This is my entry for @Ryria's A Moment in Time contest
keep going keep moving keep
Joseph Marini blinked. The disorder of his surroundings had slowed in their momentum, present issues dimming in importance a second at a time. Time stretched. Screaming voices faded.
In front of him, nothing.
The first thing he had noticed was the sudden lack of pain. Wounds that had stung at the brush of his own clothes were nowhere to be found, his skin clean in its entirety. There was little to feel anywhere. No wind, no temperature, nothing. He hung in a space devoid of any sensation, his fingers unable to touch.
Ahead, a present darkness stretched into infinity. Each step took him a little further into nowhere. Colors formed in the corners of his vision, their illusion guiding his wandering eyes towards nonexistent surroundings.
As he continued onwards, the progression of the day began to reorder itself in the back of his mind. A standard affair, one quick to be forgotten by the time you reached the next. Friends came together to gather at the Nook for a comfortable, relaxed evening indoors. Simple conversation overall but certainly better than nothing. The ease of sharing a meal with others was all he needed to make a night special.
"Going somewhere?" called a voice, its echo spinning Joe back around. A bar drifted among the empty nightscape, the seats floating above a lack of ground. Together, it held a sense of familiarity, like it was something Joe hadn't seen in quite some time.
Behind the counter stood a man with the slightest grin on his face, hair slicked over and sleeves rolled back. He beamed with all the confidence he needed.
"Y'look like you're in quite the rush to nowhere," he said, the smile growing.
"I-" Joseph's words blanked, his thoughts coming before his speech. All around him, ideas raced. "What is this?" he asked, the sentence stumbling out.
"What does it look like? It's a drink between friends. Now c'mon, sit down."
The bartender waved Joe over, his back against a wooden wall covering a starless oblivion. He had glass in hand, a rag busy at work cleaning it.
Joe moved into his chair and rested his hands against the dusty platform. He offered one last look at the empty world as if a quick glance could somehow solve its mysteries.
"This the Void William? Has it finally come to collect me?"
William placed the mug on the island in the center of his workspace, the sound of the rubbing cloth finally ceasing. A silence rested in the air.
"Don't give me any talk like that, you know what this is just as much as I do."
keep moving keep
"Well, it's certainly not any tavern I know." Even in the face of the unknown, there was still room for humor. Joseph took another look around. He half-expected everything to fade away at any second, the scene gone as fast as it came. He wasn't much for dreaming and yet somehow everything felt more real than life itself.
"Not too sure about that lad, you used to love this place, didn't you?"
With the blink of an eye the setting shifted, the nothingness filling out its gaps with the rest of the building. Light began to flood in, the change so instant that Joseph had failed to register the difference.
"So what'll it be? Two whiskeys? Pretty sure that's what you ordered the first night if I'm sure. Might be wrong. Memory fails me now and again." William turned away from him without an answer. He had already seen all he needed in Joe's eyes. "Do you remember last time y'were here? What was that now, ten years ago? Time moves quick."
Joseph hadn't even begun to finish taking everything into account. Their little hut was simple yet cozy. Its atmosphere covered almost every inch of the place as a whole. Behind them, a setting sun was at odds with the candlelight, the dim glow adding some warmth to anything it could touch. Outside, gulls called out at an empty town, the sound of a washing sea breaking up the space between their cries.
"Something like that," Joseph said, questions still hanging in the back of his mind. "That was before you went back home, wasn't it? Before you went home for good."
"Couldn't keep my daughter waiting forever." William looked towards the tavern's window, the orange sky capturing him. "Not while she was alone out there at least."
"It was a good thing you did. Would've been selfish for me to keep you here."
"Nothing selfish to it. Y'didn't know if you were going to see me again." He began his work on the drinks, separating what he needed apart from the rest. "It's funny what y'said to me back then, all that stuff about happy endings. You think you reach forever and somehow it ends up just as small a part as the last one."
"Tell me about it." Joseph paused, following William's gaze to whatever he was staring at. "I think you always had the knack for adaptation though. All this shit would come your way and somehow I never saw it change you."
