POV - Azra'il
The irrigation of the farmers' fields had begun as an occasional favour and become a routine with the inevitability of things that fit well enough to keep happening.
Roxy had suggested it for the first time weeks ago, with the pragmatism of someone who sees a practical application for what they are teaching. The farmers around Vila Buena had fields of wheat and vegetables that depended on water in volumes the local wells supplied with difficulty in the drier months. A Saint-level mage specialising in water could resolve that in an afternoon. Two pupils with anomalous water control for their age could help considerably.
Paul and Zenith had agreed on the condition that Roxy accompany them. Since then, twice a week, I had gone out with Roxy along the dirt path of Vila Buena whilst the chubby little pervert stayed home with the excuses he had developed for the situation.
The excuses had varied across the weeks with a creativity I had learnt to respect technically even without respecting its origin.
"I need to finish the clay figures."
"I forgot I was going to practise Roxy's new spells."
"I think I have a stomach ache."
"I need to reread the chapter on magic circles."
Roxy had tried to invite him with the gentle persistence of a teacher who genuinely wanted the best for her pupil. I had observed each attempt with the neutral interest of someone cataloguing data about a phenomenon they partially understood and intended to understand completely.
The pattern was always the same. The mention of going outside produced an immediate shift in Rudeus's posture, the shoulders rising, the breathing changing slightly, his eyes quickly finding any available conversational exit. Then the excuse. Then the retreat into the interior of the house at the speed of someone who had escaped something.
It was the pattern of someone whose body had learnt that outside was not safe long before the conscious mind had the chance to question that premise.
That afternoon, the fields of farmer Maurice had the particular dryness of earth that had gone without rain long enough to begin cracking at the edges. Roxy was working with her customary efficiency, the irrigation spell flowing with the fluency of something completely internalised, the water rising from the aquifer and distributing through the furrows with the precision of someone who had done it dozens of times.
I was a few metres ahead, using a controlled continuous flow to reach the furthest corners of the field that Roxy's spell did not cover. The afternoon temperature was reasonable, the sky had that quality of clean blue that autumn days produced in that region, and there was in the work that particular satisfaction of something that produced a visible and immediate result.
〈Eos, I have been thinking about Rudeus.〉
[I notice that happens frequently when you are doing something physically simple that leaves the mind partially unoccupied.]
〈He grew up in a Japan without war. Without magic. Without any evident existential crisis. Without any public catastrophe that would explain the kind of withdrawal he has. Without anything notable.〉
[Correct. The profile does not correspond to collective or historical trauma. It corresponds to something personal.]
〈I want hypotheses.〉
[First: gradual voluntary isolation. No specific traumatic event, simply the accumulation of negative social interactions to the point where avoidance became the pattern. Second: severe rejection, romantic or social, that generalised into an aversion to the external environment as a whole. Third: documented public humiliation, the kind that leaves the memory of the physical space associated with the event. Fourth: systematic bullying during a formative period, which conditions the body to react to open social spaces as a threat.]
〈The third and fourth hypotheses fit the behavioural pattern I have observed most closely.〉 I directed the flow to the next row with a subtle adjustment of intention. 〈His pattern is not sadness. It is not laziness. It is physical fear that occurs before conscious thought. That is conditioning, not choice.〉
[Consistent with repeated exposure to situations of humiliation or threat in external spaces during a developmental period. Systematic bullying in adolescence or childhood produces exactly that type of conditioned response.]
〈The bullying hypothesis is the most probable, then. Though I may not be entirely right, as I do not have sufficient evidence to state it with certainty.〉
[Correct. For now we can only suppose.]
I finished the last row and turned to assess the field. The earth was receiving the water evenly, the furrows full at the right pressure, without waterlogging and without any dry area. It was reasonable work for a four-year-old body with channels still in development.
Roxy arrived at my side, wiping her hands on the cloth she carried, with the expression of someone satisfied with the result. "That came out well," she said.
"It came out acceptable," I said. "The northeast corner still has irregular distribution."
Roxy looked at the northeast corner. Then at me. "Nobody else would have noticed that."
"Noticing is not optional."
She smiled with that expression I had learnt to recognise as her version of "you are impossible, but I have grown accustomed to it." We began walking back along the dirt path towards the house, the afternoon light golden over the wheat fields that swayed gently in the wind.
