art moments

“But, you know… meeting so many different pokémon is the best!”

Gou stares at the boy in front of him. He’s still drenched with seawater, as well as breathing heavily from almost drowning, but he’s grinning so wide you’d think he hadn’t just had a near-death experience. He has giant chocolate brown eyes and a hat that should have fallen off his head long ago, but has somehow stayed firmly on. He looks at Gou as if he’s made of sunshine, and Gou suddenly can’t breathe, almost like he’s still underwater and still running out of air, and he doesn’t understand why.

This boy, who he doesn’t even know the name of, who’s dumb enough to leap onto Lugia of all pokémon (though, Gou can’t really fault him for that, can he?), who went through almost drowning in the ocean (far away from any kind of shore or civilisation, he might add) and came out smiling, has gotten Gou’s interest.

He hates it.

Because Gou’s motto has always been that he doesn’t need friends, and he’s right. He has Koharu, so he doesn’t get lonely, but it’s not like he needs more. This kid seems like the exact opposite of that, if Gou's judge of character is right, and it usually is. He seems like exactly the kind of person to say he can never have too many friends, whether they be people or pokémon, while Gou is strictly the latter. It’s stupid and endearing and Gou realises he’s been staring.

He laughs it off, saying, “You’re quite the character!”

“What, really?” the boy says, and when Gou looks up at him he looks slightly confused.

Gou smiles. “I accept!”

The boy blinks, taken aback. “Accept what?”

Gou smirks, pointing a thumb at his chest and grinning. “Accept you as my friend!”

“What’s that about?” the boy laughs, and Gou’s heart does a tiny jump in his ribcage.

It manages to calm down enough to allow him to say, “I’m Gou from Kuchiba City!”

The boy smiles. “I’m Ash from Pallet Town!” The pikachu that had been clinging for dear life on Ash’s shoulder for the past few minutes hops back onto his perch. “This is my partner, Pikachu!” Pikachu chirps a greeting in Gou’s direction.

Ash holds out a hand, and Gou takes it without hesitation. Ash’s hands are rough and calloused, and surprisingly warm, considering they had been in the sea less than a minute ago. It’s dumb and stupid how his heart quietly skips as they shake hands, and even more dumb how when Ash pulls away, Gou wishes he hadn’t.

Instead of mulling on that feeling, he pushes it away, opting for greeting Pikachu by scratching him under the chin. Pikachu sparks at him, and he yelps, remembering Koharu’s yamper and pulling away sharply. Both Ash and his partner giggle at him, and he realises it was a joke, and smiles too.

Ash gives him a soft smile, and Gou’s brain isn’t quite sure what to do with it, so while it’s figuring it out, Gou smiles back.

---

Ash is saying some dumb adorable thing about a bulbasaur he has down at Professor Oak's ranch when Koharu catches up to them.

"Hey, Ash, mind if I talk to Gou for a minute?" she asks, in that voice she uses when there's no choice for the recipient.

Ash seems blissfully unaware of her tone, however, and just grins, Pikachu dangling from his arms, already half falling asleep. "Sure! I'll see you at the dorm, Gou!"

He skips down the hall, and Koharu turns to Gou, crossing her arms. He starts to get nervous.

"...What?" he asks, on his guard.

"Why'd you wanna stay here?" Koharu says, getting straight to the point. "I know your house isn't far. There's no point being here when your commute is that short."

Gou shuffles his feet slightly, looking off to the side when he realises he doesn't have an answer. Why does he wanna stay here? There's no logical reason for it. All Gou knows is when he found out Ash was going to be staying here, he immediately wanted to join him.

Koharu leans into his personal space, and he leans away from her in return. "It's because of Ash, isn't it?" Gou's breath hitches, because he has a horrible suspicion she's right. She pulls away, rolling her eyes. "We get it, you have a crush on the guy. Sheesh, you've never been this hung up on a person. Only on a pokémon, and only with Mew."

Gou stares at her for a few moments, before her words click into his head, and he feels himself flush and he squeaks in a slightly inelegant way. "No- Koharu- wh- I don't have a crush on Ash!"

She squints at him for a few seconds as he thinks about it and blushes an even brighter red. "Oh, my God, I have a crush on Ash."

