Oneshot
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Nekodatta
Pokémon Trainer
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Last year back in May I wrote a oneshot about the game "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33". I did it as I was still in the middle of playing the game, basically with the same exact amount of information the characters themselves had at that point in the story, which made for an interesting experience.
I first posted this oneshot as the game had basically just come out and there were less than 50 fics about it on Ao3, and it was the second ever fic posted about it on FFNet. It's probably the fastest thing I've written for a fandom after getting into it, lol.
Therefore this oneshot has no spoilers past Act 1 of the game outside of the general premise of the story.
I'm looking to polish this up a bit if necessary, but I'm mostly curious about what other fan of the game think of it.
His grandfather's Gommage, number 62, had come when he had been only three, too young to fully grasp what was happening.
He had only vague memories of lots of people wearing flowers at the harbour, but the figure of his grandfather dissolving into ash and red petals after one last quick hug had branded itself into his memory.
Maybe it had even been one of his earliest ones.
That had been when Gustave had first learned of the Gommage.
His grandmother's Gommage had been four years later. Gustave remembered helping carry her handmade pillows outside her house, all beautifully embroidered with flowers and geometric patterns, and laying them down on a table on the street, covered by a cloth so they wouldn't get dirty. It had been a beautiful sunny day, the sky bright blue with not a cloud in sight, the horizon clear.
« Look at that sky! » Grandma said once they were done, clapping her hands.
She was a strong looking woman, the kind you could easily picture baking bread all day long and covered in flour instead of working with dainty, delicate threads and sewing needles. She wore a long, wide dress, her gown almost reaching the ground covered in petals.
« Why, last year's Gommage was terrible! All that fog, you couldn't even see the number on the Monolith. Dreadful, it was... poor Margot had to go like that, trembling like a leaf. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. »
Gustave remembered that; Margot had been their neighbour. The nerves of not being able to see when the Gommage would actually start had gotten the better of her, and she had fainted well before sunset actually arrived, missing her last hours. Her grandson had hugged Gustave, sobbing something about not even saying goodbye.
« Yeah. It's... nice.» Gustave mumbled. « The weather, I mean.» he quickly added.
Some petals from a nearby vase fell over one of the pillows, and he brushed them away. Who had started the tradition of the flowers, and why? He didn't know.
Those who did were already long gone.
« I wonder who's going to take these pillow home!» Grandma had been smiling, but her hands kept playing with the flowers around her neck, ripping away the red petals. They fell at her feet and around Gustave like fragile drops of blood.
He remembered that quite well, too.
« Now, Gustave, will you stay here and make sure that someone doesn't make off with all of them? » she had asked, and Gustave had nodded.
He had been only seven, but he knew that would never happen.
There was always so much stuff left behind every Gommage by who disappeared that there was no reason to steal or fight over anything.
There was more than enough for everyone, and less and less people to use them every year.
But Grandma probably just didn't want him to see her disappear like Grandpa had done.
She had stumbled towards the harbour alone to meet up with his parents, trembling, the flowers around her neck ripped bare of their petals. Gustave had kept his promise and watched as people came and went after the Gommage, looking through what was left behind.
One pillow, he secretly decided, he would keep for himself to remember her by. Just one.
He gave one to a young couple; the lady was expecting a child. Grandma would have loved to know that one of the precious pillows she spent so much time sewing would be used by a small child.
Another pillow went to a lady that didn't look that much younger than Grandma. Gustave remembered thinking that in just a couple years time, that pillow would be left on the streets again, and who knew who would take it then.
One last pillow remained. Dark green satin covered in a beautiful and carefully embroidered pattern of golden leaves and branches.
Gustave was about to grab it and run back home, but the figure of a tall man suddenly appeared from behind him. The boy let out a gasp and shrank back, recognizing the dark uniform embroidered with golden thread, the number that glittered on his armband.
Expedition 58.
« Who's pillow was this, kid?» the man asked, carefully picking it up to turn around in his hands, before looking up at him with clear eyes.
