Erwin spends his days with his teacher and guardian in a little garden outside of common space and time. A curse has affected his teacher, and would take away his sight in the near future. This approaching blindness, along with his teacher's long bu...
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"The garden is very beautiful today," his Teacher muttered, his pipe hanging loosely from his mouth.
"It's not any different than usual," Erwin replied, as he looked around. He couldn't see anything special. The flowers were the same as always, and the grass was the same color, and the tree hadn't changed at all. The sky was the same as always, too.
"Perhaps. But that's because you've grown used to it," his Teacher said, closing his eyes. "When you first arrived, you thought it was the most beautiful place you'd ever seen, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but that's only because I hadn't seen much else," Erwin replied, remembering that day. It was like a dream, now, distant and fuzzy. "Besides, it doesn't really compare to the real thing, does it? I'm sure the outside world is more beautiful than this."
"Mm, maybe. Maybe not," his Teacher murmured, taking a long drag from his pipe. He blew out the smoke, slowly, and watched it curl into the air. "It depends on who you ask."
"What do you mean? There's only the two of us, isn't there?"
"Yes, but we're both very biased," the man replied, chuckling to himself. "To you, the outside world is full of unknowns, and wonders, and adventure. To me, this is the best life could ever be. Peaceful. Quiet. Unchanging."
Erwin stared through his glasses. The round frame was a bit loose, but that was okay. The metal was a little rusted, and the lenses were scratched, and the paint was flaking, but that was fine. They'd gotten wet a few times, but the water didn't seem to bother them, and they'd dried without issue.
The prescription, though, was starting to get old. Should he fix it, or should he ask his Teacher if he could have another pair? He could just try to scavenge for one in the piles of things that sometimes fell from the sky, but he'd never found anything like that before, so there was probably no point.
It wasn't a problem, really, not at the moment. He could still see fine, after all. It was just that words were beginning to look a little fuzzy, and sometimes he had trouble reading, if the lighting was bad.
Maybe he could just take the glass out of one of the lenses? No, that wouldn't work, they were sealed in, and he didn't have any tools to get them out, anyway.
He sighed. It wasn't a big deal, and his Teacher would probably be able to fix it, anyway, if he asked him to. He always could, when Erwin was younger, not that he'd aged that much, but...It was hard to tell, without the passage of seasons, or the changing of years, or a calendar, or any indication that time was even moving at all, but Erwin guessed that he was somewhere in his teens now, based on the biology books he'd read.