She sighs in exasperation. "What would you do without me?" she says, sarcasm dripping in her tone. Yamper scampers around her feet excitedly as she starts to make her way towards her room. "Let me know if anything happens," she calls over her shoulder, leaving Gou with the bombshell she just dropped on him with no remorse.

He watches her turn a corner, then slumps heavily against the wall. He's never had a crush on anyone before - maybe because he's always kind of avoided talking to people or getting to know them in any way. That's probably it. But Ash kind of just… literally leapt into his life. It hasn't been twenty-four hours since he met the guy and he's already charmed his way into Gou's heart with his dumb goofy smile and stupid bright eyes - which, and Gou speaks from experience, is not easy to do.

Sighing, he continues down the hall and heads into his and Ash's shared dorm. He half regrets asking for it now, considering, but the second half is so excited it nearly drowns out the first. Ash is sitting on the bottom bunk, having changed into a pyjama shirt with a pikachu face on it. He’s brushing Pikachu's fur as the pokémon sprawls out on his lap in bliss. He looks up when Gou enters and immediately brightens.

"Hey! You were gone for a while. What'd Koharu want?"

"Oh, you know," Gou says, throwing his notebook and phone onto a nearby table, "none of your business."

Ash sticks his tongue out at him. "That's boring. Tell me!" He twists around to try and see Gou's face from where he's clearly not making eye contact. "Wait. Why's your face so red?"

Gou can feel his face heat up even more and sincerely hopes to Arceus Ash is as oblivious as he seems.

"Hmm…" He doesn't seem to notice the pokémon on his lap is also looking at Gou, and judging by his expression, has already worked out what's going on. Ash suddenly lights up. "Oh! I got it! You have a crush on Koharu!" He grins up at Gou like an excited rockruff. "Did I get it? Did I?"

Pikachu just sighs and goes back to sleep as Gou stares at Ash in disbelief.

Oliver is thirteen.

When he arrives back in Motorville, the first thing he does is take a shower, and then he goes down to Miss Leila’s shop and talks to Myrtle about nothing in particular, until Miss Leila shoos him out not unkindly for “distracting her best employee”. On the way out, she says something odd.

“You seem different to usual, Oliver, dear.”

Oliver blinks. “Different how, Miss Leila?”

She stands in the doorway of the milk bar and shakes her head fondly. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. More mature, I suppose.”

He laughs it off with a smile and a wave as he goes to see how much progress Phil has made on his car since he last saw him (was it when the Clarion was made? It feels like months ago), but it sticks in his head for the rest of the day.

---

Oliver is fifteen.

He hasn’t grown any taller. Phil and Myrtle were already taller than him to begin with, but now they tower over him; he supposes he must have a growth spurt someday soon. In the back of his mind, he worries over it, mind wandering along to the other world and its magic, but there’s no time for that when Denny’s made it into the track team, and Phil’s made a new car, and Myrtle’s taken up playing the flute (by Oliver’s recommendation).

He doesn’t think about it for a few months until all four of them are over at Phil’s garage, watching him work and chattering amongst themselves, occasionally handing him a tool when he asks for it. Somehow, the conversation takes a turn to two years ago.

“Man, do you remember when I hurt my ankle and just completely stopped running for a while?” Denny asks, leaning against a pile of old tires. Oliver looks up at him, then turns his gaze to the floor to avoid eye contact. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to notice. “That was weird. Honestly, I barely remember what even happened during that.”

“That was a few months before I got weird too, huh?” Phil says, his voice echoing from under the car. “Like, when I stopped working on any of my cars or… anything, really."

Myrtle frowns slightly. “Now that I think about it, Denny’s injury was only a few months after my sickness.” She leans back in the old garden chair Oliver had found buried under a tarp. “It is odd all of that happened in the same year.”

Oliver stays quiet, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to where Phil is halfway under his car, hoping to stay non-suspicious. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen, as Phil rolls out from the motor and raises an eyebrow at him, streaks of motor oil on his cheeks. “Wasn’t that the year you disappeared for months at a time, Ollie?”

When Oliver doesn’t reply, only glancing away which in retrospect he thinks only makes him look suspicious, Denny hums in thought. “He came back to fix my ankle. And… whatever was stopping me from running, I guess.”

“Same with me,” Phil says, still staring at him, “but with my motivation, or whatever.”