Gustave hesitated just a moment.
« ...my grandmother's, Monsieur. She made them herself. » he mumbled.
« ... Figured. You're lucky to still have met your grandparents, kid. Treasure those memories; if we fail, you'll be one of the last generations that will be able to claim they knew them. » the man said with a sad smile.
Gustave hadn't thought of that. That in the following years, there would be less and less grandparents until they would all disappear.
People wouldn't get to grow old enough to become grandparents. And after that... they wouldn't grow old enough to become much of anything.
« ... But you won't fail, will you? » he asked in a whisper, eyes wide.
The man laughed.
« Of course we won't! Tell you what, kid. How about I take this pillow with me on the expedition? I'm sure it will help me sleep well as we head for the Monolith. I'll take good care of it, and bring it back to you! »
Gustave looked at the pillow. He wanted to keep it, but... this would help the Expedition, even just a tiny bit. Grandma would have been proud.
He nodded, silent.
The man had walked away with a booming laugh, waving.
Gustave had never seen that pillow again.
Expedition 58 had disappeared just like all the others the following years, swallowed up by the continent and whatever Nevron that must have lived on it.
Year after year, he had watched them depart on their ships (and a giant wheel, once. Expedition 50 had been crazy like that), never to be seen again, and he would briefly wonder what happened to them... and to that single, insignificant pillow, and that man. He hadn't even asked his name.
Now, years later, as he himself stood on the same ground his countless predecessors had treaded, he still found himself looking for both of them, as dumb as he knew it was. That pillow had probably been torn to shreds years ago. And that man... had suffered the same fate, probably.
And yet... Gustave still searched.
Every past expedition's flag they used as a resting point, every old, ruined campsite littered with corpses frozen black with chroma they happened to find, his eyes would briefly scan the area, almost subconsciously.
« Scary how fast we got used to it.»
Snapping out of his thoughts he turned around to find Lune staring forlorn at three figures on the ground, huddled close under a half broken tent. She gestured to the vegetation that had crawled all over the three human figures wearing black and gold, hiding them from sight almost completely.
« To... all this. It's just... that there's so many of them. » she added in a low whisper.
Gustave replied with a stiff nod.
He understood exactly what she meant. Anywhere they went, they would find traces of past Expeditions.
After a while, your mind started to just stop paying attention to them.
Flags still standing, billowing in the wind, proudly announcing that the people they had belonged to had made it there. Campsites, some with old, rusted kettles still propped up on a long extinguished fire.
And corpses.
So many corpses of fellow humans, perfectly preserved by some sick trick of the Paintress.
In Lumière, every Gommage people disappeared in flower petals and ash, not even leaving a body to bury and mourn behind.
Here, they were destined to never decay. All little background details of the masterpiece made by the perverse goddess they called the Paintress.
Some were laying just at the edge of the road, as if they were just sitting down to take a brief nap.
Probably succumbed to poison or infected injuries; Expedition 33 made sure to avoid eating anything they found around them, as to not commit their same mistake.
They continued.
Many were covered in dried up blood, laying next to the Nevrons they had perished from; Expedition 33 killed any Nevron they found still standing, feeling just the faintest twinge of satisfaction at the idea of avenging them by channeling power through the Picto runes they would sometimes still hold.
They continued.
Too many to count had their faces frozen in pained screams, fingers clutching at empty air as they lay suspended in the air, pierced by spires sprouting from the ground, or thorns, or laying broken after a mortal fall. Expedition 33 made sure to always check their footholds, cushioning their fall with a burst of chroma as to not suffer the same fate.
They continued.
Sometimes, in the heat of battle, Gustave would dodge a lightning fast Luster's charge just to watch it slash a fellow Expeditioner's body apart, or thrust his sword into the ground to channel a surge of Power towards his comrades just to realize he had stabbed through the back of someone long gone, the body half buried in ground and moss.
The first time it had happened, he had puked part of their measly rations out as soon as the battle had finished, feeling sick to his stomach.
