They went silent. I expected them to berate me or ask me who I was. I expected them to ask me to not play with their emotions. I expected them to-
"He... Is El really alive?" The sister asked without a shadow of a doubt.
"Yes!" I replied while feeling the tips of my mouth curl up. I was rather content.
Even in this darkness, the moon was bright enough to make the water under their eyes glisten. This time it wasn't because of grief that they cried out, it was happiness.
I could almost taste the sweetness in their tears.
They came stumbling down the rubble and one grabbed onto my shoulders.
"Where is he?" It was a calm yell.
"Uhh, he left for Ohnicht after he saw you with the prie-" Damn it, I shouldn't have said that.
"He saw us?!" A pang of hurt filled her eyes. Self-deprecation maybe. "That little weakling wouldn't be able to handle that. What have I done?" She crouched down and held her head. Her emotions were going through a marvellous crash. I could see them change at every given moment.
But weak? What was she on about?
"No no no! It's fine! We can fix this, you only have to meet him. Tomorrow- yes tomorrow we'll find him for sure. Or actually-" I was having a hard time putting my thoughts together too. But I realised that since Master Elyan was fighting against the church he would be in hiding. "If not tomorrow then in the future, definitely. He is alive after all!"
At that moment I asked myself if it was worth it. He left me back here because he knew it was a suicide mission. He decided to care for a stranger. There's no doubt that he would care for his family just as much if he knew that they didn't betray them.
He would want them to be safe her- No!
'I was going about this wrong.'
He was going on a suicidal rampage because he thought his family betrayed him. If he could only meet them, then he wouldn't have a reason to self-sabotage anymore.
"He wouldn't even want to meet us. He wouldn't want to see us, it'll hurt him." One complained. My words weren't getting through to them. At the end of the day, I didn't know what was right from wrong, but I knew that I wanted him to heal this relationship before it ends.
They are the only people left in the world for him.
"Talk it out, please. I know it'll make him happy and drag him out of the hurt. Right now, Master Elyan isn't in the right mind, and no one can help him. No one but you. So I- SO please don't give up!" Things were messy, our relationship was messy. I didn't know how to address them, I didn't know how I could make them believe me.
"I don't know." The sister went silent.
"What does he look like, is he fine? Has he been eating alright?" I got bombarded with questions from the mother the very next second. She was taking her time to process the situation. I too had questions.
Both of us had things we needed to know. And answers to questions that only the others knew how to answer. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.
So we spent the rest of the night listening to each other's stories. I told them about how Master Elyan and I met. About our journey here. About Luoris. Regretably even I didn't know how Master Elyan ended up in that situation before he met me, but I told them about everything I knew.
And they too opened up- A week after the news of Elyan's death had come, they spent their entire savings hiring people- trying to hire people to look for Master Elyan, not believing his death in the slightest. But not believing is always a stage of grief... so in the back of their mind, they started to embrace the fantasy of his death.
Countless detectives were sent to Luoris to find something, anything, if not about his survival then at the very least about the whereabouts of his body. So that they could find some closure. So they could give Master Elyan some closure.
But nothing came up. Then their innate human nature took over. In absolute despair, you cling to the slightest hope like it's everything. They wanted to believe that he was alive. After all, there was no evidence of his death.
After some time the people looking for Elyan suddenly stopped investigating altogether. That was the first time the church approached them. From then on they started to "negotiate" and pull strings. Slowly but surely the slight hope that they clung to was getting snatched away by the church. They weren't even allowed to look for him anymore.
No one accepted their request to look for Master Elyan, as if they had been bought off by some third party. It was obvious who was behind this all.
So they decided to look for him themselves. Of course, having blown through their savings they didn't have the means to move to Rottheim and look for him. So they were almost about to turn to money lenders, shady ones before they remembered the bribe the church was offering.
The church in the town worked under the God of Oaths. All they had to do was make a pledge. The pledge didn't even have to be fulfilled as long as they made it. But suppose the pledge was broken and they let Elyan's survival out, the church would be in the right to take their lives, ultimately putting a seal on the entire fiasco.
But that only applied to this town. The church probably didn't expect the two of them to move to Rottheim to search for Master Elyan.
In that case, this amount of money was more than enough to last a couple of months for them to investigate properly, and had no strings attached to it.
She thought that it was a good plan of action with immediate rewards and satisfaction from 'screwing' with the organisation that took Master Elyan away from them.
As the older sister explained this, it became obvious that she wasn't normal in the head department. Coming up with this twisted plan while grieving? She was almost inhuman.
But in the end, even she couldn't factor in the variable of Master Elyan showing up in town himself at that one particular moment. After all, fate did attach a string. Right at the worst moment. When they pretended to betray Master Elyan, the man himself showed up at the scene.
One thing led to another and after this downward spiral, we sat here together as the sun started to rise.