“He cured my illness.” Myrtle pauses, scrunching her eyebrows together. “...And I think my parents’ marriage somehow?”

All three of them stop, glance at each other, and then stare at Oliver. He ducks his head and does a half-hearted shrug. Phil snorts.

“Take it from the guy who’s known him his whole life,” he says, ducking back under his car and making his voice start echoing again. “That’s just how Ollie is. He’s just such a nice person everyone naturally follows in his wake of good-hearted destruction.”

Denny laughs. “I can’t deny that. I swear I’ve seen flowers actually bloom in his presence. He’s, like, magic or something.”

“There’s also the fact he still looks eleven,” Myrtle says. “All us three are teens and Oliver’s still the age I met him.”

“I was thirteen when I met you!” Oliver says indignantly, speaking up for the first time since the conversation began.

“You looked eleven then, and you look eleven now,” Denny teases lightly. “But seriously, are you gonna get any taller or are you gonna be four foot something forever?”

Oliver splutters in offense as the rest of his so-called friends laugh.

---

Oliver is eighteen.

...He thinks. He still looks thirteen. Maybe he’s not been counting right.

Denny has left Motorville to try out for the state championships, and Phil’s now employed at Rusty’s garage; Oliver is proud of both of them. Though, with Myrtle still working for Miss Leila (she's getting paid for it now), Oliver’s the only one without a job. It’s kinda difficult to get one when you look thirteen. And he definitely only looks thirteen - he’s not actually still thirteen. That would be ridiculous, and impossible, and… magical, which is entirely possible. He steers his mind away from the topic whenever it happens to pop up.

With all the time he has now, what with everyone at their jobs, he visits the other world a lot more. Swaine’s co-running Hamelin with Marcassin, and Esther’s continuing to care for familiars. Swaine doesn’t look much different - other than occasionally he shaves now, which is a big shock - but Esther’s growing up at the same pace as Myrtle, which he supposes shouldn’t come as a surprise.

He wakes in a dream one night, and finds his mom standing in a field of flowers for the first time in five years.

“Oliver, sweetie,” she murmurs, and if Oliver is seeing and hearing her right, she seems on the verge of tears. He blinks. That's not right. It's usually the other way around. “I’m so sorry.”

“What…?” he whispers, and for once she comes up to him to sweep him in a hug, kneeling down to match his (unfortunate) height.

“We didn’t know,” she says, and her hug is exactly like how he remembers it. He presses his lips together as she murmurs, “Honey, we didn’t know. We’re both so sorry," into his ear.

Oliver swallows and wraps his arms around her middle. The dream doesn’t end as he remembers the rest of them doing - instead of her drifting away, into white space, his mom simply holds on tight, and the ending is so abrupt he wakes up startled, tears in his eyes.

There was definitely one thing about this dream that was the same as the others.

Great Sages can be so cryptic.

---

Oliver might be nineteen.

That’s what the calendar says. But he gets confused looks from his childhood best friends, and mistaken for another kid by actual thirteen year olds, who give him odd looks when he tells them (and himself) that he's not. At this point, he thinks Myrtle is convinced he’s magical. Which, he doesn’t particularly blame her for - after all, it’s the truth.

He visits Teeheeti one day, on a hunt for a certain lantern-nosed fairy. Of course, he’s so easily recognisable now that when he walks into the Fairyground, all the fairies with nothing better to do start calling for the Lord High Lord of the Fairies.

“Ollie-boy!” Drippy shouts, almost from the other side of the town. Oliver smiles and waves at him, and he comes racing over, lantern jingling furiously. “Haven’t seen you ‘round here in a bit! What’s going on, mun?”

“Not much!” Oliver says, smiling. “Just wanted to visit you, I guess.”

“There’s a change. Haven’t seen you in months, mun!" Drippy rolls his eyes, and Oliver winces apologetically. "Been lonely, I have. There’s been a new restaurant opened up here and everything! Come on, I’ll show you the way.”

Drippy leads him through the town, past the Cat’s Cradle and the giant octopus building that Oliver never really got the chance to learn the name of. As it turns out, the new restaurant is right near the Cavity Club. The seats are, of course, far too tiny for Oliver to sit on, so he just sits on the grass instead. They order and begin to wait.

“So, Ollie-boy,” Drippy starts, sipping a glass of water. “Wanna tell youer old friend what’s really bothering you?”

