The sun was dipping below the horizon when little wee Aria finally saw it fit to sleep — the whole of Orb still hadn’t adjusted to the destruction of the false sun back during the Great War — and Gemini placed her little sleeping form onto the cot. However, Aria’s little hands gripped onto his right index finger at the last moment, clutching onto them tightly even though she was asleep.
“This…”
Lila came to his side a moment later, attracted by Gemini’s words. “She’s scared that she won’t see her papa anymore.”
Her words were thick with emotion, to the point that Gemini could barely make out the individual words. The Demon Sovereign lowered his head slightly. “Sorry. But this is the only thing I can do. The foe has grown so much. I want to protect the two of you, but…”
Some wounds would probably never heal. Gemini knew that well, after all. Sometimes, Lila would talk in her sleep, asking him not to leave her behind. On other times, she would mumble about her old family in Ars, which had been annihilated long ago.
“I know.” Lila’s expression was firm, but Gemini knew that it was a façade. Lila, in turn, knew that Gemini knew, but she still insisted on maintaining this façade of her, and Gemini knew why.
“Let’s not go to sleep this early,” said Gemini. “I want to have some…pizza. And all kinds of food we tasted, back in Ark City. Laze around, under the true night sky, and gaze up at the stars.”
“Pizza. Okay.”
“Let’s do it together,” said Gemini. “I’m still not convinced that I’m a bad cook. It tasted fine to me when I cooked my food long ago, so…”
“Maybe it’s just relative,” Lila suggested. “Like, your food tastes bad after eating mine.”
“Really? Are taste buds this fickle?”
“Why don’t you ask them and find out?” Lila forced a smile onto her face. “But yes, let’s cook together. We…might not have the chance to do that in the future, after all. I’m not sure what might follow, and—”
Gemini held her hand. “Don’t think about that. Whatever happens, will happen. If we fail, we’ll all have our memories wiped or be obliterated together, so it’s not so bad.”
“You make that sound like a good thing.” Lila smacked his head lightly.
“We’re not leaving anyone behind. And…I’m confident that if we are indeed forced into Celestia with our memories wiped, I’ll still be able to find you. No matter what.” Gemini clenched his fist. “And…I don’t think the Abyss Sovereign will split up families. That just won’t make sense, right? It’s possible that we’re all just fighting to avert futures that wouldn’t happen in the first place, or just to confront fears that shouldn’t have been a problem.”
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“You do make some sense there,” Lila replied.
“I know I do. It’ll be for the best if we can convince the Abyss Sovereign to at least leave our memories intact, however.” Gemini took a deep breath. “Or insert the necessary changes. Hereward has…prepared an entire set of countermeasures, in the event that we cannot stop Celestia’s creation.”
“Okay.”
The two locked gazes for a moment, and then Gemini cleared his throat. “Well. Pizza. Let’s get down to it, shall we? Although I suppose the fragrance would wake Aria up, so we should just prepare some for her too.”
“Do you want to check on the demigods that stayed behind? Invite them for a last meal or something?” Lila asked.
“Well, I haven’t checked on Quinn ever since he started having fun,” Gemini mused out loud. “But I don’t want to. This is my private time. The last time I invited those gluttons over, they stole much of the prepared food and rebuked me by saying gods didn’t need to eat.”
“That was three days ago…you’re still holding a grudge?”
“I’m, by all accounts, practically immortal. If I don’t make use of my limitless lifespan to hold a grudge, what good is my lifespan for?”
“If not for the fact that your mouth is twitching,” said Lila, “I would have thought you were serious. But well…we might need to talk about this immortal thing of yours eventually. When you come back, we’ll need to talk about Aria’s upbringing. It’ll be a problem for her personality if she grows up with the Demon Sovereign as her backer and shield.”
“The way you say it makes me feel like we’re going to send her to school,” Gemini replied.
“Of course we are, silly. How else is she going to learn? We aren’t teachers. I’m just a housewife, and you’re an idling great god. We’ve spent most of our lives just fighting or slacking away,” Lila replied. “Gotta get her good education, right?”
“True.” Following his wife into the chicken, Lila started to settle the dough for the pizza. Gemini, on his part, tinkered with the oven — which was an artefact he had brought back from Ark City during their previous visit — and started to preheat it. “240 degrees, right?”
“Yeah,” said Lila, glancing at a recipe book. “You can move on to other things now. See those fries there? You can start frying them, for instance.”
Gemini nodded, but before he could reach out to that bag of fries, someone rapped on his cottage door…which was attached to a cottage sitting on the highest peak of his own Divine Kingdom.
“You got to be kidding me,” Gemini muttered.
“Visitors?”
“Yeah. The other great gods, who have in their infinite wisdom, decided to visit their fellow’s home to beg for food.” Gemini rubbed his head. “Didn’t Hereward say that sending me out without alarming the enemy was really hard? Why did he suddenly decide that it was fine to drop by? In the first place, is it really fine to ditch the elites of the Five Lands and come here for a meal?”
“Well, the gods might be crazy.”
“You can strike the word ‘might’ off,” Gemini muttered. “I’ll go and receive them, then.”