Now he didn't think anything of it anymore. If they didn't want to join all their comrades, they didn't have that luxury.
But still, he would take a moment to stop and look at them if he could.
« It didn't look like that many people when we watched them leave every year, right? » he asked Lune as he crouched near one of the figures on the ground. One was still clutching a pistol. He didn't know if that meant that they had used it on themselves or just considered it.
This one wore an armband with a 75.
She had been laying here, frozen, since before he had even been born.
Lune cautiously crouched near him, not before scanning their surroundings to check for Nevrons - but there weren't any. Maelle and Sciel were keeping guard near the flag post, a bit further ahead.
« No. Every year, it looked like the Expedition struggled to gather people, but I guess that over the years... it quickly added up...» she frowned, leaning closer to the other two figures on the ground, brushing leaves away to look at their armbands.
« ... They are all different.» she said in a low voice, just a tiny hint of that spark of excitement that would color her voice when something caught her attention, but more subdued. Contained.
Gustave furrowed his eyebrows, not quite understanding what she meant until he had a look himself.
They all wore different armbands.
He felt a painful lump in his throat and forced himself to swallow it down, taking a steady breath.
They were huddling close, so he thought that they had been comrades, maybe lifelong friends, choosing to spend their last moments next to each other.
But those Expeditioners had been separated by decades. Yet each of them had chosen to crawl under that tent next to the others. There wasn't anyone else of their same expedition near them, so they must have been alone when they did. Probably desperate for the slightest human contact.
Like when he had sat down under that tree, and grabbed the gun to-
He forced those thoughts away and looked at the three armbands.
Expedition 75, 63 and... 58.
His eyes widened when he saw something peeking out from under the figure of the man wearing the 58 armband.
« It can't be...» he whispered, moving closer.
It was him.
The man he had given the pillow, all those years ago. And there it was.
Carefully nestled under his head as he lay on his side, dirty and somewhat frayed, but the pattern was unmistakable.
« Wait... is that a pillow?» Lune muttered. She sounded more appalled than shocked. « Who brings a fancy pillow with them on the Expedition?» she asked.
« ... says the one who brought a gramophone.» Gustave replied with a slight grin as he leaned closer.
He delicately tried to pry the object from under the man as Lune sighed, putting her hands on her hips.
« ... Really? Chroma and Pictos I understand, even weapons, but... are we really resorting to stealing pillows now?» she asked.
Gustave huffed, opting to hook his mechanical arm under the man's shoulder to try and roll him over instead. As soon as he did, something that glittered caught his attention.
« ... He left a journal.» he whispered, touching it and channeling just the slightest flow of chroma into it to read it. It was protocol in the Expedition to leave both written and audio recordings; if anything happened to the written part, if it got destroyed or lost, at least the audio caught by the chroma left flowing in the area could be heard and transcribed again.
« .... I hope this works, never been any good at these- » the voice from that man crackled to life around them. He sounded pained, his breath laboured, as if he was speaking through gritted teeth.
« Here's Mathieu from Expedition 58. I'm... I think I'm one of the last of my group. Our ships got separated in the storm, no idea where the others are. Got attacked by one of those freaky human looking Nevrons... What a joke. I suppose that's a fitting end for me- »
There was a pained laugh, followed by a hiss of pain.
« - chased by a lovely, angry lady. I've decided to sit down here, next to two past Expeditioners... Hopefully it will catch someone's eyes and they stop here. »
Gustave listened with wide eyes, not taking his eyes off the journal.
That man - Mathieu, he finally knew his name now - coughed a couple of times.
« ... Losing so much blood. I've got tinctures, but they're wasted on me. To whoever finds this... use them. Use everything we have on us. I... just want to feel like I at least helped someone... »
Lune took a shaky breath next to him, and Gustave lowered his head, his hand still on the man's shoulder. It was hard and cold like a bronze statue. He squeezed it nevertheless, as if it could still give some comfort to who it had belonged to.