Oliver starts. “Wh- Mr. Drippy, there’s nothing bothering me! I-”

“Save youer breath, you’re a terrible liar.” Oliver stops talking, taking a drink from his own water quietly. He glances at Drippy, only to jump when he realises he’s leaning into his personal space and squinting at him in an almost threatening manner, if only he wasn’t so small.

“Okay, so maybe there’s something bothering me,” he mutters into his fairy-sized glass, built for fairy-sized hands.

Drippy continues to stare at him for a few moments before he says, “Well? Spit it out, mun, I don’t have all day.”

Oliver takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. “Mr. Drippy, can people without soulmates age?” he says heavily, looking down at the water in his glass and swirling it around as he waits for a response.

They’re both silent for a moment. Drippy looks Oliver up and down, and Oliver glances up to find his expression somber. “...At this point, there’s not much hope, is there?” he says softly, as though what he just said didn’t break Oliver’s heart, in the non-magical way.

Oliver blinks back tears, swallowing hard. Drippy pats his arm lightly, and they sit in silence for a minute before their food arrives, and Drippy starts attempting small talk. Oliver does his best to respond, trying to smile, but the mood has been brought down.

Oliver thanks Drippy, though he’s not sure what for, and the fairy watches as he casts Gateway home. There, he lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling for a while. At some point, tears start to fall. At some point, he starts to sob.

Oliver is thirteen.

---

Oliver is thirteen.

He’s accepted it now. It hasn’t sunk in quite yet, but he’s at least accepted it. That doesn’t mean everything else stops growing. At some point, all his friends turn twenty-five. He’s too busy accepting he will genuinely be four foot something for the rest of his life, if his life ever ends, which it doesn’t seem to be doing any time soon.

Marcassin, now in his early thirties, mentions Cassiopeia during one of Oliver’s trips to Hamelin. She’s apparently doing very well - only blowing up a toaster a month. She had made a public apology, back when Oliver was thirteen and meant to be thirteen, and twelve years later, most have forgiven her. Of course, some haven’t, which is reasonable, considering everything she did. Oliver hasn't seen her since before his whole immortality revelation, too busy with, uh… his immortality revelation. Which seems strange, but he already gets enough pitying looks from his friends - he didn't want to get more.

So, he casts Travel in the direction of the Ivory Tower in search of a certain green-haired queen.

As it so happens, he lands right in the main flight bay of the castle, where he first flew Tengri in to fight the White Witch all those years ago. Cassiopeia clearly hadn't been lying when she said her first step would be flowers - there are flowerpots and planters and vases filled with them on every pedestal Oliver remembers being empty before, and all the deactivated robots have their nooks and crannies filled with pastel pink and blue petals. He brushes his hand along a few of the taller plants. They look incredibly healthy, considering how many there are - he wonders if Cassiopeia has enchanted them, or maybe has someone else take care of them. It's most likely the former - he's not sure having this many of them here would be worth it otherwise.

He wanders through the halls, no longer filled with wild beasts, until he hears a familiar tune hummed by a familiar voice. He makes a right and heads straight for it, trying to remember where the path he's walking leads but ultimately failing. As he gets closer to the voice, he recognises the melody. It’s the Clarion’s song, the one Esther played to clear the Miasma Marshes of the cursed fog. Oliver smiles nostalgically. He hasn’t heard it in twelve years, after all.

He manages to find a circular room with a beautiful segmented glass domed roof, letting him see the bright blue sky. The room seems to have either been built specifically to be a garden, or been entirely repurposed to be one. The floor is made of red brick, and there are flower beds blooming with so many plants they overhang heavily onto the small paths leading through the growth. Oliver can only name a few of these flowers - he can see roses, violets, and a few... carnations? - but he’s stunned by their beauty nonetheless.

In the middle of the garden, barely distinguishable through the flowers, stands Queen Cassiopeia, former Nazcaan royalty. Her white headpiece is barely visible over the giant sunflowers she appears to be watering, and she seems to be so caught up in it that she doesn't notice Oliver come in. He winds his way through the path until he's standing near her, coughs quietly, and her head snaps to attention. She stares at him for a few seconds before smiling.

