworldly. He had no weapon on him, carried himself with the look of a complete novice and admitted he’d never so much as been in a fight one breath after telling her how he wanted to be a hero. Orario was no place for someone like him, not yet.
So, she smiled kindly and explained that to him, she told him about the city and about the Dungeon, about the dangers for the unwise and the unwary, and invited him to spend some time here instead, or if not then any of the other major cities that dotted the continent. He had some money on him, he could find a place to stay and a job, and in the mean-time he could learn some skills and get some training that would actually help him. Then when he was a bit older, a bit stronger and a bit more appealing to the guilds in the city, then he could head to the Dungeon.
It was all sound advice. Exactly the kind of advice anyone would have told him.
And he rejected it all.
Despite how weak and how soft he looked, despite how he’d been quailing just from finding himself lost in an unfamiliar city and despite hearing about all the dangers that awaited him, he shook away all her suggestions. Shaking his snowy-white hair gently, he turned his rubellite eyes down and refused all her warnings. Even without any reason to be, and even despite looking like he’d be pushed-over by the faintest breeze, he seemed to have far more of a backbone than she could have expected. Alone and lost, already far from his destination and with no idea what he was doing, he still insisted he was going to Orario and he was going to be an adventurer. He was far more bullishly stubborn than he had any right to be.
She smiled again.
She couldn’t help it. She liked stubborn children, you had to be stubborn to get anywhere in Orario, that city and that Dungeon would sweep you off your feet if you weren’t looking.
The Gods are capricious, prone to flights of fancy and moments of interest. They were, if they wanted to be, benevolent but more than anything, they were just looking for entertainment. They wanted to see first-hand the stories the Mortals would weave around them.
That was probably why her resolve simmered away, why her smile turned affectionate and indulgent, and why she reached out towards him once more- offering this time to at least see him to his destination, telling him that she still had a house somewhere in Orario, at the very least she could give him somewhere to stay until he found a familia of his own. Or maybe it was because of the light in his eyes that shone bright when she focussed her Divine gaze on him, the piercing ruby glow that remained strong even as the world around them faded momentarily to grey.
It had been a long time since she’d been to Orario, a large part of her missed it and everything that would always be still to do there, but it was too soon for her to return. Her familia was gone, and she had no dreams of restoring it, not yet, there was something she was waiting for before she could even consider that. But if this stubborn, lost rabbit was so sure about throwing himself into the lion’s den, she could at least make sure he had a chance to get there without someone else taking advantage of him.
She introduced herself, pouted slightly when her name garnered absolutely no recognition from him, and then she took his hand.
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The journey to Orario was as long and uneventful as expected.
Sitting together in the back of a wagon that slowly lumbered towards the famed city, she was surprised to find herself feeling a small bubble of excitement at the return. It didn’t make much sense, she certainly had no intention of staying, that would only attract undue attention and would risk making everything far more complicated. She would deliver Bell to the destination, and then look after him until she could hand him off to another God or Goddess, and then she would be on her way once more… but so much of her heart and so much of her own dreams were still tied up in that labyrinthine metropolis and buried deep in that dungeon, that she supposed it only made sense to find herself becoming restless as she began the journey back once more.
Her companion, predictably, went well past “a small bubble of excitement”. With his attention almost constantly fixed on the direction she’d pointed towards where the city lay, straining out the front of the wagon, he was forever staring towards the horizon, desperately waiting to see the famed Tower of Babel, as if begging for the walls of the great city to come in sight.
To pass the time, and to distract both of them, the asked about him and his life before this wayward journey.
So, Bell told her about his life in the countryside. He spoke happily about the rivers and mountains of his homeland, he talked about how he’d grown up chasing wild animals over hill and dale. He talked about the little experience he’d gained in farming, about the wind through the trees, the warm summer skies and the chilling winter nights.
And he told he about his grandfather, the one who had raised him, who had been everything to him. A great giant of a man, easy with laughter and open with love and…
And soon his voice trailed off and this enthusiasm died as his head dropped down and the words that had flowed so easily were stifled like a dam.
