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062. Hope

"What's that?"

"Oh, this?" Yeul held up the single flower for me to see clearly, never taking her eyes from the delicate white petals. "It's a flower I found over the hills to the North. I'm not sure what it is. But it feels kinda familiar."

She spun it between her fingers, fat green stalk leaving a faint trace between her thumb and forefinger, the petals gleaming with still-wet dew in the morning sunshine.

"Didn't Caius know what it was?"

Yeul frowned. "I think he might've. His face changed - you know in that way it does? - when I showed it to him."

"Oh, you mean that kind of constipated look he has sometimes?"

Yeul giggled a little. "Yeah, that one."

"Then I guess he must've been lying."

She humphed, and turned her gaze to me, finally. "He treats me like I'm a child too much! I'm sixteen now, that makes me a grown-up!"

I couldn't help but chuckle at her. "Yeah, and what does that make me?"

"Oh, ancient. As ancient as my third eye." She stuck her tongue out, playfully, and dropped her hands to rest on her knees, the flower resting between them.

"Yeah. I guess those two years really aged me hard."

"Of course. You're practically dead."

"Hey now! Anyone would think you'd want me gone!"

"I mean not right now, but maybe by the end of the day!"

"Such a rude little girl—"

"—high-seeress!"

"A fancy title won't save you from my terrible cooking" I warned, with a smile that belay my mirth.

"That's okay, I saw you give yourself food poisoning once. I know it'll all even out in the end." And she grinned, like the girl she truly was at heart, at the prospect that at some point, I'd eventually embarrass myself.

"I'm so glad to know I've got your support at all times."

"You're welcome," she said, and grinned up at me with a broad smile and eyes shut in jest and the sun shining over the two of us, warming me deep into my very soul.

I wanted it to be like that forever. Just the two of us, sitting under the beaming sun, warm and happy and content. It was my hope against hope as wide and far as I travelled with Serah. Like the emblem I held in my heart to warm me beneath freezing nights beneath the stars, or when Serah was reunited with the one she loved and I was left to watch, or when I lay in bed at night in Academia, thinking about the burning passion in Hope's heart.

Yeul, and the joy she brought into my life. The hope that she allowed me to have. Even though there was nothing to hope for.

Yeul was dead. She was not coming back. All I could do was try and ease the suffering for other Yeuls… and if I was good enough under the eyes of Etro, she might grant me my Yeul back.

So I remembered what it felt like that sunny morning, the day before she died, and held it as a mantle of hope against the dark void of life I had left to look forward to. Even if it was futile, even if it never came true, this hope that haunted me at night was all I had to light the way forward.

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