EX CORPORIBUS: EPILOGUE

Completed January 26, 2020 (♒︎)

When they had told Izlude that his father was riding up the long path to Riovanes, he did his best to put on a semblance of relief. Showing them he was afraid would do nothing but compound the matter.

He did not want to betray that sort of weakness. He did not want to make things worse.

There was the solace that there would be some resolution to his weeks in captivity, however—that things would happen at last and he would no longer have to persist in the dreadful anticipation of them. They let him look to the winding path outside the tower window, where he could see the bleached and yellow plains of Fovoham running flat until they met with the edge of the Yuguewood. His father's chocobo, angular and black-feathered, scratched a line through the dirt of the road. A little ways behind him, he saw another rider trailing behind.

Izlude tensed as he recognized who it was.

His joy at knowing Wiegraf wouldn't be another death weighing upon him gave way to unease as the two men approached. Even at this distance, the figure in red looked completely unlike the man who had once rode with him to Orbonne. His features corresponded to those he remembered, but it was if the animating force within them had left. He was pale, still, and gave no gesture or glance that Izlude expected of men alive and moving.

He shuddered. It was as if they'd tied a corpse to a bird and set it running.I very much enjoyed using Izlude as bookending, and I like the parallelism of having things begin and end with some combination of a fear regarding his father, guilt over the death of others, and an outsider's assessment of Wiegraf.

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