"After a while you learn to hide it well." He finished up the drinks and took one for his own hand, sliding the other across the counter. "T'Joseph Marini. A man I've missed."
Joe picked up his mug and smirked before raising. With a man like William it was easy to forget
that something is wrong
that there was ever anything to worry about. He sipped his drink, the alcohol lacking any real taste.
"Let this be a celebration," continued William, speaking between his own swigs. "A celebration to it all. To everything. Certainly been quite the life."
"Listen William, I…" Joe's words stopped once more. Somehow, he didn't even know where to begin. "It's good to see you again but-"
A distant cry broke out from behind him. He looked over his shoulder, his ears failing to pick up on what was said. It had sounded like his name.
"Why don't we go for a walk? C'mon, you worry too much. It'll help." William walked out from behind the counter and crossed the tavern, gesturing for Joseph to follow.
The scenery went quiet again. Joe couldn't help but hesitate. Pieces of the night were coming back to him, his mind filling in the gaps a moment at a time.
There had been a crash. Something had come through the window. It was one of those creatures that everybody always talked about. You called them Invisies. That's what they were. Invisies. Felt wrong to call them by their real name.
"You waiting for something? Not like there's much else around here." William's voice called Joseph back to reality. His tone kept the lighthearted honesty that had been there from the very beginning.
"Oh- Uh, sorry. Right." Joseph stood up, following him out the door.
The second they made it outside everything had changed once more. They were no longer at a bar, but rather an open field, the sun gone and the stars out. A widened tunnel burrowed into a hill, tall grass swaying in the wind before it.
"Remember when you took me here the first time? Had never seen somebody add so much mystery to something so simple. I knew the story word for word and there you were, a man barely out of his adolescence, feeding me tales of the ancients. Cracks me up just thinking about it."
That brought a smile to Joe's face. The questions from before vanished his mind, it was like they were never even there in the first place. If he couldn't ask them, there was no other choice but to roll with everything being presented to him. "What can I say," he said, "always had a knack for telling stories like that. Never got old."
"Thought we were going to die if I'm being honest. Second a pebble dropped down figured the whole thing would follow."
Joseph saw them now, the younger men climbing their way over the field. William was taking in the scenery on his own terms. Joe walked next to him with his eyes caught by the stars above, their brilliance free from any clouds.
"Those gems were some of the most stunning things I ever saw."
Another shift. They were underground now, their sky replaced by stone sparkling in the torchlight. The younger duo sat side-by-side, staring upwards.
"It's moments like these that made it worth it, wouldn't y'say?" William had his gaze fully on Joseph now, curious for his reaction. "The average man would give everything to get something like this and here you were with dozens of them right in your pocket. Let's walk a little further."
They made their way into the tunnel, an unknown force guiding Joseph forward. There was no thought to his progression. His mind wanted to see, and see it would.
"I'm surprised you kept this up as long as you did," continued William, waving a hand to the different scenes fading in and out of existence. "Lot of it was pure blind-luck."
"I'm the man who doesn't die, simple as that." Joseph's lightheartedness had started to fade despite his words. A sincere fascination eclipsed everything else.
He saw himself now, no more than seventeen, guiding different faces through ruins and corridors with a blindness that could barely be masked. William was right. There they went, setting off traps on a whim, death a few inches away. The groups varied in numbers. Most were strangers, some friends. Here and there was a lover. Out of all of them, he saw his cousin the most. The cast of characters for an unruly youth.
"You liked that one, didn't you?" said William, looking at one girl laughing louder than anybody else at Joseph's jokes.
"Didn't know what to think at the time I guess. She was gone before I could even say anything."
"Tends to be that way. There's some magic to that though, how quickly a feeling can come and go. To me, that's what being young is all about."
They carried forth.
"Things were simple back then," said Joseph, changing the subject as more events came back to memory. "Picked up adventure as it came along. Nothing much to it."
"You don't know much it hurts to hear y'say that. World was just as complicated back then as it is now. I think you knew. We all knew."