"Oliver!" she exclaims, putting down her watering can. "You haven't visited in a while! Would you care for some tea? I know you prefer coffee, but I believe Marcassin took my coffeemaker away from me after… some incident or another, I'm sure."

Oliver smiles. "I would love some, Queen Cassiopeia."

She exits the garden, gesturing for him to follow. "How many times must I tell you, please just call me Cassiopeia. Or even Pea! It was my name at one point, you know."

Oliver giggles as he's led down marble hallways and past yet more flowers before they arrive in the kitchen. Cassiopeia immediately fills the kettle and puts it on the stove, while Oliver sits at the table in the middle of the room. She makes small talk as the kettle boils, asking Oliver about his day and whether anything interesting has happened recently, to which he answers to the best of his ability. The kettle whistles, and Cassiopeia pours water into two teacups and places teabags in both, setting one down in front of Oliver and sitting across from him with her own.

"Now, as much as I adore your visits," Cassiopeia says, which makes Oliver smile, "is there any reason you've come to me today? And with so little warning, as well."

Oliver swirls his tea around his cup. "Well, Queen Cassiopeia," he winces apologetically as she gives him a dry look when he says her title, "I haven't, uh… haven't been aging these past few years? And I, uh, thought you might… know something about that, in some way."

She stares at him, and he ducks his head to avoid her gaze. "You haven't been aging?" she says, tapping one of her fingers on the table. "How did that come about, I wonder? I, myself, am immortal only due to my use of the forbidden spell…" Her eyebrows scrunch together as she traces the wooden pattern in the table.

Oliver bites his lip, then hums in an attempt to break the quiet. "Has anyone ever told you my soulmate was Shadar?"

Cassiopeia chokes on air, glancing up with wide eyes. "Shadar? The Dark Djinn?"

"That's the one..." Oliver murmurs, looking away. It's not that he's… embarrassed his soulmate was Lucien, just… the reaction.

"But- you-" She struggles to get the words out, making Oliver wince. "You're… you! And Shadar was… so bitter. I don't remember much from my White Witch days, but he was such a big part, I don't know if I could forget…" Cassiopeia taste-tests her tea, wincing as she burns her tongue, before her eyes go wide as she seems to realise something. "Did you not defeat the Dark Djinn? Is he not… dead? I vaguely remember him dying…"

"He is!" Oliver says, quickly. "But he… severed the link between our souls. When he died, I mean. He turned out to be okay! He just, uh... wanted to protect the world. His… his actual name was Lucien." He taps his fingers on the table anxiously. "With the link gone, I haven't… aged at all."

"Wait… yes, you two being soulmates is coming back to me now." She leans back in her chair, putting one hand to her forehead and exhaling. "I apologise. My memories from my time as the White Witch are… faint." She huffs, shaking her head slightly. "So, you think because you don't have a soulmate to age alongside, you can't age at all?"

"That's… pretty much it, yeah." Oliver sighs, trying to take a sip from his teacup and wincing as he burns his tongue, trying to blow the steam out of his teacup.

They sit in an almost, but not quite, awkward silence for a few moments or so, carefully sipping at their drinks, trying not to burn themselves. "So… how old are you?" Cassiopeia pipes up, startling Oliver.

"Physically? Thirteen. But, if I were aging, I'd be… twenty-five or so now?"

She laughs to herself quietly. "I hardly know the difference between those numbers. In my many… many years sitting in this castle, I appear to have forgotten how humans age."

"Oh, well…" Oliver thinks to himself, trying to find a good comparison. "Have you seen Esther recently?"

Cassiopeia nods. "A year or so ago, I believe."

"I'd be the same age as her."

She blinks, shocked, as she presumably thinks back to her last encounter with Esther. “Wow. You really did stop aging." She smiles slightly, a quietly fond look in her eye. "You're awfully young to be immortal, you know."

He hides his nose in his cup. "Don't rub it in," he grumbles, more to himself than to Cassiopeia. She laughs, and he finds himself smiling along with her, until he's giggling into his cup.

Cassiopeia leans forward, resting her forearms on the table, as Oliver takes a sip from his tea to calm his laughter. "What are you going to do now?" she asks, and she seems genuinely curious.

Oliver blinks. "Hm?"

"Well, you just found out you're immortal - or, at least, can't age." She smiles at him, sitting back again. He doesn't tell her he didn't just figure it out, but then again, maybe twelve years isn't all that much to Cassiopeia, considering. "What are you going to do for the rest of your never-ending life?" she asks.

