"I didn't understand how it was possible," his mother continued. "Can a soul really get a body just like that? I wondered about it for a long time, but in the moment, I honestly didn't care. You were alive, you were breathing, you were there. That was all that mattered."
On the shore, I held you against me, laughing, my eyes full of tears.
You were soaked, chilled by the lake water, and yet I could feel the warmth of your body against mine.
I ran my hand through your white hair, flattened by the water, then down your back, then across your face, just for the pleasure of touching something that didn't slip through my fingers. For all those years, I had carried you, rocked you, caught you, but it had never gone further than the illusion of contact.
"Can I touch him?" I said, laughing, my voice trembling. "Can I really touch him? By Chaos, how is this miracle even possible? Do you see this, Rysrys? I can touch you."
Like my fright from earlier, my ecstasy also pierced the silence of that desolate land.
So much so that it was only when I set you down on my lap that I noticed something was wrong.
Your head was thrown back, your eyes closed, your mouth slightly open. You were breathing, I could feel it against my palm, but your breathing was slow, too regular. I called you by your name several times, softly at first, the way you wake someone who's sleeping.
"Rysrys? Rysrys, what's wrong? Wake up, please, my little heart."
You didn't react. I raised my voice. I patted your cheeks, rubbed your arms to warm you, and I started talking to you about anything and everything that came to mind, the lake, the people I had seen from the surface, the story you had asked me for the day before, hoping the sound of my voice would be enough to bring you back. You didn't move.
I shook you. Gently at first, then hard enough that your head rolled against my shoulder. I stopped, horrified, and pulled you against me again.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you. Rysrys, I'm begging you, say something. Anything."
Nothing. Not a flutter of the eyelids, not a finger moving.
It's true that you rarely cried and laughed even more rarely, but even so, you should at least have grimaced, groaned, done something.
Did the water do something else to him? Did I pull him out too late? Did I hold him too tight? Not enough? Should I have put him down? Or held him more firmly?
The questions crowded my head and none of them had an answer.
"What have I done?" I murmured. "What have I done..."
I had never been so afraid in my life. No, actually, I had never been afraid in my life before that moment.
I stayed like that for a long time, holding you without knowing what to do. Then, little by little, the panic left me enough room to truly realize what was happening.
"This... this is impossible."
Since I am the lake itself, I can feel its magical energy, because, well, it's mine.
But when someone ingests the lake's magical energy, it turns into theirs and I lose contact with it.
This time, though, I could feel the magical energy inside you. It covered your entire soul and had made you solid, but it hadn't become your magical energy, so your soul was fighting the lake's magical energy and vice versa.
I understood what was at stake. The body would belong to whoever gained the upper hand. If the magic won, your soul would dissolve and you would become a part of the lake, like any other drop. Your body would also have returned to its initial appearance and turned back into lake water.
If I'm here, then I won. Did I really beat the lake, or was it whatever reincarnated me here that helped me take control?
I tried to intervene. I tried to separate the magical energy that was clinging and condensing around you from your soul.
"Come on, get out! Out! I won't lose my son over a stupid mistake like this."
But I quickly understood it wasn't going to be possible. Your body started trembling, your heart raced so fast I felt every beat against my ribs, and I stopped everything immediately.
"What am I going to do? What am I going to do?"
It was my own magic that was causing your downfall, and I had no way of stopping it.
All I could do was stay there, watch you, and pray. I had never prayed in my life, even though I knew perfectly well who had created me. But that day I discovered in myself a new talent for begging a higher being.
Oh, interesting. Is she talking about the being I glimpsed back then? thought Emrys.
"I'll do whatever you want. I'll stay locked in here until the end of the world if that's the price, but let him wake up. Let him win."
I repeated it until the words no longer meant anything.
Unfortunately, no one answered me. Still, even before I started I knew no one would answer, but I had to try anyway.
It's getting even more interesting. What happened to that creator, for them not to answer?
Emrys had listened without moving, his mother's hand in his. Thanks to his Haki, he felt her emotions fluctuate at a speed he had rarely observed in anyone.
Fear, guilt, hope, then fear again.
She wasn't just telling the story, she was reliving every moment as if it were the first time.
He then felt water fall onto his hand. And he heard what sounded like drops of water falling into the water. There was no doubt about what was happening: his mother was crying, and it seemed she hadn't realized it yet.
His throat tightened at the thought of all the worry and pain he had put her through during those times.
He put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him without protest.
"I'm sorry you had to go through all that alone."
She finally realized she was crying.
"Sorry." She wiped her face with a quick gesture, surprised to find it wet. "I didn't notice it was coming out."
"You're allowed."
She rested her head against him and went on in a calmer voice.
It lasted several months.
I never left you. I had set you down in the farthest place from the lake that I could reach, and I stayed sitting beside you, never moving more than a few steps away.
I watched your motionless face until I knew every feature by heart. Some days, your body would start trembling and I would lean over you, convinced it was the end.
Other days, everything stayed so calm that I was afraid it was even worse. I learned to watch for the slightest sign, a finger twitching, a breath deeper than the others, and to cling to each one like a promise.
I talked to you, like I had always done.
"It snowed outside today. You would have liked to see that, you always asked me what it was like, snow. A man walked by the lake with a completely white horse, he looked lost."
I told you what I saw on the other side of the surface, what I had seen during the day, what I was thinking. I didn't know whether you could hear me. I told myself it couldn't do any harm.