To the side came an impaired Joseph, a wounded soul unable to pull away from the ground, his legs everywhere they shouldn't be.
"We can skip this one," said William, not even stopping to observe.
They entered a dimly lit hall, torches placed evenly along the sides. Three people sat slouched against them, their hearts and minds exhausted both physically and mentally. Young Joseph on one side, a cousin on another. She sat next to a man they thought to be an enemy, a hand on his shoulder.
On one end, a Joseph held back his tears. On the other, his older-self began to feel them form.
"William- You know that-"
"Hey. It's alright. This is a happy memory. I think you forget that sometimes. It's a happy memory." William threw an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in tight. "Why don't we keep going? We don't have to do this right now."
From there, they walked arm-to-arm, leaving their linear passage behind for a wide-open city. "Everywhere you went you made friends. It's incredible really. I wish I could have done the same."
Joseph's mirror reflection was now with a group he had yet to see. They were sitting in a park by the lake, sarcastic comments flying at one another from all around. It was four twenty-somethings sharing an afternoon together. A joyful brown-haired Cielothar sat with Joe close by. To their side was a slightly sardonic Ailor and a recently cured Sanguine, a woman rowdier than the rest.
"I liked them," William said, crossing his arms. "There was a certain dynamic that gave a touch of fun to everything. Y'don't always find something like that every day."
Joseph could only offer a look of confusion. These were his memories, not William's. All of this had happened long after he was gone.
"I liked them too," said Joe, stepping forward. "But it's like you said. It's easy to assume something is forever."
"I think by now you knew." Upon that comment, the scene had gone back to the tunnel with the three sitting in desperation, if only for a moment. "It didn't matter with them though. They made you feel like there was nothing to worry about anymore."
"And yet I went right back to my old ways when they left."
"Any man would have done the same. Doesn't mean you didn't learn." William led Joseph forward. Each step changed the scene, images flashing by at the pace they walked.
Kids out by a river. Dances at a masquerade. Family dinners, nights spent by the fire, they all came and went with their stroll, progress turning them back into mere memories.
"Do you have a favorite moment? Something better than the rest?"
There they were in a field again, this time a lake in front rather than a cave. Joe was teaching the Cielothar how to swim. Laughter was being shared between them, their voices a force to be reckoned with.
"It's hard to say. This was nice though. I could call it a favorite." Despite the simplicity of his words, his heart was heavy.
And all at once, everything had started to flick by them without any care, the moments drifting through their heads like passing pages in a book.
First kisses. Drunken whimsy. A young man crying in his bedroom, arguments with the people he loved with punches that shouldn't have been thrown. They stood together on a dock, Joseph saying goodbye to a different face each time. He shook hands, gave out hugs, and shared a kiss on occasion. They were kisses more powerful than the others that had been seen only but a brief moment ago.
"Always thought this one was weird."
William's comment paused the increasing tempo of the shifts, locking them in place while Joe said goodbye to a man dressed in green. "He offered for you to go with him and yet you didn't. There was nobody left anymore, and you didn't."
Joseph thought for a moment.
"I guess I thought I'd be missing something in Regalia. A girl maybe. A friend who was still looking for me. I don't really know, it was-"
Each word made a new realization. Joseph paused. He was starting to figure out what this was all about.
"I stayed because I knew it wasn't over. Because there was still something for this city for me to offer."
"Even after it kept taking?"
"Well that's the thing wasn't it?" Joe turned to face William. "All my life I tried to control it. I tried to take charge, I tried to stay out of things, none of it worked. But that never meant it was over. I knew that."
Their world became recent. Joe was face-to-face with the most familiar version of himself, playing the lute with people he had only just gotten to know.
"If I left I would have never met them," he said, continuing. "And I know it's not forever. Maybe it won't last. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll be saying goodbye to them too, but damn it, it matters now, doesn't it?"
"Yet somehow you still find your mind locked on everything else."
Scenes began to repeat. First kisses. Drunken whimsy. Family dinners, nights spent by the fire.
"You can't just let go of-" Joseph grabbed his head, pain surging through him without any warning. He didn't know what to say anymore. Words failed him. He was remembering everything now.