He thinks for a few moments. What is he going to do? He's literally going to be thirteen forever; there's not much he can do about that, and he's already bored of it after twelve years. He supposes he could go back to Motorville, but people are already suspicious there, and for good reason. No one stays the same age, after all - unless you're Oliver, that is. He did enough travelling for a lifetime when he went on his quest to defeat Shadar, and though he didn't know it for the bulk of the time, the White Witch as well.

He hums into his cup. "I don't really know," he admits, biting his lip as the sentence settles in his mind.

Cassiopeia looks uncharacteristically nervous as she stares down her teacup, before she quietly says, "You could… stay with me."

Oliver looks up, blinking a few times, staring at her as he processes her words. “Stay… here? At the Ivory Tower?”

She nods slowly, as though warming up to the idea. “It gets awfully lonely around here, you know. Though, perhaps I should think of a new name…" She stares to her left at nothing in particular, lips pursed in thought. ""Ivory Tower" sounds a bit sinister, don't you think?"

"I think it's fine," Oliver replies, staring down at his now almost empty cup. Ivory Tower sounds okay to him, but they're getting off track. "But, um, back to the, uh, "staying with you", thing…"

"Ah! Yes." Cassiopeia brings her attention back to Oliver, smiling. "Do you think it's a good idea? I have a spare room you could stay in. Many spare rooms, in fact. This palace is enormous."

"Trust me, I figured that out trying to find the throne room the first time," Oliver laughs into his cup, draining it of the last drops of tea. He sets it down with a small clink.

They sit in silence for a bit as Cassiopeia finishes her drink as well. Oliver traces the lines in the wooden table with his finger as he thinks over her proposition. The more he thinks about it, the more he warms up to the idea. After all, he has nowhere else to go. All his friends in Motorville have drifted apart from him; it's kind of hard to stay friends with a forever-thirteen year old when you're in your mid twenties, not to mention he hardly spends time there anymore. 

And all his friends here… and in Motorville, for that matter… he'll outlive all of them. He'll be thirteen when they're old and grey. When they're gone… where will he go, if he doesn't stay here? He'll be wandering alone forever. Like… Cassiopeia was, but less restricted by a kingdom. That… scares him a little. What would happen if he were to be alone? What would happen if he were alone as long as Cassiopeia was? Would he become something like the White Witch? Or maybe... Shadar? His mind whispers that Shadar was his soulmate, and Oliver frantically chases the thought away, refusing to think about it, in the same way he's been refusing to think about it for the past twelve years.

"Oliver?" Cassiopeia murmurs, and he looks up, startled. "Are you okay?"

He presses his lips together, electing to ignore the question in favour of answering hers. "I… guess I could stay here…" Oliver murmurs, and Cassiopeia visibly perks up. "Th- that is, if it's not too much trouble!" he adds on quickly, not particularly wanting to be a burden.

She blinks slowly. "Oliver, child," she starts, and Oliver wrinkles his nose, seeing as he's technically not a child, "I have been alone for so long, just having someone here who isn't that godforsaken Council is a blessing."

Oliver blinks, staring at her for a moment, before lighting up with a smile as he exclaims, "Thank you, Queen Cassiopeia!"

Cassiopeia sighs, though it's through a grin of her own. "What will it take for you to stop calling me that? Perhaps I shall start calling you Saviour Oliver."

"...Please don't."

"Very well, Saviour Oliver."

---

Swaine dies first.

It maybe shouldn't be a shock to Oliver, who's been living with Cassiopeia for the past fifty years and visiting his friends every week, watching their grey hairs slowly grow in as his stays the same red as always. But somehow, it is a shock, and it's another reminder of how he's still thirteen while his friends are literally dying around him. He attends the funerals: the public one and the private one. Both have a traditional Hamelin send off - that is, cremation. The actual body gets set on fire during the private ceremony.

In both ceremonies, Marcassin makes a speech. In both ceremonies, he cries. As does Esther, and Drippy. Oliver attends with Cassiopeia, and quietly sobs into a handkerchief adorned with Nazcaan symbols, as Cassiopeia lets him lean on her shoulder.