His grandfather had died, leaving him all alone and without anything to do or anyone else in the world. After surviving in a daze for almost six months, Bell had taken everything he’d owned, turned it into vallis and headed towards Orario to fulfil the ambition the man had left for him. She’d heard and seen similar stories countless times before, it wasn’t the most tragic or the most painful, but it was still the story that had left a young child thrust out into the world long before he was ready and so clearly desperate for a place to belong. It wasn’t a difficult feat to understand where this boy’s stubbornness came from, why he was so desperate to come to Orario and to join a familia.
Instead, she filled the silence he left.
She told him about the city he’d been yearning for, about what he could expect and the people he could wait to see. She found herself enjoying the tales almost as much as he did, as she watched the boy hanging on her every word, looking between her and the tower still not even visible in the distance. She told him about daring fights across rooftops, of treasures buried deep in the dungeon, of cheering crowds and sneering villains, she told him about those that lurked in the dark and about those that rose up, risking their precious lives to stop them.
And, as the days passed, as Babel came into sight and his eagerness only grew, she found herself telling him about her own familia.
She hadn’t intended to. She’d never been a quiet or reserved person, but there were some walls around her heart that had not been easily sundered, no matter how often she’d thought of them, she hadn’t spoken about any of them in years. And yet, Bell’s pure naiveite and infectious interest somehow wormed its way inside her defences all the same. When he talked in such delighted terms about the brave and the dauntless men and women from the stories, she found herself giving examples… At first she talked about members of friendly familias and those she respected, then she spoke about those of enemy familias and those that should fill him with terror… and finally, softer and with more reverence, she talked about her own children.
She bragged about their exploits, laughed about their failings and coddled the boy curled up at her side with stories of their victories and the proud way they’d waved her banner through the city.
The topic she’d never meant to talk about ended up taking almost a full day in the telling. He was just a random youth she was seeing to the labyrinth city, and yet the more she shared her tale, and the more he drank up every word, the more she found herself wanting to say. The in-between years should have been no more than the blink of an eye to a Goddess… but the mortal realm was different, life here among them was different. After going so long barely so much as giving her own name outside Orario, it seemed that it’d all bottled up in inside and all came spilling out together.
And then, as the day turned to dusk, and as her tales began to peter off, Bell looked up towards her, his eyes full of wonder and his expression full of respect… and he asked what had happened? Why had she been out there, in some seaside town he’d already forgotten the name of, instead of with her children?
It was an incredible question, shockingly naïve and unworldly to the point it took her breath away. It was a question nobody would ever ask, except as an insult, because the answer was known in the asking. There was only one reason the successful Goddess of an upper-ranked familia would ever be outside Orario with no plans to return.
But Bell didn’t know. To him Orario was where the heroes and adventure lived, to him the darker side of the city was just part of a story, and the only real villains were the monsters lurking in the dungeon.
For a long moment she thought she would say nothing. For several minutes she thought she would scold him and teach him never to ask such things so bluntly.
But when she opened her mouth and when she began speaking, her voice was softer still and her story was one she had never before breathed a word of.
She told him about the destruction of her familia.
She told him about the true foes lurking in the darkness, of their traps and schemes, and the heartless, profitless, meaningless deaths of the children she’d cherished so much. She told him about a campaign waged in the shadows, of valiant warriors cut down without mercy and last wishes gone unfulfilled.
She told him how she’d lost almost everything she’d once cherished, how her beloved familia-home had become cold, and how in the end she had been forced to abandon her own ideals and flee the city under the cover of darkness- lest she lose the one last thing she still held dear.
As she finished, she looked to him again, and was surprised to see his head hanging low and wet tears spilling freely onto the wooden carriage below as his body shook with sobs.
She stared, taken aback, she hadn’t meant to scare him, or dissuade him from his dreams, not really… but such circumstances were the reality of life in Orario, it was something he needed to know about. If just this much was enough to shatter his illusions then it was better he stop now be-
And then his hand grabbed onto hers and his own words came out, in spluttered apologies and halting, earnest attempts at consolation.