"Y'talk about all this stuff y'learned and yet here you are, repeating the same troubles. It's easy, isn't it? To repeat it all?" William looked over to him, his eyes unblinking.
"Because you never-" Joseph staggered to the side, the headache growing. "You never learn anything once. You do it over and over again. Because-"
Joseph stood locked in a hug with his father, both crying harder than they ever had. They didn't want to break free from one another.
And then it was his cousin, same position, same emotion.
And then just like that, they were gone.
keep going keep moving keep going
"I know what this is," said Joseph. The tears were no longer coming from a far-away version of himself. They were his own.
"How did I let that happen?" he said, still trying to hold back despite the stream forming on his cheek. "Fuck William, it was so easy. None of that had to happen."
"That's a line of thinking that's going to get you nowhere. You told me earlier that I was the one always adapting, but you think I ever learned anything? You really think that I was doing myself a favor by letting all that sit on the side? Why do you think it took me so long to go find my own daughter? Why do you think we ordered the same drinks and talked about the same shit every night we spent in that tavern together? It was easy Joe. We both knew that."
A little Joseph walked along the river, guiding his younger cousin with a stick along the way. The memories merged together. As they continued along, the very same girl showed Joe a song on the piano, the chords nostalgic and full of life.
"Joseph. I could give you some bullshit about how they're all waiting for you, but we both know there's just as many people waiting for you over where you came from. If you can't be at peace back there what makes you think you're going to be at peace in here?" William pointed to the side, signifying some unknown land that they hadn't quite made it to far away from where they stood. "I didn't want to show you how good everything was. I wanted to show you how good everything could be. If there's one thing you should take away from this, it's that."
Together they sat at the tavern, whiskeys in their own separate hands.
Joe's chest had begun to ache at an instant. The skin burnt with the touch of sharp claws, blood making its way towards his waist. He threw his hands down, the mug dropping onto the ground. Alcohol spilled out onto the floor.
"Fuck- William-"
"Think about all the other people who'll be waiting for you when we drink again. Think about the person you're going to be Joseph."
The scenery started to collapse around them, the town returning to its original shade of black.
"Think about how next time you'll have those answers with you, you'll have gone through it all again with the knowledge you needed. And it's going to hurt. Never said it wouldn't. You'll wonder why you even try, you'll want to die, you'll want to die over and over, but that's the thing right? You told yourself you'd never end your life and you're going to stick by that. Isn't that true?"
"William- Something isn't-"
The tavern receded into the ground. The room emptied itself. There they stood together, two people among a blank background. Screams flew in from nowhere, their words garbled beyond comprehension.
"I want you to do it again. Do it again and again, over and over, because that's what it's going to take. Keep your chin up. Keep your head high. You always say that you're gonna stand tall and stand happy yet there you go bringing everybody down with you. It's not an empty world out there Joe. This is a life that isn't over. You have time. You have all the time you need."
William turned from Joseph, throwing his hands up into the air as he retreated into the darkness.
"But hey, what do I know? I'm just a barkeep."
He faded into the black, his body vanishing the farther he went.
"Hey- William- I don't- William! Fuckin'-"
Joseph's sight grew fuzzy, the blank vacuum shifted, impossible objects turning in the corner of his vision.
"William! Where d'ya' think-"
"Hey, it's okay, you're alright Joe, it's gonna be alright."
Joseph opened his eyes, the shreds of Regalia clear all around him. A woman was pulling him along the road, clenching her teeth with every tug she made.
He kept his mouth shut. Even with full awareness of his surroundings, he didn't know what to say.
Around him, screams rang across the streets. People scurried in different directions, rubble and glass beneath their feet. A sight more chaotic than anything they were ready for.
Despite it all, Joseph knew he was going to make it.
Had a lot of fun making this, I've never shared any recent writing on the forums before so it feels nice to finally put something out there. The topic for the contest was just something I love writing about. The best part about having the same character for so long is that you can easily fill the story up with events that actually happened.