Marcassin is next. His son ascends the throne, thankfully much older than his father was when he did the same. He gets a similar set of ceremonies; being the emperor and all, though, they're bigger than Swaine's funerals were (Oliver's not sure Marcassin would have liked that), and the three kingdoms are swung into sadness for a week before things get back on track. Everything goes back to normal so quickly after even the emperor's death, Oliver thinks, watching the main street of Hamelin bustle from a palace balcony as he cries silent tears for his friend.

The next funeral is thankfully a good few years later - Esther's. Gogo dies with her, what with him being born out of Form Familiar. Her ceremony is much quieter, yet Al Mamoon keeps their heads bowed for her, the daughter of a Great Sage and one of the best familiar keepers around. Oliver realises Esther dying means Myrtle must be dead as well, and quietly mourns two friends instead of one. He swallows as he realises it also means his childhood friends from Motorville must either be already dead or close to it. During Esther's ceremony, Drippy clings to Oliver's shoulder as they both realise they're the only two of the original team left.

Drippy lives for much longer, thankfully - he looks the same as he did seventy years ago, bar maybe a few extra wrinkles surrounding his eyes. Oliver asks him about this, and at first he responds with offense, but then explains that fairies have a much longer lifespan than humans do. He lives for another fifty years before finally kicking the bucket. Oliver is the only human allowed at what would otherwise be a fairy-only ceremony. He watches Drippy's body vanish into a puff of golden magic, and tries not to burst out wailing, because he can hear Drippy calling him a Cry-Baby Bunting at even the first sign of tears. Only a few of the other fairies cry. Many of them who weren't alive a hundred and twenty years ago (has it really been that long? Oliver's heart squeezes as he realises it might have been) give Oliver almost offended looks during the ceremony, not knowing who he is, but the fairies that know him tell him to pay them no mind.

When he returns to the Ivory Tower after Drippy's funeral, he sits in the garden for a while, surrounded by plants and flowers, tugging on his black mourning cape (which Oliver wishes he didn't know was a thing) and gazing up at the steadily darkening sky through the glass. For some reason, it didn't hit him til now that everyone he once knew from when he was actually thirteen, on a dumb quest to save the world that really never should have worked but did, is gone. Everyone, from every town. Drippy was the last part of that time he had. The first tear falls, then the next, and he feels himself breaking down as he starts sobbing, sitting on the red brick below him and letting himself cry for a time that's long since passed. Somewhere between tears comes the realisation that he won't be able to see his mom in the afterlife, if there is one (and considering he's died before, he thinks there is) and he thought he was over her death, there are more recent deaths to be sad about, but all his grief hits him at once, and he wails and howls into his hands like the thirteen year old that he isn't.

Cassiopeia finds him curled up in a ball on the floor next to a bench, tear tracks still wet on his cheeks. The first thing she does is question why he's on the floor when there's a perfectly good bench right next to him, which makes him smile, even though it's fake. Then she scoops him up and carries him through to the living room, where he eventually falls asleep on her shoulder as she reads through a peace treaty from ten thousand years ago that she found in the back of the palace library and highlights the spelling mistakes.

The next day, Oliver returns to the garden and, following in Cassiopeia's footsteps, picks five flowers to fill with his memories. It doesn't mean he loses those memories himself, it just means if he ever forgets his adventures, he can always have a little reminder.

One is blue, like Drippy's fairy suit. One is pink, which was Esther's favourite colour. Another green, as Swaine's coat. The fourth purple, like Marcassin's cape. The last flower's petals are pure white, with a black center. Oliver stores in this flower his memories with his mother, and with Lucien, and how he saved Cassiopeia; it's the centrepiece of the bouquet. He keeps the five flowers in a vase in his room, enchanting them to never die.

---

Oliver is thirteen.

Sitting on a kitchen counter and watching-slash-guiding Cassiopeia on how to use an electric kettle (he's not entirely sure, himself - they've only been invented recently), he smiles.

"Why in the world are you smiling?" Cassiopeia says, trying to figure out where the on button is. "This damned machine still won't turn on!"

"I don't think there's any need to cuss out the kettle, Cassiopeia," Oliver says. "We have all the time in the world, after all." She glares at him, and he giggles.

"Read the instructions to me one more time, I think I got it."

It still hasn't quite sunk in that he'll be thirteen forever, but it will eventually.