He wasn’t crying from fear, it seemed, but from sympathy. For her, a Goddess he barely knew, who had a family she loved and who had it all ripped away from her. For her, who was left alone, just the same as him.
She sighed, brushing away her own wet eyes as she shook away his words.
Life and death was almost trivial for a Goddess, Mortals were wonderfully interesting, but their lives passed in no time at all. Looking down from the heavens, anytime you found one you liked enough to follow, if you looked away for just a moment, the chances were that by the time you turned back they’d already have passed on and were on their way to their next life.
But it was different in the mortal realm. It was different when they weren’t just distant mortals but her own children. It hurt more than anything when she felt her blessing disappear and when she’d felt so many disappearing at once it had been enough to send her to her knees. Elegia didn’t really exist outside Orario, but she’d still lit a candle each year that had passed.
It was coming into summer now, still a long way from the Heroes Remembrance but she passed that night in silence just the same, holding the hand of the young boy curled up against her as she drifted in memories never forgotten and he mourned a group of people he’d never even known.
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Entering Orario turned out to be less difficult than she’d imagined. Technically, there was all sorts of paperwork and Guild interviews a returning Goddess was supposed to fill out but, thankfully, the gate was manned by the Ganesha familia these days and one of their higher rankings had been on hand at the entrance she and Bell had wound up going through.
He didn’t remember her, but he knew enough to know of her. A quiet introduction and a short explanation had been enough to see him sigh and wave her quietly through after the bounding, excited youth she was escorting and back once more into the bustling, raucous streets of the famous labyrinth city.
It had been a long time.
No time at all for a Goddess, but an age for humans. That enough was more than clear. In just a few minutes she could see that the Orario she remembered was nowhere to be seen. Instead, everywhere she looked and in the faces of everyone she saw… she could see that the Labyrinth City was a far happier, kinder city than the one she had left.
No mortals could deceive the eyes of a Goddess and it took little time at all to spot traces of darkness and of sinister dealings still lingering in the distance… but they were in the distance, far from sight and quiet by necessity.
Bell walked ahead of her, practically bouncing on the spot as his head turned this way and that, his eyes full of wonder as he drank in every sight around, looking every bit the hayseed he was.
And as she followed, she found much of that same wonder growing in her chest, as well as a warm feeling that spread through her entire body.
Orario had become a city where children could smile.
…
Of course, it was still a city and not a utopia, and that meant that the first order of business was to make sure they actually had somewhere to stay. And so, shaking herself from her thoughts and yanking the young boy off from where he’d been looking to start racing towards the Guild HQ (without even a familia), she directed him away from the central district and out towards paths she’d followed so many times the footsteps were practically burned into her memory.
She laughed when she saw it.
The city had changed, but somehow, for some reason, this at least had stayed the same.
Even having offered the boy a place to stay in the city, she hadn’t truly expected that her old Familia house would still be standing. She’d steeled her heart to see it in ruins and planned to pay out the expenses for some cheap accommodation before he found some God to take him in.
But seemingly in defiance of any logic or anything she may have expected about Orario, it stood proud and tall just as she remembered. The familia logo was above the door was faded beyond the point of recognition, and the interior had deteriorated greatly in her absence. But it hadn’t been looted, hadn’t been torched and, with just a few hours spent dusting and tidying up, the two of them were able to make it not just liveable but comfortable.
Her room was the same as ever, the sheets were now worn with age and a musty smell had settled in that needed to be aired out, but otherwise it was exactly as she’d remembered it.
Looking through the house and settling himself in at his direction, Bell had read the names above each of the bedroom doors and then finally put himself down on the living room couch instead.
Of course.
Rolling her eyes, she’d picked up his stuff and -with some protests- shoved him into the room two doors down from her own.
He’d panicked at the thought, and then panicked again when she’d told him that a rather difficult young Elf had lived there once, and that she’d be very upset if he didn’t take exceptional care of it.
That at least was no worry at all. Rather than being lulled to sleep by the creak of wagon wheels, she was kept awake that night by the sound of a young adventurer-to-be frantically polishing old abandoned bedroom to a mirror shine.
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Life from there played out exactly as she expected.
That was to say, it played out exactly as she’d warned him.
Even without having to pay for accommodation, the boy’s funds were still dwindling fast.
In just the three weeks they’d been here, already he’d been scammed four times. Twice by people offering to help him with familia applications, once by someone bumping into him and claiming he’d broken a valuable vase, and one more time after he was convinced to make a donation to what had turned out to be a fraudulent charity. How someone with no income and little money could possibly think to give to charity, she had no idea. The boy was just far too obvious a mark. He needed friends, he desperately needed someone with at least some degree of street smarts that could keep people from taking advantage of him when she wasn’t around.
But more than that, he needed a familia.
Predictably, his first few days, going around applying to all the major familia’s had been a wasted effort. He’d been turned away at the door or given nothing more than a cursory interview time and again. The middle and lesser familias had been exactly the same story.
Some wanted specific races- more than once he’d been slumping away from a familia only to see the person who’d just rejected him warmly greet an Elf, or Dwarf, or Animal-Person that was applying right after him. Humans didn’t have it as badly as Prums, but they certainly weren’t the most desired race for an adventurer with nothing else to their name.
Some wanted specific professions- that at least was a simple concept. After having been turned down from one of the blacksmithing familia’s, he hadn’t gone anywhere near any of those again.
Nobody, it seemed, wanted a random country bumpkin with no skills, no abilities and absolutely no idea how exactly he was going to be of any use to them in the dungeon.
Thankfully, at least, he hadn’t managed to get himself entangled with any of the countless irresponsible or dangerous stray Gods roaming the city. As stubborn as he was, she’d at least managed to wrestle that promise out of him, that no matter how he applied, he wouldn’t accept any invitations to join a familia without consulting her first. One run in he’d already had with a God that’d offered to make him his “personal toy” had been enough to put some fear into the boy about that, and she didn’t think he’d approached any Gods directly after that.
But as the days passed and as the last of the funds he had left dwindled away, she watched solemnly as his hopes died and the light in his eyes slowly faded.
As the steps that had once taken him bounding around the city now left him trudging from door to door, already expecting the rejection before he even got it.
It was exactly as she’d warned him, exactly as she’d told him it would play out… but she took no joy in seeing it.
And there was a certain frustrated impotence in knowing there was little she could do to help him and no contacts left she could easily call on herself. Especially not when she herself travelled through the city wrapped in a cloak and did her best to prevent anyone from knowing she had returned. Ultimately, all of the familia’s she’d let herself hold some tiny hope she could direct him to had been as fruitless as the boy’s own explorations.
None of her closest former allies still remained in the city, having been forced out like her or sent back to Heaven in her absence. And of those that remained as any sort of power, none were particularly appealing prospects.
Loki wouldn’t have much interest in him, he wasn’t the kind of boy to catch her eye and there was nothing about him yet to impress her. The Goddess of mischief collected the beautiful, the strong and the interesting, and while Bell certainly had the ability to meet all three of those criteria, right now she doubted the red-head would so much as give him a second glance.
Ganesha’s familia seemed to have flourished in her time away, but as a result they weren’t accepting any new rookies. The Elephant God might be the man of the people, but having such a massive familia meant Bell had little hope of ever approaching him directly, and any other entreaties would be (and had been) turned away at the door. Once again, Bell’s lack of training or experience worked against him.
Apollo was rejected out of hand. Rather, she forbade Bell to so much as knock on his door. Ishtar was similarly dismissed, Bell was banned from even stepping near the Pleasure Quarter.
Freya… she considered the Valkyrie for a time, but in the end thought better of it. She didn’t know the Goddess of Beauty well enough to truly say she understood her tastes but Bell’s soul held a magnificent purity to it that she thought may possibly be of great interest to the voluptuous Goddess, there was a good chance that she may take a liking to the boy and then -rookie or not- he would certainly be very well looked after. As far as she knew, all of Freya’s familia appeared to be treated with at least some manner of kindly love and affection.
But somehow, it had seemed wrong. The thought of pushing someone as innocent and naïve towards Freya had seemed like leading a lamb to the lion’s den, and she couldn’t help but feel that- while it may satisfy his grandfather’s wish for him to “become a man”, Bell’s own dreams of being a hero would die as a result. Surely, she thought, a Hero needed to be far more than simply another toy in Freya’s collection. If anything, it should be the reverse, a Hero would make Freya his, rather than becoming hers. But that was an impossibly high-hurdle for the boy as he was right now, and maybe impossible at all (seeing as it had never been done), so she kept the very idea to himself. As it was, Bell had knocked on the door of Folkvangr and been immediately rejected by the guards so she’d left that matter at that.
Hermes, it seemed, was currently out of Orario on some task or another. She’d never held much hope that the messenger God would find any interest in this boy, he was a collector of the useful and the interesting, of which Bell was neither, but as flighty and as haphazard as he may have been, he was at least someone she knew took his responsibilities leading his Familia seriously. Or at least she had thought as much, but it was hard to hold that opinion when he wasn’t even in the city. His followers had rejected the boy just the same as anyone else and it had all become a moot point.
Her eyes caught on the fireplace and, not for the first time, she found herself wishing that Hestia was here. If there was anyone in the Heavens that would take up such a young, lost and hopeless little boy, it would surely be the soft-hearted Goddess of the Hearth. She had even gone so far as to raise an anonymous enquiry with the Guild… but it seemed the smaller Goddess still resided in the Heavens, or at least, if she had descended the Guild had no registry for her, so she didn’t reside in the Labyrinth city.
Another day turned to dusk, and once again she watched silently as the pitiful form of Bell Cranel slumped through her doorway. His back was arched, his shoulders low and none of the enthusiasm or joy he’d once radiated seemed to shine from him at all anymore.
It was exactly as he’d expected. A naïve and foolish country-boy, just another poor soul ground down under Orario’s reality.
But just because she’d expected it, didn’t mean she took any joy in seeing it. Even if he had no skills, no experience and no ability, Bell was still a kind boy with a righteous heart, he was still just a child looking so desperately for a place to belong. His soul shone as brilliantly as ever, but the light of it seemed to have diminished as his spirits had faded. Her heart ached and after a moment she turned her gaze away.
There was no help for it, and no help for him.
It had been exactly as she had foreseen, exactly as anyone could have guessed.
He would come to Orario, lose all his money on his hopeless dream and then, at last, perhaps he would heed her advice and leave the city to take up employment elsewhere. Or perhaps he would find some calling within the walls now that he was here. Maybe in a few years when he was older and wiser, if the same fire still burned within him, he could take up his adventure again, but this was the reality he faced.
The only part she played in it was to keep him from being entangled up in someone that would dye his dream and good intentions black. The only thing she could do for him was offer him some small comfort and a bed to at least spend his miserable nights in.
It was more than anyone else would have done, more than anyone else had done.
It was all too obvious. Anyone would have seen it. God, or Goddess, merchant, tailor, soldier or sailor, anyone in the world could tell you how the story of a naïve boy in the big city ended. All exactly as she had expected.
Except…
She stood up, turning away from the boy and busied herself around her house, walking through the now unaccustomed steps that had once been so familiar.
Except… Bell Cranel himself. He alone had exceeded her expectations.
After yet another day of trudging from end to end across the walled city, of answering flyers and being turned away from meetings… he would pick himself up off that couch, cook a meal with the ingredients they’d pooled their funds to provide, and plaster the same façade of a smile on his face as they ate together. He would tell her he hadn’t given up, he would tell her that he had some ideas for where to try tomorrow and marvel once again at how huge the city truly was.
And then he would do the same tomorrow.
And the next day.
And once again, he would completely ignore her advice and her guidance. Even when she gave up this farce and left the city, he would remain behind, trudging through Orario clinging to a dream even as it died in his hands.
She had come to understand just how stubborn this weak-looking young boy truly was.