〈About Rudeus.〉 I continued the reasoning as we walked. 〈If the hypothesis is correct, the direct approach will not work. Rationally explaining why leaving the house is safe will not resolve anything, because the fear is not in the reasoning. It is in the body.〉
[Correct. Gradual exposure therapy would be the most efficient method. Incremental exposure to the threatening stimulus under controlled and safe conditions until the body learns that the threat does not materialise.]
〈Which means someone will need to be with him when he takes the first steps.〉
[Someone he trusts. Someone he genuinely believes will not judge him.]
I did not respond.
But the conclusion was sufficiently obvious not to require verbalisation.
The courtyard had that quality of late afternoon when we arrived, the low golden light that made even the henhouse slightly more beautiful than it deserved to be. Rudeus was in the practice space with his customary closed concentration, arms raised, mana flowing through the channels with a fluency that had improved consistently over the past months.
The clay figures were scattered around him in clusters.
I had seen his figures frequently, but stopping to look properly this time, I noticed the difference in quality that had developed over the past weeks. Some of them were objects of genuine artistry within the limitations of the material. A figure with long hair in the specific posture of someone who had spent a lifetime being gentle, which could only be Zenith. A slightly smaller, more rigid figure, with spectacles drawn on the face with impressive precision, which was clearly Lilia. A figure with a bag disproportionate to its size and a mage's hat and a staff which was, without any margin for doubt, Roxy.
The level of detail in those three figures was the kind of detail someone dedicates when they have been paying very close attention to who they are portraying.
〈Chubby little pervert.〉
Then there were the others.
A larger male figure, broad-shouldered, with a miniature sword, which had clearly been made with less dedication than the others. The face had the vagueness of something its creator had preferred not to detail excessively.
And then there was the last one.
A small figure, with white hair that Rudeus had clearly attempted to reproduce with lighter clay, wearing an expression I could only describe as a specific combination of scowling, arrogant, and slightly squashed, which he had captured with a precision that was simultaneously impressive and offensive.
It was me.
Undeniably.
[The figure presents reasonably accurate proportions for the current height. The facial expression demonstrates considerable familiarity with the subject. The overall level of finish, however, suggests that significantly less time was dedicated to this figure compared to the other three. Specifically, the nose is slightly crooked to the left, and the mouth has a curvature I would classify as involuntarily comic.]
〈The nose is crooked.〉
[To the left, yes.]
I went to Rudeus.
He registered my presence but did not turn his head, with the expression of someone feigning intense concentration as a preventive strategy.
I stopped in front of the cluster of figures. I looked at the Roxy figure with the hat and the staff. Then at the Lilia one with the spectacles. Then at the Zenith one with the gentle posture.
Then I looked at the squashed figure with the crooked nose.
"The nose is pointing the wrong way," I said.
Rudeus finally looked at me with the expression of someone who had expected that conversation and still was not entirely prepared for it. "It is an artistic representation."
"It is a caricature with a defective nose."
"It is stylised."
"Roxy's nose is in the correct position," I pointed to the corresponding figure. "Lilia's as well. Zenith's is perfect." I looked at mine. "Mine is pointing left."
"Perhaps your face is slightly asymmetrical."
I looked at him.
He held my gaze for approximately two seconds before looking away at the speed of someone who had made a bet and realised too late they had lost.
"You dedicated more time to the other three," I said.
"The other three stayed still when I was observing them."
"I stay still."
"You stay still whilst looking at me with that expression."
"Which expression?"
He made a vague gesture that encompassed my entire face. "That one."
I considered that for a moment. "That does not explain the nose."
Rudeus picked up the figure with an expression of surrender and began adjusting the nose with his thumb. I watched the process with the attention of an art critic observing a restoration of questionable quality.
"Better," I said, when he finished.
"Thank you," he said, in the dry tone of someone who is not giving thanks.
I sat on the ground beside him. Rudeus looked at me with that expression of someone calculating which subject I had arrived to raise.
"Roxy tried to invite you again today," I said.
The shift in his posture was immediate and subtle. His shoulders rose two centimetres. "I know. I was busy with the figures."
"You were busy with the figures last week too. And the week before."
"I have been consistent."
"You have been consistently inventive with the excuses," I said. "It is a skill, I acknowledge that."
Rudeus stared at the figures in front of him with that expression he used when he did not want to continue a conversation but also had no way of leaving it without being obvious.
"It is not only about going out," I said, more slowly. "It is about the outside in general."
He did not respond.
"You stay in the courtyard during practical training. But you never stay longer than you need to. And when you can choose, you generally choose to stay inside."
Still nothing.
