Lore:Memoirs

Memoirs is a one-shot, canon story in the Clouded Horizons series' Eighth Realm. The story takes place at an undetermined time after the events in Dimensional Legend, and features Liam Bayloh as he muses over the life he had with his wife, Yuna. It is written by Daniel Rydell.

Story

He had known that this day would come for close to seventy-eight years.

Of course, she was to die. This wasn’t something that he had ever doubted; even though he’d considered her an angel sent to love and protect him as much as he loved and protected her. But the simple fact of the matter was that he was a Vayash Moru, and she was simply a Hume, a mortal being that had loved and left him. He wasn’t upset by this, though. She had lived a long and healthy life. She’d just left him so suddenly…

“It’s just like you, you know. Flitting away like the wind, or the daisies of spring, or the children of fall,” he commented quietly, sitting a few feet away from the headstone that marked her final resting place. Despite his sorrow, he knew she’d love to partake in just tiny bit of his humor if she had been there, just as he would have loved to give some droll morsel or humorous anecdote to her.

“I suppose I’d like to ask you if life was everything you hoped it could be. But, you died with a smile, so I know that answers my question.”

He looked to the ground that held his beloved, and he put his hand to it. “I don’t have any regrets about the time that I spent with you. You made me blithe in spirit, but it seems as though you tried to help everyone feel happiness. You removed my self-loathing and doubt… I would never be who I am today if it wasn’t for you.”

He closed his eyes, allowing himself to believe for a moment that she was sitting there next to him. He didn’t think she was, of course, but the imaginings of a three-hundred year old being were excusable, if only because he was lonely.

Light footfalls alerted him that he was no longer alone; a couple walking by to pay their respects to someone else that had departed. He was crying, while the woman comforted him. He watched the two pass, but couldn’t help but allow a bittersweet smile to come to his lips. “Y’see what you left behind, love? This world is one that breeds life and death and the endless cycle of the two.”

His opened eyes took in the world around him, before he started to speak again.

“But it’s the world that brought you to me, so I’m not sure I can be too bothered about it,” he began, before chuckling. “You’d tell me I sound my age right now, wouldn’t you, beloved? You’d be right, but we three hundred twenty-eight year olds aren’t allowed too many vices, so I hope you’ll let me have this one.”

As if supine in their living room, he moved to lie on his side, resting his head on his palm. “I learned to appreciate because of you, and I hope to teach others to appreciate in honor of you. I hope you’ll bless me as I’m still not the best at this.”

He breathed in the fresh aroma of lilies and spring-fresh air and it reminded him of their younger days, lying in a field far from here, yet far too similar. He remembered picnics and long walks and late nights as he worked on paperwork and she puzzled out crosswords. He recollected long drives all around the world and recalled conversations leading into the veiled tones of early sunrise.

He remembered their first time, the passion that passed between them; the huskily whispered words of lust and love entering his mind as if they were said but a moment ago and not in years upon years passed. He could enumerate each promise they’d made and could detail the exact tone and inclination of the covenant they’d sworn to each other so long ago to love and respect.

“I’m sorry I didn’t grow old with you, because it’s going to be rough to keep going without you, but I will because I have the memories of everything of you, my own personal anamnesis. I’ll keep these with me forever… but you’ve got to do something for me. I know it’s greedy, love, when you gave me an entire lifetime of experiences and happenstances with you. Consider this my final request to you; you’ve already done so much for me that I’ve no right to ask you further than this.”

He pushed himself upright, looking over the tiny plot of land; a sepulcher that held his dearest.

“Wait for me. You deserve utmost felicity, but without you with me, paradise simply isn’t.”

His eyes shuttered briefly before he opened them once more. “Don’t forget that you are everything to me, and that I adore you, my love.”

He stood to his full height, and turned. “See you soon, Yuna.”