A Bar Between It All
Ambiance:
Ambiance:
keep going keep moving keep
Joseph Marini blinked. The disorder of his surroundings had slowed in their momentum, present issues dimming in importance a second at a time. Time stretched. Screaming voices faded.
In front of him, nothing.
The first thing he had noticed was the sudden lack of pain. Wounds that had stung at the brush of his own clothes were nowhere to be found, his skin clean in its entirety. There was little to feel anywhere. No wind, no temperature, nothing. He hung in a space devoid of any sensation, his fingers unable to touch.
Ahead, a present darkness stretched into infinity. Each step took him a little further into nowhere. Colors formed in the corners of his vision, their illusion guiding his wandering eyes towards nonexistent surroundings.
As he continued onwards, the progression of the day began to reorder itself in the back of his mind. A standard affair, one quick to be forgotten by the time you reached the next. Friends came together to gather at the Nook for a comfortable, relaxed evening indoors. Simple conversation overall but certainly better than nothing. The ease of sharing a meal with others was all he needed to make a night special.
"Going somewhere?" called a voice, its echo spinning Joe back around. A bar drifted among the empty nightscape, the seats floating above a lack of ground. Together, it held a sense of familiarity, like it was something Joe hadn't seen in quite some time.
Behind the counter stood a man with the slightest grin on his face, hair slicked over and sleeves rolled back. He beamed with all the confidence he needed.
"Y'look like you're in quite the rush to nowhere," he said, the smile growing.
"I-" Joseph's words blanked, his thoughts coming before his speech. All around him, ideas raced. "What is this?" he asked, the sentence stumbling out.
"What does it look like? It's a drink between friends. Now c'mon, sit down."
The bartender waved Joe over, his back against a wooden wall covering a starless oblivion. He had glass in hand, a rag busy at work cleaning it.
Joe moved into his chair and rested his hands against the dusty platform. He offered one last look at the empty world as if a quick glance could somehow solve its mysteries.
"This the Void William? Has it finally come to collect me?"
William placed the mug on the island in the center of his workspace, the sound of the rubbing cloth finally ceasing. A silence rested in the air.
"Don't give me any talk like that, you know what this is just as much as I do."
keep moving keep
"Well, it's certainly not any tavern I know." Even in the face of the unknown, there was still room for humor. Joseph took another look around. He half-expected everything to fade away at any second, the scene gone as fast as it came. He wasn't much for dreaming and yet somehow everything felt more real than life itself.
"Not too sure about that lad, you used to love this place, didn't you?"
With the blink of an eye the setting shifted, the nothingness filling out its gaps with the rest of the building. Light began to flood in, the change so instant that Joseph had failed to register the difference.
"So what'll it be? Two whiskeys? Pretty sure that's what you ordered the first night if I'm sure. Might be wrong. Memory fails me now and again." William turned away from him without an answer. He had already seen all he needed in Joe's eyes. "Do you remember last time y'were here? What was that now, ten years ago? Time moves quick."
Joseph hadn't even begun to finish taking everything into account. Their little hut was simple yet cozy. Its atmosphere covered almost every inch of the place as a whole. Behind them, a setting sun was at odds with the candlelight, the dim glow adding some warmth to anything it could touch. Outside, gulls called out at an empty town, the sound of a washing sea breaking up the space between their cries.
"Something like that," Joseph said, questions still hanging in the back of his mind. "That was before you went back home, wasn't it? Before you went home for good."
"Couldn't keep my daughter waiting forever." William looked towards the tavern's window, the orange sky capturing him. "Not while she was alone out there at least."
"It was a good thing you did. Would've been selfish for me to keep you here."
"Nothing selfish to it. Y'didn't know if you were going to see me again." He began his work on the drinks, separating what he needed apart from the rest. "It's funny what y'said to me back then, all that stuff about happy endings. You think you reach forever and somehow it ends up just as small a part as the last one."
"Tell me about it." Joseph paused, following William's gaze to whatever he was staring at. "I think you always had the knack for adaptation though. All this shit would come your way and somehow I never saw it change you."