"In your previous life," I said, with the care of someone choosing the right angle of approach, "you mentioned that you stayed in your room. That you rarely went out."
"I liked being home."
"Liking being home and being afraid of going out are different things."
The silence that followed had a different texture from the previous ones. It was not the silence of someone searching for an answer. It was the silence of someone who had found the answer and was deciding what to do with it.
Rudeus looked at the ground with that particular expression of someone who has carried something long enough to no longer be certain of where the weight ends and where the person begins.
I did not press. There was nothing more to say that had not been said. The words had reached as far as they could reach.
I sat beside him in the silence of late afternoon with the clay figures between us.
And then, without consciously deciding to do it, I began to hum.
It was low. It was for myself, or at least that was what the tone communicated. A melody that had been in my head since the wheat fields, since the conversation with Eos about what Rudeus needed to hear without my needing to say it directly.
Then the words came, soft, unhurried:
🎵 "I know the road is hard, but you'll have tales to tell
If you let fear take hold, the years will pass before you dwell" 🎵
Rudeus did not move. But the rigidity in his shoulders changed in character. It did not disappear. It became the rigidity of someone listening rather than the rigidity of someone closing themselves off.
🎵 "And I know you understand that wings were made to soar
It's safe where you have stayed, but safe won't give you more" 🎵
He lowered his head slightly. His fingers stopped touching the figure he was still holding.
🎵 "And if you face it, take the chance, tell fear to step aside
And if you find, in the end, what you've been missing all this time"🎵
The wind passed through the courtyard with the scent of earth and fresh grass.
🎵 "And if you follow where your heart says go, rewrite
The story that you know, and finally let go
And come to understand that you are flying, you are flying
I know that reaching for the sky, you'll touch it yet" 🎵
Rudeus was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at the horizon visible above the fence, that strip of orange sky that preceded the dusk.
🎵 "Ideas rise within my mind like sparks that start to spread
But they can only burn you if you keep yourself shut in instead
So go and reach the sky and claim the dreams you've held so long
It's safe where you have stayed, but safe won't make you strong" 🎵
He breathed in deeply. Slowly. The kind of breath of someone arriving at a conclusion that the body was still resisting.
🎵 "And if you face it, take the chance, tell fear to step aside
And if you find, in the end, what you've been missing all this time
And if you follow where your heart says go, rewrite
The story that you know, and finally let go
And come to understand that you are flying, you are flying
I know that reaching for the sky, you'll touch it yet" 🎵
The final note stayed in the air longer than the others. Then it dissolved into the silence of the afternoon like something that had arrived where it needed to arrive and needed nothing more.
"Azra'il."
"Yes."
"If I wanted to..." he paused, reorganised. "If I went out. Now. Would you come with me?"
I looked at him.
There was in the question a vulnerability he had clearly not planned to expose, and which had come out regardless because the moment had arrived when it needed to.
"Yes," I said.
Rudeus stayed still for a few more seconds. Then he stood with the movement of someone who had made a decision before the body could reconsider.
I stood too.
We crossed the courtyard together in silence. Rudeus stopped at the gate in the fence for a moment, his hand on the old wood, his eyes fixed on the space beyond. Then he pushed.
The gate opened with its familiar creak.
He stepped through.
He walked slowly, with the careful steps of someone testing the ground at every metre, but he walked. The dirt road opened before him, flanked by wheat fields that the afternoon wind moved in slow, steady waves. He followed it until he stopped at the point where the field opened completely and the horizon became visible without any obstacle.
The hills reddened with the colours of late autumn. Beyond the hills, the mountains with their peaks dusted in snow, bluish with distance, solid and permanent like something that had existed for millennia and would exist for millennia more.
Rudeus stood still, looking at all of it.
I leant against the open gate, hands on the wood, watching his back.
The wind passed through the field and reached us carrying the smell of earth and grass and the freshness of open air that has no ceiling or walls to contain it.
Rudeus breathed in deeply.
It was a small thing he had done. A few metres of dirt road in a village where nothing threatening had happened and nothing threatening was going to happen.
It was an enormous thing in what it cost him.
I said nothing. I let the moment exist for as long as it needed to, with the patience of someone who knows that certain things do not require comment in order to be complete.
The sun continued descending.
The fields continued swaying.
And Rudeus continued standing on the road, looking at the mountains on the horizon, breathing the outside air with the quiet attention of someone discovering that the world was larger than the space where they had spent decades, and that larger was not necessarily threatening.
It was simply large.
And there was time to come to know every part of it.