The Winds of the Past [Rune Factory 4]

Chapter 44

“Years later when I became a Guardian… it was only then that I realized… realized how much my promise meant to you, how seriously you had taken it. By then it was too late, and so I left you on your own. That, too was wrong.

“So I swore that, having broken my promise to you, I would never make such a promise to any other—that I would live out my days alone, honoring my promise as best I could. It didn’t feel right to be happy myself when I had left you so unhappy. But then….”

I paused, and as I hesitated, suddenly I heard Avani’s voice hailing me. I jumped up and looked down the slope, and there she was, striding briskly up the path towards me, the wind playing through her long locks as she approached. Her eyes sparkled in the brilliant sunshine, and she smiled her dazzling smile for me.

“My Lady?” I called to her. “What is it? Why have you come here?”

“Oh, well… you see, Kiel was looking for you. He… he has some papers he’d like you to translate for him as soon as you can. I brought them with me….” She pulled out a couple pages of old script and handed them to me. I looked at her as I took them, and thought she looked anxious.

“Thank you, My Lady. I’ll look at them and talk to Kiel later. Is… there anything else? You look as though you have something on your mind.”

“Well, I… I just wondered….”

“Yes? What is it?”

She turned bright red and looked away. Seeing my picnic on the ground nearby, she stared at it for a moment. “I… wondered who… why a picnic for two? I mean,” she added hastily, “Lin and Xiao both assumed I was accompanying you, so….”

I smiled at her. “Is that all?” She nodded. I caressed her cheek, then tilted her face up to look into her eyes. “There’s no one. I….” I released her and sighed. “I just wanted to pretend that there was.”

“Oh?” She looked confused, and bit her lip as she hesitated for moment. “Why… here particularly?”

I turned and led her to the entrance. “Take a look at this, My Lady.”

Stepping closer, she looked up at the great door. “Wow… there’s so many names carved here!”

“Take a look up there, way at the top—those two names there.”

“They… they’re written in some other language. I can’t read them…. What do they say?”

“That one on the left says ‘Leon’.” She turned to look at me in surprise. “And that one to the right says ‘Maria’.”

“Maria?”

“Yes.” I sighed again. “She passed away centuries ago, of course. We were friends from an early age, growing up together. I was a few years older than her, and I always thought of her almost as a little sister—annoying but adorable. I used to look out for her, just like a big brother, and she’d follow me all over, just like a baby sister. I was probably the only one who thought she was adorable though… she was something of a crybaby, and most people found her irritating.”

“Yes?” Avani said, encouragingly, as she looked back up at our names carved near the top of the door.

“Then one day, she was crying over some trivial matter—another child picking on her, probably, or maybe she’d been scolded for something or another. I don’t recall why she started crying, but I just couldn’t get her to stop. So finally… I told her that if she would only stop crying, I’d give her whatever she wanted.

“So she stopped and looked up at me and said, ‘Really? Whatever I want? Then, when we grow up, will you marry me?’” Avani quickly turned to look at me, startled. “Well, I was just a kid, so I said ‘Sure, I’ll marry you. Just stop crying!’ Then as a reminder of that promise, we carved our names here, using the old language we’d just recently discovered—a sort of a secret code to us.