"After a while you learn to hide it well." He finished up the drinks and took one for his own hand, sliding the other across the counter. "T'Joseph Marini. A man I've missed."
Joe picked up his mug and smirked before raising. With a man like William it was easy to forget
that something is wrong
that there was ever anything to worry about. He sipped his drink, the alcohol lacking any real taste.
"Let this be a celebration," continued William, speaking between his own swigs. "A celebration to it all. To everything. Certainly been quite the life."
"Listen William, I…" Joe's words stopped once more. Somehow, he didn't even know where to begin. "It's good to see you again but-"
A distant cry broke out from behind him. He looked over his shoulder, his ears failing to pick up on what was said. It had sounded like his name.
"Why don't we go for a walk? C'mon, you worry too much. It'll help." William walked out from behind the counter and crossed the tavern, gesturing for Joseph to follow.
The scenery went quiet again. Joe couldn't help but hesitate. Pieces of the night were coming back to him, his mind filling in the gaps a moment at a time.
There had been a crash. Something had come through the window. It was one of those creatures that everybody always talked about. You called them Invisies. That's what they were. Invisies. Felt wrong to call them by their real name.
"You waiting for something? Not like there's much else around here." William's voice called Joseph back to reality. His tone kept the lighthearted honesty that had been there from the very beginning.
"Oh- Uh, sorry. Right." Joseph stood up, following him out the door.
The second they made it outside everything had changed once more. They were no longer at a bar, but rather an open field, the sun gone and the stars out. A widened tunnel burrowed into a hill, tall grass swaying in the wind before it.
"Remember when you took me here the first time? Had never seen somebody add so much mystery to something so simple. I knew the story word for word and there you were, a man barely out of his adolescence, feeding me tales of the ancients. Cracks me up just thinking about it."
That brought a smile to Joe's face. The questions from before vanished his mind, it was like they were never even there in the first place. If he couldn't ask them, there was no other choice but to roll with everything being presented to him. "What can I say," he said, "always had a knack for telling stories like that. Never got old."
"Thought we were going to die if I'm being honest. Second a pebble dropped down figured the whole thing would follow."
Joseph saw them now, the younger men climbing their way over the field. William was taking in the scenery on his own terms. Joe walked next to him with his eyes caught by the stars above, their brilliance free from any clouds.
"Those gems were some of the most stunning things I ever saw."
Another shift. They were underground now, their sky replaced by stone sparkling in the torchlight. The younger duo sat side-by-side, staring upwards.
"It's moments like these that made it worth it, wouldn't y'say?" William had his gaze fully on Joseph now, curious for his reaction. "The average man would give everything to get something like this and here you were with dozens of them right in your pocket. Let's walk a little further."
They made their way into the tunnel, an unknown force guiding Joseph forward. There was no thought to his progression. His mind wanted to see, and see it would.
"I'm surprised you kept this up as long as you did," continued William, waving a hand to the different scenes fading in and out of existence. "Lot of it was pure blind-luck."
"I'm the man who doesn't die, simple as that." Joseph's lightheartedness had started to fade despite his words. A sincere fascination eclipsed everything else.
He saw himself now, no more than seventeen, guiding different faces through ruins and corridors with a blindness that could barely be masked. William was right. There they went, setting off traps on a whim, death a few inches away. The groups varied in numbers. Most were strangers, some friends. Here and there was a lover. Out of all of them, he saw his cousin the most. The cast of characters for an unruly youth.
"You liked that one, didn't you?" said William, looking at one girl laughing louder than anybody else at Joseph's jokes.
"Didn't know what to think at the time I guess. She was gone before I could even say anything."
"Tends to be that way. There's some magic to that though, how quickly a feeling can come and go. To me, that's what being young is all about."
They carried forth.
"Things were simple back then," said Joseph, changing the subject as more events came back to memory. "Picked up adventure as it came along. Nothing much to it."
"You don't know much it hurts to hear y'say that. World was just as complicated back then as it is now. I think you knew. We all knew."
To the side came an impaired Joseph, a wounded soul unable to pull away from the ground, his legs everywhere they shouldn't be.
