Four-fold Knowing

As soon as I saw that expression paired with that prompt, I just had to do this, I'm sorry 😂

It's such a complicated thing for him: he knows, intellectually, he was never meant for his parents' peaceful life, keeping the farm. It's why he left home in the first place, knowing there was work he was better suited to.

And he'd never have met so many people, pretty much everyone he cares about outside of his parents, if he hadn't become Warrior of Light.

He's even had a few offers! Mostly from individuals who are...just as naïve as he was starting out, and while he's not jaded, while he still believes (or tries to believe) the best of people, believes there's good in the world, believes in peace over violence, life over death, he doesn't want anyone else to come so close to losing themselves to it all as he has.

That he's been through that and survived, that's the thing that makes him the Warrior of Light, as far as he's concerned. And that's the thing that also means he can't walk away. He can't go home again, it's changed him too much.

(At night, when all the stars are bright and there's not a hint of a cloud in the sky and the moon and its dogs are high in their circuit, he still smells the salt sea air and the sweet-bitter loam of freshly tilled earth--