RUINS
Written on July 5, 2020 (♋︎︎)
Author's Notes: If you've forgotten who Baron Bolmina is, he's one of the many characters in the Zeltennia faction who show up for one scene in which Goltanna is talking about tax raises.
Ovelia had not counted it strange when there had been no royal visit to Gallione in the years following the war. She had not considered the necessity of making a show of good will towards the half of the kingdom that had sought to usurp her, and if she had, it was a piece of diplomacy she recognized better left to the king. For a woman always enclosed behind castle and cloister walls, the eastern duchy had long been an abstraction anyway—a place on a map, a banner glimpsed across the plain, a word that bore little meaning save in its relation to a girl all but forgotten. Alma Beoulve, when she had known her, of course, had no conception of Gallione either, having been spirited away from her homeland before she had half her teeth.
When Delita told her that they were to attend Bolmina's instatement as the new lord of Igros, it struck her very suddenly that the place had some meaning to him that had escaped her. He seemed eager to assure her as to how little would be expected of her, how quickly they could pass through the ceremonies expected of him and back into the hills of Lesalia. When she tried to assure him it was no great burden for her to walk amongst former enemies, he grew very quiet.
All through the long weeks that followed, she did her best to ask no questions. She had found long ago that she seldom wished to hear her husband's answers. When the king seemed to linger on every detail of a castle besides the baron he was about to place in it, Ovelia left him to his thoughts. She had a wreath of red flowers put on the one monument touching near her heart and said nothing as she watched Delita walk the long white halls of Igros—winding his way through towers and walkways that could little concern him, tracing the faces of statues as though he would impress their features further into memory by his touch. When he was finally in the midst of ceremony and spectacle—placing a medallion about Bolmina's shoulders and reciting some speech a more eloquent man had written him, he was far better composed. Ovelia barely noticed how little he ate at the fete that followed.
It was only a month later, when they walked once more in the remnants of the old cathedral that they spoke on it. He made no confession as to having dwelt in Gallione once. He said that nevertheless he wished there were fewer places in Ivalice stained by ill memories.
"The war stained most places in the world," she replied softly. "Perhaps it's why I've come to love a place already ruined."
He held her then—tightly—as frightened things cling to whatever is nearest them.
"It's not ruined for us though," he whispered. "We never saw ruin come to it."
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