朝視～2017年12月24日 昼3時ごろ（日曜日）

[Асако]

　A butterfly appeared flattering under the young but terribly gnarled tree, her fragile wings sending as if reflected worm sunrays all around. In a blink though there was no butterfly anymore, a girl in a light blue long dress was sitting on the gentle grass leaning her back on the tree. Her face was said but calm. She was looking at the flowing in the distance river.
　Again Tomomi was here. She liked it here. She liked the silence and the solitude but at the same time she wasn’t alone, she was with Nathan and Gabriel and that she appreciated most of all.
　She knew that they live still. Nathan being the tree supporting her back, Gabriel… perhaps in that gentle beautiful grass covering the slope, or perhaps in Nathan, who undoubtedly found him in the Essence and united with him.
　She also knew that she was not the only one who knew they are living. Celia comes here to Nathan and reads to him, now opting mostly for poetry. She wouldn’t have done that if she thought that no one would listen.
　

* * *

Celia and Nathan have both changed dramatically during that several years since they met. Nathan – first being a kindhearted boy, despised and hated and oppressed for who he is, and for who his father is. Surrounded with three close people who loved him and supported him, he didn’t grow up unaware of love, he felt it and he learnt to give it and to give it back. And he grew strong-minded and cautious, weighing every word he said, even back at home for you never know whether there might be Jessica. Then he grew and fell in love and was kind and gentle and shy and decent… A never reading boy, a boy who hardly has any nice communicative experience outside family and even family is not that much safe… He could be a bully, he could obsessed with lust, but he is trusts that he is not that whatever people may think, he is what he is, not worse than others for his background. And he protects his Self being silent, being true to his love and trust in his father who he has never seen and who it was so easy to abhor. Nathan was a boy, who learnt not from books and little from other people, but mostly from nature and his senses, and the few people who he knew he could trust.
　But the world stood up against him. They took him away, put in a cage, and beat, and openly despised, and treated like scum, and shackled him up and collared him and gave him no chance of escape. They tortured him and battered and trained against his father, and never let him met with dear people – even thinking of that was out of the question.
　And the person who did all that to him was Celia, a former Hunter. She was taking revenge on his father who has killed her sister. As she said she’d like him to know that his son was not being treated well. She volunteered for the job of his “teacher and guardian” and did her duty with all earnest and responsibility. Getting her own back on 　Nathan’s father through tormenting his son who did nothing wrong, as Nathan once argued.
　Gabriel noticed one day that people change. And Celia slowly but surely was changing her attitude to Nathan in the two years they spent together. In the beginning she saw only a son of the devil, murderer, of the Black Witch with the filthiest heart ever. But gradually she started to make out through her blinding grief Nathan himself, she started taking him as an individual. And thus she wasn’t so entirely inhuman towards him. She was gentle at times when she treated his wounds after a futile attempt of an escape, she didn’t put on shackles so often… Tomomi felt tears coming up to her eyes. How desperate and miserable and lonely should a person be to see anything kind in these… In the end, Celia chose to tell him about his Gran’s death. And she was genuinely worried about him when he was suddenly taken away from her, she tried to protect him…
　
　Freedom. That was all Nathan wanted. Freedom and peaceful life with no Hunters, with no torture, in the nature, in its calm. He didn’t want to kill, all his heart was against it. He didn’t wish death to even his death enemies. He couldn’t hate even Celia.
　He managed to escape from prison. He had to learn to survive on his own, though he didn’t become any more free than he had been. He was still wanted, still hunted. He had to learn to be even more careful, he had to learn to steal – and even at that he showed consideration for others and mercy, never stealing from those obviously in need, never beating unless that was unavoidable.
　He met people and started to know more about the witch world. He met nice people willing to help, in their way supportive. That helped, that gave hope. Him being a danger to everyone who risk coming close, being treated nicely, being helped, supported.
　But his birthday drew near, and he was in death urgency to make sure he’d have his three Gifts. And so he came to Geneva and met the guy who would first win his trust, then his friendship, then fall under ungrounded suspicion, then secure the greater and greater part of his heart, then wins his smile, his feeling happy with him and finally his love, utmost love that unites them even in a different form. Even after death. What is death after all? Merging with the Essence? Then shall it be called death, or rather another form of existence, which may be more precise?
You’re one now, together in the peace of nature.

　Gabriel died when he was only nineteen.
　Tomomi looked at the starting to go down sun. Back in her world it is Christmas. They say, people who die or are born at Christmas are very kind. That is supposed to mean that after the former go, they are well. And it was sunny weather back both yesterday and today, and it’s sunny and worm here. Nathan went after Gabriel and it happened before Christmas too, on the same day in Tomomi’s world, and the sun shone on her tears, and the two are happy now living.
　And Celia is here. She took the responsibility of the whole war. How must she have felt about the regime that she, a practical woman and a trained soldier, should have chosen to turn against it? She was enraged with Marcus killing her sister, but Soul did worse. Not only her close people did he murdered, but all people who he pleased, most who did no wrong whatsoever. It was just mass slaughter and he was in the lead. May it be that Celia felt responsible? As she said once she became a Hunter to protect White Witches… And she was going to return to her duty as the duty called for her.
　Tomomi gave a glance at the log cabin at some distance under the hill, brightly lit in the setting sun. She saw Celia as an honest woman who was trained to be harsh and hard and who got used to see atrocities and to return them to those who caused them. And sure she was repenting her harshness to Nathan for she learnt from him that making him pay for his father’s deed was utterly wrong.
　Celia spoke business and did business. She won respect and her authority wasn’t ever questioned. Even Marcus followed her directions when he considered them right with him, and surprisingly, that was most of the time. I wonder what Marcus felt towards Celia working with the woman, who had been torturing his son for two long years, who made his son want to kill himself. Did he temporally make a concession till the war is over? Most possible. He hardly forgave.
　And Celia played an enormous role in restoring order in the aftermath of the won war. One might remember thousands of cases when people grew enchanted with power and lost their aim, becoming in no time the same tyrants as those who they have overpowered. But Celia proved not to be interested in power. She was interested in her work, in restoring or rather creating peace and even more – reliable, fair and responsible government. And then she returned to the boy who she had grown to be close to, not like a son, not like a family, but probably indeed as a teacher and guardian. Feeling responsible for him. And the boy was then even more alone than ever before.
　But he found the way to the Essence. And he is not lost, but is found. Although horribly wounded. And he is never alone any more. They are finally together.
　
　But why does it still feel so sad? Why does it still bring tears to my eyes?
　Tomomi was watching stars appear in the clear sky, leaves of the tree she was leaning on quietly rustled and the grass felt warm.

　Just as when he was a child – he was learning from nature then, and he was learning from it now and learnt it inside him, and that’s how he has found his way…

@темы: книги, фэнтези, дневник, путешествия, Tomomi's story, Half Code, Half Lost