where you go i go

Sixteen

One-hundred and eight years had passed since the end of the war, and Nayoko found herself taking on a new name and role, one that she had never expected to take on. It wasn't on purpose. Nayoko had been passing through a village when she had been caught up in a rescue effort; a local farmer's house had caught fire.

A little boy, not yet two, with hair the same colour as the fires he had been pulled from, cried out in agony and confusion as he was carried away from the remains of his home. She didn't know what prompted her to stay around and watch as the villagers discussed what to do with the little orphan, but stay she did.

"I'll... I'll take him," She murmured.

The villagers looked at her with distrust.

"I'll take him to the Archives. He'll be cared for there, treated well and given an education," she continued. While she didn't want to return, it seemed like the fairest option for the boy. It's not like anyone that remembered her was alive now, anyway.

Eventually, the villagers relented, as none of them had enough resources to feed another mouth that was not their own. When Nayoko took the path towards the mountains in the East that seemed to touch the sky, she did so with a toddler swaddled to her back.

The baby squawked and screamed and cried as she walked, and she tried her best to tune it out. However, there was only so much she could take, and after hours of endless squeals, Nayoko sat down on the path and untied the makeshift strap that held her to him. Finally free, the boy began to clumsily walk-crawl away from her.

Nayoko picked him up and held him to her chest, humming firmly in an attempt to calm him, trying to remember how she had done it. Did it even work on toddlers, or just babies? She rocked back and forth in her seated position until the boy's struggles seized and his screams settled into soft little hiccups.

Nayoko combed her fingers through his soft red fringe, finding it curious. It had been so long since she had last held a baby. She knew it was a bad idea, and yet....

"Gregor," She whispered against his forehead. His little fist clenched at her shirt in response.

Nayoko settled down in the outskirts of the Dawn Capital. It was a big enough city that she wouldn't raise any eyebrows, while it gave her the stability she felt she needed to raise the boy. Later, she knew it was the right choice as she watched the child, her child, grow from a clumsy little babe to a young boy that climbed trees and skipped stones in the lake.

It was hard to explain to him why he continued to grow and develop while she changed little, how the parents of his friends seemed far older than his own mother. How was one supposed to tell their son that they were immortal, that her body had not always been her own? That she had lived out countless lifetimes and would continue to do so until she was struck down?

"I'll be with you forever, mama," He had said as he cuddled up to her one night, unaware of how his comment had made her heart ache.

Still, she did her best to raise him, and she did. Before her very eyes, her baby boy became a young man, strong and capable and just as capable with a lance as his grandfather of the same name had been. She was there for him when he got married, and she was there for the birth of his first child.

"Ma, promise you'll watch over her when I'm gone?" He asked as she combed her fingers through his hair, just as she had done when he was a child. It was the first time he had ever brought up his own mortality in front of her, and she had to blink back the tears that welled in her eyes.

"I promise. I'll be there as for long as you need me," she said with a smile, putting on a strong face for him. He grinned up at her, exhausted by his anxiety. His still cheeky smile captured her heart.

Time felt so short to her now. The longer she lived the shorter each year felt, and before she knew it her boy's hair had faded to gray, and he could no longer skip stones in the lake.

Nayoko kept her promise to her son and continued to watch over his children and grandchildren.
They were bold and brave and so much like Gregor that it lessened the pain of losing him just a bit. But when his great-grandchildren no longer considered her family and she became the strange, ghostly woman who came to visit now and then, she knew it was finally time to move on.

She never broke her promise.