"We can skip this one," said William, not even stopping to observe.
They entered a dimly lit hall, torches placed evenly along the sides. Three people sat slouched against them, their hearts and minds exhausted both physically and mentally. Young Joseph on one side, a cousin on another. She sat next to a man they thought to be an enemy, a hand on his shoulder.
On one end, a Joseph held back his tears. On the other, his older-self began to feel them form.
"William- You know that-"
"Hey. It's alright. This is a happy memory. I think you forget that sometimes. It's a happy memory." William threw an arm around his shoulder, pulling him in tight. "Why don't we keep going? We don't have to do this right now."
From there, they walked arm-to-arm, leaving their linear passage behind for a wide-open city. "Everywhere you went you made friends. It's incredible really. I wish I could have done the same."
Joseph's mirror reflection was now with a group he had yet to see. They were sitting in a park by the lake, sarcastic comments flying at one another from all around. It was four twenty-somethings sharing an afternoon together. A joyful brown-haired Cielothar sat with Joe close by. To their side was a slightly sardonic Ailor and a recently cured Sanguine, a woman rowdier than the rest.
"I liked them," William said, crossing his arms. "There was a certain dynamic that gave a touch of fun to everything. Y'don't always find something like that every day."
Joseph could only offer a look of confusion. These were his memories, not William's. All of this had happened long after he was gone.
"I liked them too," said Joe, stepping forward. "But it's like you said. It's easy to assume something is forever."
"I think by now you knew." Upon that comment, the scene had gone back to the tunnel with the three sitting in desperation, if only for a moment. "It didn't matter with them though. They made you feel like there was nothing to worry about anymore."
"And yet I went right back to my old ways when they left."
"Any man would have done the same. Doesn't mean you didn't learn." William led Joseph forward. Each step changed the scene, images flashing by at the pace they walked.
Kids out by a river. Dances at a masquerade. Family dinners, nights spent by the fire, they all came and went with their stroll, progress turning them back into mere memories.
"Do you have a favorite moment? Something better than the rest?"
There they were in a field again, this time a lake in front rather than a cave. Joe was teaching the Cielothar how to swim. Laughter was being shared between them, their voices a force to be reckoned with.
"It's hard to say. This was nice though. I could call it a favorite." Despite the simplicity of his words, his heart was heavy.
And all at once, everything had started to flick by them without any care, the moments drifting through their heads like passing pages in a book.
First kisses. Drunken whimsy. A young man crying in his bedroom, arguments with the people he loved with punches that shouldn't have been thrown. They stood together on a dock, Joseph saying goodbye to a different face each time. He shook hands, gave out hugs, and shared a kiss on occasion. They were kisses more powerful than the others that had been seen only but a brief moment ago.
"Always thought this one was weird."
William's comment paused the increasing tempo of the shifts, locking them in place while Joe said goodbye to a man dressed in green. "He offered for you to go with him and yet you didn't. There was nobody left anymore, and you didn't."
Joseph thought for a moment.
"I guess I thought I'd be missing something in Regalia. A girl maybe. A friend who was still looking for me. I don't really know, it was-"
Each word made a new realization. Joseph paused. He was starting to figure out what this was all about.
"I stayed because I knew it wasn't over. Because there was still something for this city for me to offer."
"Even after it kept taking?"
"Well that's the thing wasn't it?" Joe turned to face William. "All my life I tried to control it. I tried to take charge, I tried to stay out of things, none of it worked. But that never meant it was over. I knew that."
Their world became recent. Joe was face-to-face with the most familiar version of himself, playing the lute with people he had only just gotten to know.
"If I left I would have never met them," he said, continuing. "And I know it's not forever. Maybe it won't last. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll be saying goodbye to them too, but damn it, it matters now, doesn't it?"
"Yet somehow you still find your mind locked on everything else."
Scenes began to repeat. First kisses. Drunken whimsy. Family dinners, nights spent by the fire.
"You can't just let go of-" Joseph grabbed his head, pain surging through him without any warning. He didn't know what to say anymore. Words failed him. He was remembering everything now.
