act22side

I suppose it's easier to run with fewer of us, haha...

...Please check for me—if there's any more clean gauze in the box.

*sigh*. Okay...

Here.

I'll remove the gauze on your wound now. This will hurt...

Unf...

Hey... Fionn, not so afraid of blood no more?

Huh? O-Oh, no, yeah... I've seen so much blood lately. Pointless being scared any more.

Say. Reed... Is Bagpipe really just going now? Aren't you two friends?

Perhaps, come a day we will be, but not for now.

...*sigh*. I suppose.

I was just thinking, I know we were bound to go our separate ways, but you should've had a proper goodbye with them.

Everyone... should have a proper goodbye.

—Hey, it's Moran!

They see Moran, eyes grasping on the faint light of daybreak, limping in their direction.

Held tight in her grip is a broken sword, and a blood-soaked bandana.

Is that... Selmon's?

Moran, what... happened to her?

(Shakes head in silence)

I'm sorry. I know—you can't have seen.

Far away in the woods, remnant fumes from the flames of war still rise gently for the sky.

All those who did not come back now lay in the woods, just as Selmon does. No one in time to see them, in their final moments.

The survivors stare in silence at the drifting smoke.

They all just—don't know... which way to go.

In the Scáthanna Fields, in Hillock, in Oak Grove...

She has seen fire, great and profuse. Be it anywhere, there are those who scheme of war and disaster, vying for power and prestige.

She has seen the ordinary soul struggling amidst it all, only to die without rhyme or reason.

She raises her hand, and from a Draco's flame, a faintest flower is born.

The feel of holding a flame still makes her tremble, pains her insides to no end, but no more does she shut her eyes.

For all those... who pull themselves up from this land of mud.

And the flower floats down, and sinks into the wetlands, there to wither without a sound in the mire.