He was foolish beyond words and hopeless beyond measure.
And the worst of all, is he would do all that, she believed now that he would see her to the gate and wave her off into the distance without once giving a single entreaty towards her.
In that more than anything, he had completely defied her expectations.
He was a boy looking for a place to belong, and she had given him a house. He was a boy looking for a family, and a Goddess greeted him morning he woke up.
And yet, he had never once asked her to take him on.
It was such a simple thought, it must have been an insidious one to someone as desperate as him. Providing her falna would be almost no consequence at all to her, and then he could dive into the dungeon, he would learn the skills he needed and then he would have no trouble at all in finding a God or Goddess to truly take him in. From his perspective, from looking at things selfishly, there must not be a single reason why she would refuse.
She had expected that he would start mentioning it as soon as the reality of just how out of reach his goal truly was began to set in, that he would begin pleading with her no more than a week after they arrived.
He was young after all, and impulsive to boot. And a dream was everything to mortals.
That had been entirely within her expectations. She had prepared her answers and her rejections since long before Babel had even come into sight.
But he hadn’t asked. And she now believed he never would.
He understood that a falna wasn’t just a gift from a Goddess, it was a family and he cherished that ideal more than anything.
She had told him clearly that her familia was gone and that she had no wish to restart it, not yet. And he had never once raised the topic.
He had never once so much as hinted at the idea. Even as he walked sullenly from rejection after rejection. Even as his bright young dream withered and died before his eyes, day after day. He had never once pushed his hopes onto her.
It was foolish beyond words, and only revealed again how hopelessly naïve he truly was. This wasn’t some storybook, this was reality, this was his life!
Men’s lives were already so short and their youth even shorter. There was no time at all for such pointless consideration and no excuse in the last for leaving even a single stone unturned, not for the sake of meagre concern! He should have ignored her instructions and taken up search in any familia or any district that would have him, but he respected her warnings and kept his sights from the darker places of Orario and the useless Gods that sought only entertainment. He should have given up on politeness and come to her on bended knee, entreating and pleading, or even bargaining for her to offer up her own blessing.
She would have hated to see such a pure soul enwrapped in the whims of a feckless God. And she would have turned down any request he’d made. But she had expected him to do so all the same! It was for his dream, she would have understood!
But he didn’t, he smiled that same façade of a smile, told her how excited he was to be in Orario, and trudged through the same heartbreak day after day.
And in the end, that kindness moved her heart more than any pleas ever could have.
Because she was the Goddess of the foolish and the hopeless. She was the one that looked after those that charged into the unknown night for the sake of another, or those that wore the worries of every else on their sleeves. She was the one that loved those that cared about what was right, even when it was as far as possible from what was easy.
And soon enough, without the boy doing a single thing, without him doing anything but being himself, she found that her mind had been changed.
She found herself walking, acting and holding herself in ways that she hadn’t in years. Rather than shuffling through a now unfamiliar house like a Goddess in Exile who was doing nothing more than delivering a stray young boy to his destiny, she strode through it with the confident steps of the Goddess of a Familia, supporting a child she believed in. Rather than simply coddling him as part of some whim or entertainment, she became truly closer to him- stricter and more insistent, but also full of more care.
Eventually she realised that rather than wishing him well when he left in the mornings, she had begun wanting to call him back, wanting to see this boy’s story for herself rather than entrust her to someone else.
It seemed in the end that she was less stubborn than he.
Her old outfit, the one she had worn in those days now passed, was still in her bags. And it still fit her just as perfectly as ever. Changing from her travelling clothes into robes adorned with her own symbol, with her own hopes and dreams, she knew there was no going back and no more wondering.
She called him into her room. And told him about her change, about the offer she was now reaching to him.
She held him as he sobbed, as he clung to her, shaking with relief, excitement and gratefulness.
And as she lay her falna across his back…
As she saw the Wings and the Sword unfurl across the boy’s skin…
She knew for sure that this too was Justice.
“Welcome to the Astrea Familia, Bell. This is your story now.”
End.
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