Outside, the seasons changed. Things happened, some ordinary, others stranger, but for the first time in my long existence, what was happening in the world mattered less to me than what was happening a few steps away.
And then one day, without warning, I felt the fight stop.
The magic that occupied your body had stopped struggling. It no longer rejected you, no longer choked you. And suddenly I stopped feeling the lake's magical energy as being mine.
Strangely, I still felt a link with it, but in a more distinct way than when it was simply my magical energy.
In the moment, however, I had neither the intention nor the desire to pay attention to that detail.
I spun around. You had taken total control. I knew it before I even touched you: you were completely tangible, from head to toe, and your chest was rising and falling at a calm rhythm.
I took you in my arms and started crying without restraint. I touched your face, your hands, your hair, to make sure everything was really there, that nothing would vanish under my fingers.
"He won," I whispered. "He really won. My little heart, can you hear me? You won."
I felt your heart beating against mine. I no longer know how long I laughed and cried at the same time. There are no words for what I felt. I had never known anything that came close.
You finally opened your steel eyes.
You looked exhausted, like someone coming back from a very long journey. You didn't even have the strength to speak. You looked at me, a little lost, and I smiled at you with my whole face, because you were there and that was all I wanted.
"I have never been so happy as I was that day," she said.
Emrys felt a wave of warmth rise in his chest before realizing it didn't come from him.
It was his mother's joy, the memory of that joy, so strong it ran through him like a current.
But she squeezed his fingers tighter, and he felt something else slip in beneath it, something heavier and more bitter.
"But it's also the day I made the hardest choice of my life. But before I talk about that, there was an event that nearly finished me."
Just as I was rejoicing in what was happening, you suddenly began to dissipate into pure magical energy.
"NOOOO!"
The panic that had left me came back worse than ever. I thought I had been mistaken and that the lake had won after all.
That day I screamed with all my soul in grief. Then I realized other things right afterward.
I was still holding your soul in my hands and I could still feel your magical energy inside you.
"Is he sleeping?"
I know now that it wasn't exactly that, but back then I had never seen you in that state and I put it down to sleep.
"It doesn't matter. As long as he's all right, that's the main thing."
The relief I felt was indescribable. But I couldn't help being a little angry.
"What's your problem, always worrying me like this?"
I held you against me for hours, thinking about what I should do.
Even if you had managed to keep your soul this time, it had only been against a tiny part of the lake. If you were to fall into the lake again, I had no idea what could happen to you.
And above all I understood the reason you had gone into the lake. I couldn't give you everything you needed, and I had known it for a long time.
Once I had told you that people usually swim in lakes. At the time I said it without thinking, and I never imagined it would make you so curious.
And in the end your curiosity pushed you to do it.
I could make you survive, but I couldn't make you live. For that, you needed to discover the world, to experience things, to meet people. So many things I couldn't give you.
So I decided to send you away.
I didn't make that decision in a single night. Every time I told myself I would keep you, I looked at you and saw the desolate landscape all around.
Every time I told myself I had to send you away, I thought of everything I would lose.
I changed my mind dozens of times, over several days, while you regained your strength.
I knew that every hour would make the separation harder, and I couldn't stop myself from taking more of them anyway.
It was your face that decided it for me. Even exhausted, you looked like someone who wanted to live.
"I told myself you deserved better than this," she murmured. "And it's a mother's duty to give her child the best there is."
The day of your departure finally came.
I watched you having fun swinging two femurs around like swords and wondered what I should say to you.
Should I explain it to him? Should I say goodbye? No, I couldn't bear it if he refuses. I wouldn't have the determination to go through with it.
So, looking at you one last time, I couldn't stop my tears from falling.
Goodbye, my son.
Then I ejected you from this dimension, sending you to a connected place that I knew was peaceful.
"The meadow," said Emrys.
"Yes. It was the last time I saw you in person until today."
But that wasn't all yet.
While I was moping in my renewed monotony, something unbelievable happened.
"What's going on?"
I started seeing the meadow I had sent you to as if it were all around me.
I didn't understand what was happening, but when I noticed that the surroundings were moving without me turning my head, and when I heard your voice, I understood.
"Th... this is Emrys's vision?" she said, shocked. "How is this possible? Is this the link I've been feeling until now?"
"You can probably guess the rest, I imagine," said Nimue after she had finished telling her story.
"I see," said Emrys. "So that's how it is."
He fell silent for a moment to take in everything he had just heard.
"So that's why you know what I've been through until now."
"Yes."
"But one question. When I went blind, did you stop seeing too?"
"Yes. And since I had no access to your Haki or your thoughts, I had to rely on your other senses."
"Damn. And here I thought I could at least partly fulfill your dream."
Nimue smiled hearing that, and ruffled his hair a little.
"Don't worry about it, Rysrys. You made me travel plenty over these last forty years. Everything you heard, tasted, smelled, or touched, I did too. I'm more than satisfied."
"Well, I'm not. I'll find a way to let you see it, whatever it takes. But let's drop the subject for now," said Emrys, wanting to ask her about what he considered the most crucial point.
"Do you... do you know that..."
"That you come from another world?" Nimue finished for him. "Yes. I was quite surprised when I found out. And it made me ask myself a lot of questions. But in the end my answer is the same as the one you gave."
She took off Emrys's mask. Normally that should have been impossible for anyone but him, but he let her.
She came closer and kissed him on the forehead.
"It doesn't change anything for me. You're still my son."