The Little Rat Ramon (2)
A world without humans is, by nature, quiet and beautiful.
Ramon wanted to share that beauty with the girl. Sorrow was the only feeling one could find inside this underground prison — but he hoped that, at least for as long as they spoke, she might slip free of the dark.
Mid-speech, with both arms flung wide, something came clattering down from Ramon's embrace. Walnuts, of all things — from who knew where. The girl's eyes widened a fraction. A few seconds of silence followed.
"...Hehe. Stealing is wrong, Ramon."
A desolate, withered laugh. Worn so completely that nothing remained to be felt in it.
But Ramon wanted to give something back. The smile she had lost. The one that belonged to the days before.
"...Thank you. Still, when I get out of here, I'll make sure to return your share to the squirrels, too—"
The words broke off as if she had woken from a long dream. Her dazed gaze drifted to the iron chains wound around her wrists.
"When I get out of here... I will..."
A quietly trembling voice. Something stirred in his chest.
Ah. That wasn't what I meant to do at all.
Don't be sad. Please, don't be sad.
"...Yes."
A dark, heavy answer. A hollowness as if even her soul had been bleached white. A terrible silence settled between them.
"...Winter will be here soon."
A chill seeped into the cell. A faint wisp of breath lingered near the girl's lips before scattering into nothing.
"I hate winter."
He had met her in the season when cedar blossoms rode the wind. Time had slipped past them, and now it was the season of falling leaves.
"This will be my tenth winter."
What flickered through Ramon's eyes was surprise, and pain, and anguish. All this time he had never asked how long she had been imprisoned, afraid of wounding that fragile heart. Ten years. Ten long years inside a prison that held nothing but despair. He hid the turmoil as best he could.
He could not offer comfort carelessly. Even that might become another wound. But this much, at least, he wanted her to hear.
Ramon curled himself into a small, round ball in the cup of the girl's palm.
"...You can't."
A frail, powerless voice.
"Please leave before winter comes."
It was the voice of someone who wanted him to stay. Of someone helpless with guilt. And of someone pleading, all at once.
"...Ramon."
The girl's eyes were welling.
"Ra— Ramon. Hic. Please. I'm begging you."
Her breathing grew short. The warning signs of a fit. Ramon hurriedly soothed the terror-stricken girl.
"I-I hate winter. Please come back when winter is over. Winter is terrifying. Winter takes everything away. It was winter. They all left in winter. I was locked away in winter. Fire burns hotter in winter. It hurts more in winter."
The monologue would not stop. Winter had never once changed. And neither, in that, had the girl.
"Everything was swallowed by the fire. It's strange. It was so cold outside, but I was burning to death. My friends... they said it was too hot, they begged me to save them. I couldn't do anything. I just hid. I didn't— I— hh, hhk— it's my fault. I should have gotten them out. I was so scared, I didn't, I didn't—"
What had changed was only the direction of human greed. What came pouring out was humanity's ugliness, and its cruelty.
Leaning on each other, each as precarious as the other, they let the time flow on, and on.
The Astaria Empire. The Imperial Palace. The Empress's study.
"Prime Minister."
The voice of the Empress who ruled more than half the Hainel Continent — Aria, Astaria Edelgard — carried a dignity equal to her overwhelming presence. A conqueror born, and a Sword Master. A sage sovereign praised with one voice by her people. The woman who had ended the Empire's long dark age and fired the opening shot of its golden era was regarded as the incarnation of Aratain, goddess of war and wisdom.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Do you see this? This damned letter."
Andarlef, Prime Minister of the Empire, looked at the document in the Empress's hand. Stamped upon it was the seal of the White Magic Theocracy of Luang — a nation that had been crushed in war with the Empire and stripped of nearly half its territory.
"Those dogs from Luang have been barking rather a lot of late."
"It's hardly the first time, is it?"
Her fair brow furrowed. Even that, somehow, was beautiful — the Empire's bards praised her charismatic beauty until their mouths ran dry. Platinum hair that fell to her waist. Skin that seemed to hold the moonlight. Handsome, keen gray eyes that called to mind a bird of prey at the instant of the kill.
"How utterly contemptible. They knelt and begged for their lives — and now that they can scrape by again, they dare provoke my wrath?"
"If anything, isn't that a good thing? They're proving for themselves that barking is all they can do."
"True enough. But a dog does not bark in front of a lion, Prime Minister."
— Grrrr...
At that, the Empress's battle-lion Pantera, who had been lying beside the desk all this while, rose to her feet.
"See? Even Tera looks put out."
Aria gently stroked Pantera's head as the lion came forward. A battle-lion stood some three times the size of an ordinary lion, and Pantera was the leader of her kind — so where common specimens wore white, she shone with an unusually vivid silver.
"Do not trouble yourself overmuch. Corruption in that country has reached such a pitch that the common people recite the names of their crooked officials in the streets. They will destroy themselves soon enough."
"I almost pity the Princess of Luang. She rushes about trying to revive a collapsing nation by any means she can — but the rot has already reached the roots. There is nothing left to save."
Aria turned her back and gazed far beyond the window.
"...Do you sympathize with her?"
At the question, Aria shrugged.
"When she came to see me, I rather liked the audacity of requesting a private audience in front of all those ministers. And the terms she recited in that nightingale voice of hers were reasonably sound. But that was all. Shake her a few times and she burst into tears — a fragile, feeble girl."
In a way, the two of them were alike. Luang's collapse. The Empire's dark age. The difference was that Astaria Edelgard had overcome countless assassination attempts by her own hand, and seized the power to change her circumstances. That power was the absolute loyalty of her knights.
"And... I did not hesitate. No matter who it was."
"Your Majesty made the right choice."
During the Empire's dark age, she had had the tyrant of a previous emperor and every one of her brothers and sisters drawn and quartered. Fairness and justice. Equality of opportunity. And mercilessness toward injustice. These were the most formidable weapons of Astaria Edelgard, who had set everything right with her own hands. Under an imperial policy that recruited talent without discrimination of rank or race, craftsmen and gifted minds from across the continent flocked to her like clouds.
"...The right choice. The right choice, you say. Well. Back then, I hadn't the luxury of calling it a choice."
A bitter smile. Sensing her master's low spirits, Pantera nuzzled her face against Aria's waist.
"At this rate I'm no different from that girl. Sitting at a desk all day has made me soft."
"Haha. Perhaps a stroll with Lady Pantera would do you good."
"Pantera looks more like she wants to roam a battlefield."
— Mrrrow.
A rumble thick with affection. A sign of agreement, perhaps.
"On another matter... Prime Minister."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
A brief silence.
"That owl perched in the tree out there."
Owl?
Andarlef's gaze turned toward the window.
"Does it not seem to be watching me?"
"It does... rather, yes?"
The stare was blatant — and in the instant he thought so, the owl beat its wings and surged into the air. The direction it took was the old Imperial Palace, to the east.
"The direction it flew sits ill with me. How goes the demolition?"
"The former Imperial Palace is largely finished, Your Majesty."
The old palace, where every trace of luxury and decadence still lingered. Aria had ordered the complete destruction of every facility connected to the previous emperor.
"It is the Empire's disgrace. Search the records, destroy every facility associated with him, melt down all gold and silver you find and return it to the treasury. And as for anything of no use — burn it all."
"I shall see it done."