"Y'talk about all this stuff y'learned and yet here you are, repeating the same troubles. It's easy, isn't it? To repeat it all?" William looked over to him, his eyes unblinking.
"Because you never-" Joseph staggered to the side, the headache growing. "You never learn anything once. You do it over and over again. Because-"
Joseph stood locked in a hug with his father, both crying harder than they ever had. They didn't want to break free from one another.
And then it was his cousin, same position, same emotion.
And then just like that, they were gone.
keep going keep moving keep going
"I know what this is," said Joseph. The tears were no longer coming from a far-away version of himself. They were his own.
"How did I let that happen?" he said, still trying to hold back despite the stream forming on his cheek. "Fuck William, it was so easy. None of that had to happen."
"That's a line of thinking that's going to get you nowhere. You told me earlier that I was the one always adapting, but you think I ever learned anything? You really think that I was doing myself a favor by letting all that sit on the side? Why do you think it took me so long to go find my own daughter? Why do you think we ordered the same drinks and talked about the same shit every night we spent in that tavern together? It was easy Joe. We both knew that."
A little Joseph walked along the river, guiding his younger cousin with a stick along the way. The memories merged together. As they continued along, the very same girl showed Joe a song on the piano, the chords nostalgic and full of life.
"Joseph. I could give you some bullshit about how they're all waiting for you, but we both know there's just as many people waiting for you over where you came from. If you can't be at peace back there what makes you think you're going to be at peace in here?" William pointed to the side, signifying some unknown land that they hadn't quite made it to far away from where they stood. "I didn't want to show you how good everything was. I wanted to show you how good everything could be. If there's one thing you should take away from this, it's that."
Together they sat at the tavern, whiskeys in their own separate hands.
Joe's chest had begun to ache at an instant. The skin burnt with the touch of sharp claws, blood making its way towards his waist. He threw his hands down, the mug dropping onto the ground. Alcohol spilled out onto the floor.
"Fuck- William-"
"Think about all the other people who'll be waiting for you when we drink again. Think about the person you're going to be Joseph."
The scenery started to collapse around them, the town returning to its original shade of black.
"Think about how next time you'll have those answers with you, you'll have gone through it all again with the knowledge you needed. And it's going to hurt. Never said it wouldn't. You'll wonder why you even try, you'll want to die, you'll want to die over and over, but that's the thing right? You told yourself you'd never end your life and you're going to stick by that. Isn't that true?"
"William- Something isn't-"
The tavern receded into the ground. The room emptied itself. There they stood together, two people among a blank background. Screams flew in from nowhere, their words garbled beyond comprehension.
"I want you to do it again. Do it again and again, over and over, because that's what it's going to take. Keep your chin up. Keep your head high. You always say that you're gonna stand tall and stand happy yet there you go bringing everybody down with you. It's not an empty world out there Joe. This is a life that isn't over. You have time. You have all the time you need."
William turned from Joseph, throwing his hands up into the air as he retreated into the darkness.
"But hey, what do I know? I'm just a barkeep."
He faded into the black, his body vanishing the farther he went.
"Hey- William- I don't- William! Fuckin'-"
Joseph's sight grew fuzzy, the blank vacuum shifted, impossible objects turning in the corner of his vision.
"William! Where d'ya' think-"
"Hey, it's okay, you're alright Joe, it's gonna be alright."
Joseph opened his eyes, the shreds of Regalia clear all around him. A woman was pulling him along the road, clenching her teeth with every tug she made.
He kept his mouth shut. Even with full awareness of his surroundings, he didn't know what to say.
Around him, screams rang across the streets. People scurried in different directions, rubble and glass beneath their feet. A sight more chaotic than anything they were ready for.
Despite it all, Joseph knew he was going to make it.
Had a lot of fun making this, I've never shared any recent writing on the forums before so it feels nice to finally put something out there. The topic for the contest was just something I love writing about. The best part about having the same character for so long is that you can easily fill the story up with events that actually happened.
Last edited:
