“Hey Sean,”

Kaidan started, writing on the second page of the book the boy had given him. The first, he would reserve for the title page, which he was unsure of. He was seated in the grass, his back leaning against a tree, the warm ocean breeze hitting his face, and the day, which had not started yet, was already proving to be a hot one.

In the distance, he could hear carving, of metal against metal, names being etched in a grave of steel, so that they would last forever.

He followed with his writing.

> “It has been three weeks since… Well, everything happened. The days after were the hardest days of my life, even harder than the minutes after your mom’s death. Ayane, Tom, and Dylan tried to cheer me up the best way they could, they dragged me around as I desperately kept searching on the field of dead bodies and metal scraps for a sign of you, but nothing came out of it, the search area was just far too big, and the currents, too strong.”

The metal cling revealed another name being etched.

> “Maybe it was because they didn’t have any truly loved ones back at Elysium-3 that the destruction of it all affected them less than me. Or was it that they already had lost the most precious thing in their lives that this was just par for the course?”

Another carving, for another death.

> “Not that they enjoyed it, far from it. It drove them crazy to hunt Anton down. But we couldn’t easily leave, and leave the island as they were, mourning like us for the loss of so many.”

As he wrote, Dylan finished etching the final name on a lump of metal, the object towered over the boy and the ocean, plunged on the floor of a cliff overlooking where Elysium-3 was in its final moments.

The four of them were there, watching the Sun rising on the ever stained horizon, but this morning seemed somewhat different, the dust was spaced in such a way, that the sky above could trick you that it was clear.

But it was just a trick as usual. There was no such a thing as a clear sky.

Kaidan took a final look at the object, the place where “Sean Eloday” was written, and after a deep breath, he moved away.

“There is one more place I need to go, I’ll meet you all back on the ship.” And into the forest, following a dirty road, he faded.

A couple of minutes later, he was back at the totem Uroa called a “countdown”. Now, where once was a space divided by two colors, multiple names were written, so many, that both sections of the totem were covered, even though it should be a single part per generation.

Kaidan touched the object, looking at the names written there, Uroa’s name being one of them.

He took the knife out of his pocket, kneeled and carved out a very small piece of wood from the totem.

“I hope you’ll forgive me for doing this.”

He then stood up and began to write once again, as he walked his way back to the town and towards the harbor, as he passed by multiple people, he said not a single word, just waved and smiled.

And into the boat, for a while, he went.

----

Another paragraph was weaved.

> “The kids were amazing as always, they dedicated all of their time to scavenging the old town, the ruins under the lake, and the destroyed region of the new town together with Dylan. All to fully rebuild the Exocore, to bring it back into action. Unalu was eager to help too, and Tom landed him a hand, together with many people from across other islands, who came to our aid. Yes, Tom was working with outsiders. Hard to believe, I know.”

He stared out of the winddown onboard the Klonoa, now fully rebuilt, sitting at the port, at the edge of the island, signs of the destruction still lurking all around.

Kaidan stepped out of the room, closing the book for a second, and walking into the bathing sunlight. A crane was lowering the Exocore into the boat. Unalu and Dylan were controlling the whole operation, but the kids were all over the place, waving their arms together with the two men as if they were giving the orders.

He looked eastward, atop a cliff, where the piece of metal stood carved on the ground, even though the hills and mountains covered the object partially.

“It was part of our culture,” he could hear Uroa say.

Elysium had very little wood in it, so it seemed fit to use a part of its hull, made of steel to deter the dust corrosive effect from destroying it fast enough.

“Hey Kaidan, are you listening?” a voice almost shouted at him, and frankly he wouldn’t notice if not for the fact Ayane was wavering an arm in front of his face.

He had not seen her too often in the past few days, as she locked herself in a makeshift lab trying to extract whatever Anton used in the juice and had in the arrow he shot Tom with.

“Sorry, you need something?” he said looking at her.

Her hair was fully braided just like a true Minsho priestess would have her hair done back in Elysium, one circling her head with two falling over her shoulders at the front, wearing the same white dress decorated with blue flower patterns on its gown. The difference is that this time she had a blue flower adorning her hair, a bioluminescent one, from under the lake.

She smiled at him, she seemed refreshed, and full of hope. She spun around, letting her dress swirl back and forth.

And at her wrist, were the satchel with seeds, its brown leather contrasting the bright colors of her clothing, but almost matching her hair.

“How do I look?” she asked.

“Like yourself,” he replied, his voice dead, but he tried to sound cheerful.

He failed.

“Well,” she followed, “There is something I want to tell you. Something I told Lina when we were planting the seeds at the lake’s bed.”

He was there when they did the thing, but only in body, his soul stared at the place where the snake’s body once lay, now the red stains had been washed by rain. Real rain, not the fake one the water sprouts left behind.

“Yes?” he said, pretending to be interested. In a way he was, but still…

“I got a name for them,” she said, taking a seed out of the pouch. “Uroa.”

“Not your husbands?” he asked, perplexed.

“Well, he never named it after him. I don’t think he would want it. It wasn’t his style.”

She clutched her hand with the seed inside, in front of her chest and slightly lifted whichever foot was more to the back, this time, it was the left one. A movement she was fond of making, one his best friend always loved to see, she seemed, angelic and innocent doing it.

“He didn’t want to be forgotten. Nor him, nor this island, or his people.” She said almost uttering like a wish.

“His wish will be realized, I won't let them be forgotten”, determination pierced through her words.

“Wishes… Sean also made a wish once.”

Lina came over to the deck through the gangway, dressed in a stunning orange dress that added to her tanned skin, beginning at her left shoulder and following the contour of her body all the way to her knees, adorned with a black flower pattern identical to the one Ayane had on her dress, which complemented the tattoos on her right shoulder.

She carried a little boy in her arms. The little kid was no more than two weeks old and already showed signs of being uncontrollable, flinging his little arms around and gazing at everything. Attached to the yellow clothing surrounding the boy was a book.

“Here,” she said, removing the book from the cloth and handing it to Kaidan. The boy let a smile go out and his heart stopped for a second, a memory flying by of a little boy once smiling at him.

“Echoes of…” he said, reading the book title. “What is this?”

“The kids and Uroa’s favorite book. From the hero Eric Monroe. He loved it.”

“Hero huh? Sean loved the idea of heroes, he even called me one.”

“I hope that it can help you on your journey. To not lose track” she said, fumbling for words.

“Thank you,” he said. “We offered you all nothing but destruction and still…”

“You shame my husband’s name by saying that.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Kaidan was caught off guard by her words and her tone.

“He died for you all, believing you can give us a chance. The people here, the kids, Uyumi, Tukal, were happy to have people they thought of as heroes, who were here, who knew about us.”

Suddenly, it felt like she knew English perfectly. And he felt ashamed of his words. Sean also believed in him, and he knew that. That was why he made the decision he was about to announce, he just needed everyone to be around before announcing it.

“Now, let’s see if all is in place” Kaidan heard Dylan say. The boy was inside the cockpit of the Exocore.

“Common Tukal” Dylan whispered, conversing with the machine. “your pieces wouldn’t break from such a simple movement.”

On the screen he was looking at, the term “Uyumi System Loading” was displayed. He wrote the code and all the villages decided that the name for the robot and the system were the best possible they could come up with.

“Still” began Kaidan towards Lina, “I’m sorry about your husband.”

“Uroa had four months only. That is why he did it” she replied. “I cried more for the kids, he would too. They had a life ahead,” she solemnly continued looking at the Exocore as Dylan came out of the cockpit and moved to join the group.

“With the Exocore in, we have everything on board,” Tom mentioned, approaching from behind. “We are ready to depart.”

“I hope you enjoy all the food we got for you,” Lina said looking at Tom. He sighed and ignored her.

“Ready friends?” said Unalu, approaching the group at the same time as Dylan arrived. while signing the paperwork for the ship’s departure from the pier.

“So, now that we are all here, I need to revise our plan moving forward.” Began Kaidan “

We’re still on track for the original mission. We need to arrive at the 7 Main Towers and plant the seeds. We don’t have the info we expected to get from the Tower experiment here, but we’ll figure it out regardless.”

He paused for a second, before continuing.

“That means we’ll meet Anton again for certain. At the lakebed, he spoke about destroying all seven of them. I want to make it clear that just like he allowed me to live, we’ll not kill him. We’ll hunt him, and do whatever it takes to stop him, and let him live to watch his failure just as he did to me.”

“I …” began Tom in a tone of defiance. “Alright sir, understood. But if he tries to pull some crazy stunt like this again and I have the chance, no order you give will stop me from killing him if it comes to that.”

“To Japan next?” asked Unalu, his pronunciation somewhat better than when they first met.

“It is the location of the closest Main Tower, but if our intel is right…” continued Tom, “Are we following him? Anton I mean,” Tom gazed straight into Kaidan’s soul.

“We could beat him to the Main Tower if we were to go there straight,” suggested Ayane thoughtfully, but at the same time, her mind seemed to think something else.

“I would prefer we keep right next to him,” Kaidan replied, “what if he goes to the Main Tower on Lake Baikal, or the Himalayas for instance? Or visit Japan after we leave it? No, we should follow his every step and avert every plan he comes up with.”

“And I gotta confess” followed Dylan, “I’m curious, why Australia of all places? It is known as the Dead World for a reason.”

“That is just a bad name,” said Lina. “Uroa traded with people from there. Lots of ways to get iron there. But it’s the land of the Britannic Empire…” she said the words as if spelling them would bring bad omen.

“Our informant, is he there?” asked Unalu. “Is he Britannic?”

Kaidan shrugged and then replied.

“We’ll find out once we get there I guess. He was the one who provided us documents for travel, but only Rutgers ever spoke to him.”

And then, there was silence. For a second, for five seconds, then for ten.

“Eventually, we should get used to this. To depart,” thought Kaidan, sad.

Unalu put two of his fingers into his mount and whistled. The kids surrounding the Exocore Tukal quickly came running towards him and he got the attention of some of the workers. He began to, or what at least seemed to Kaidan, order them around, with precision and heaviness in his words. It reminded Kaidan of their first night aboard the Klonoa when he made life-and-death decisions using the crane.

Despite the boy’s young age, Kaidan felt secure around him, even though, when the boy offered to sail the group around the world after Anton, Kaidan was reluctant about it.

“All that he has left is about three months… It'll be another goodbye soon, and I don’t want to go through it again.”

As everyone cleared the deck, two little boys approached Tom, they were the ones he jumped into the water to save.

They didn’t say a word, they probably knew he would not understand. Instead, they raised their hands, showing him two bags. Inside one of them, was a selection of food from the island, and in the other a set of clothes, a pair of open-chest shirts dyed in deep blue with dark wave patterns dotted around.

“They craft it themselves for you”, said Lina, “even the food.”

Maintaining his usual air of “I don’t care” regarding the people outside Elysium-3, he grabbed the items, took a deep breath, as if the next words he would say were harder than carrying rocks up a hill, and then finally spelled it out…

“Thank you” as he kneeled to the two, putting the bags on the floor and then placing a hand over each boy’s shoulder.

“Take care of one another. Soon I’ll be back to check on the two of you.”

The kids stared at one another.

“Could you translate for them?” Tom asked Lina briskly.

“I think they understood quite well” she replied with a smile, then proceeded to talk to the boys and requested them to leave. Tom picked the bags from the floor and began to move towards the boar’s bridge.

“He is a good guy, but bad attitude”, Lina said to Kaidan as she began to leave the ship.

“I’ll work on that,” said Kaidan, almost as an oath.

“I'll remember your little story,” Lina said to Ayane, “I’ll one day tell my son about it, so he can be brave like you.”

“I hope it can help you through such difficult times,” Ayne replied.

For a second Kaidan saw Tom, quickly glancing at the two boys, who waved him goodbye from the pier floor. With a little hesitancy, Tom lifted his hands and gently waved to them. A small smile overcame Kaidan’s face after seeing that.

He approached the rail facing the docks. Despite the place having a small number of inhabitants, now even smaller than before their original arrival, the docks were packed with people, most coming from other islands to help rebuild it. He couldn’t help but think of the stark contrast between this departure and the one in Elysium-3.

There was vibrancy and hope in the outside world.

Unalu approached the rail and stared outwards, to Mali, the woman who every day provided them with specialties from the sea. They exchanged a glance of what seemed sadness, holding his ever-present hat in front of his chest, clutching it, squeezing the object… and then the boy moved away, the departure paperwork still in his hand, towards the bridge, as the gangway was finally removed.

Were there words unsaid between them? The feeling lingered on Kaidan’s thoughts as he remembered his wife, her death so abrupt, full of things he had never said, but wished. He hoped that this time, he was just imagining things.

The final rope attaching the boat to the dock was finally retrieved, and the Klonoa engines roared as the boat moved sideways, sliding away from the dock.

Ayane ran towards the rail, braced herself over it, the wind moving her dress array, her braids and her flowing with it, and shouted to Lina, as the boat departed.

“Thank you for everything, as soon as I can, I promise to find a way to fix your Tower.”

Everyone at the docks waved goodbye.

After a couple of minutes sailing out, the island getting further and further apart, diminishing by the minute in the grand horizon, Kaidan took a look at the book Sean gave him and at the one Lina had just gifted him. He flipped through the pages Eric Monroe wrote, and a photograph fell from inside it.

In the picture, The Exocore Tukal stood tall in front of a broken orphanage. Surrounding it were 12 kids, all smiling. At the cockpit, Dylan was seated, the display online for all to see and read the words “Uyuni”. Right underneath it, at the center, stood Lina holding Sarua, who had been born in the world just a week before. She stood next to Ayane, both wearing the same dress they were using today, different colors and designs, but both sharing the same flower pattern.

Tom stood in between the two boys, pretending he didn’t notice them and staring away, while the boys stared at him with inspiration. Unalu sat on the robot’s left arm, his eyes watching Mali, who introvertedly, quite hard to notice, looked at him as she cared for two kids ready to run away towards the camera. The sky was blue that day, the Sun managed to come through the dust strongly

“What is the true reason we are going to Australia rather than Japan?” asked Ayane, approaching him quietly. She eyed him, analyzing his every move.

“I sided with you on this decision,” she followed, “but I need to know you’re not going into this with some revenge idea.”

“The day we departed Elysium-3, Sean told me something. He…” said Kaidan, before stopping to take a deep breath, “he said I was a hero already, and his wish had been completed already… but he was wrong. I’ve failed him. I’m no hero.”

Ayane glanced at the picture fallen from the book and then started right back at him.

“You think hunting him will make you a hero? You and I have no more than eleven months left, this could be time wasted.”

“I think heroes make sacrifices and uphold morals and justice instead of choosing the easy route. If we stop him in some way, we would be helping many.”

He lifted Eric’s book, showing it to her.

“But I expect to learn more from this guy,” he said, pointing at the book. “For now, I believe that the people from the island are true heroes, I can’t explain why, but I feel it inside me.”

He flipped to the first page of Eric’s book and read the title of the first chapter, “Echoes of a Broken Sky.”

He then began to move towards the lower decks of the ship, but not before telling her.

“As I said before, my vengeance will be saving this world and letting him live with his failure, I can guarantee few things hurt more than that.”

----

He then proceeds to his cabin inside the lower decks, where just a single small porthole allows light to come. He sat at a steel chair in front of a steel desk, emptied of color. With a lamp atop it, a lamp of cyan light. He turned it on, placed his books over the counter, grabbed a tape from inside the drawer in the desk, and tapped the photograph Lina carefully hid inside the book and right next to it, the piece of wood he took from the totem. And then under it, he began to write.

> “I looked everywhere across the island in search of something that represented that place. Wondered if the sand of the beach would do, if the bark of the trees that made the giant totems were a symbol good enough, or even if the bioluminescent flowers from under the lake were an option. But none felt good enough, even though I took a piece of the totem they called “a countdown”.

>

> This picture though came at a good time. It represents everything this place is. A legacy, an idea of not being forgotten, to endure the testament of time and live on. A picture or even a book usually does it well enough, but this picture in particular does more than most.

>

> Because there, I can see Uroa in the seeds Ayane carries on her satchel at her wrist., or in his son's face, at the orphanage and at the kids’ lives moving forward. In there, I see Tukal and Uyumi living under Dylan’s guise as they take the shape of the Exocore they were trying to help him build. I see Tom opening up for the possibilities of the world he so much hates. I see this book on my hand, which carries you my son, carries your wishes and desires. And I see people all carrying a piece of what we are.

>

> In the old days, flowers were a common gift to the people we love, even after they had departed, being left at the graves of those whom we longed for. The seeds we planted that day were flowers not thought for those who died that night.

>

> They were for the first thing that once it was destroyed , took together with it our freedom, leading us here, in the hopes of becoming who we once were. The first death on this long journey, despite the assumption that drained the colors of the world, couldn’t take down the will of life to strive for better days, and for people to be good in dire circumstances.

>

>  

>

> That day, we planted Flowers For a Broken Sky.