« It's night... the stars at least are beautiful out here. This is a long shot, but... to that kid I met the night before departing -»
Gustave's head snapped back up, incredulous.
« ... sorry for not keeping my promise. I couldn't return it to you. I-» his voice got interrupted by another fit of coughing. By the end of it, he sounded in incredible pain, every breath shaky and with a raspy undertone to it.
« I at least got some good use out of it. Slept as peacefully as a baby out here. Weird. I'm... I'm losing consciousness... how...»
The journal ended here, his last words trailing off into silence.
Gustave took a deep breath. With a grunt of effort, he delicately finished rolling over Mathieu on his back, and grabbed the pillow. The man had his eyes closed, and he looked almost peaceful, the only one of the three figures not having his face contorted in pain.
Gustave straightened himself back up, delicately brushing leaves and moss from the pillow. Lune simply stared, lips thin, looking ready to speak up again.
Gustave looked at his fallen comrade one last time.
« ... You kept your promise, you know. » he whispered.
Lune's expression relaxed. She didn't say anything, as she simply understood.
Gustave looked back at her, dissolving the pillow and the journal in a flash of chroma to keep safe.
« Let's go back to camp. »
They continued.
I first posted this oneshot as the game had basically just come out and there were less than 50 fics about it on Ao3, and it was the second ever fic posted about it on FFNet. It's probably the fastest thing I've written for a fandom after getting into it, lol.
Therefore this oneshot has no spoilers past Act 1 of the game outside of the general premise of the story.
I'm looking to polish this up a bit if necessary, but I'm mostly curious about what other fan of the game think of it.
Content warnings: mention of death and vague mention of a suicide attempt.
Satin
Gustave had always been told that his generation would be "unique".His grandfather's Gommage, number 62, had come when he had been only three, too young to fully grasp what was happening.
He had only vague memories of lots of people wearing flowers at the harbour, but the figure of his grandfather dissolving into ash and red petals after one last quick hug had branded itself into his memory.
Maybe it had even been one of his earliest ones.
That had been when Gustave had first learned of the Gommage.
His grandmother's Gommage had been four years later. Gustave remembered helping carry her handmade pillows outside her house, all beautifully embroidered with flowers and geometric patterns, and laying them down on a table on the street, covered by a cloth so they wouldn't get dirty. It had been a beautiful sunny day, the sky bright blue with not a cloud in sight, the horizon clear.
« Look at that sky! » Grandma said once they were done, clapping her hands.
She was a strong looking woman, the kind you could easily picture baking bread all day long and covered in flour instead of working with dainty, delicate threads and sewing needles. She wore a long, wide dress, her gown almost reaching the ground covered in petals.
« Why, last year's Gommage was terrible! All that fog, you couldn't even see the number on the Monolith. Dreadful, it was... poor Margot had to go like that, trembling like a leaf. Wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. »
Gustave remembered that; Margot had been their neighbour. The nerves of not being able to see when the Gommage would actually start had gotten the better of her, and she had fainted well before sunset actually arrived, missing her last hours. Her grandson had hugged Gustave, sobbing something about not even saying goodbye.
« Yeah. It's... nice.» Gustave mumbled. « The weather, I mean.» he quickly added.
Some petals from a nearby vase fell over one of the pillows, and he brushed them away. Who had started the tradition of the flowers, and why? He didn't know.
Those who did were already long gone.
« I wonder who's going to take these pillow home!» Grandma had been smiling, but her hands kept playing with the flowers around her neck, ripping away the red petals. They fell at her feet and around Gustave like fragile drops of blood.
He remembered that quite well, too.
« Now, Gustave, will you stay here and make sure that someone doesn't make off with all of them? » she had asked, and Gustave had nodded.
He had been only seven, but he knew that would never happen.
There was always so much stuff left behind every Gommage by who disappeared that there was no reason to steal or fight over anything.
There was more than enough for everyone, and less and less people to use them every year.
But Grandma probably just didn't want him to see her disappear like Grandpa had done.
She had stumbled towards the harbour alone to meet up with his parents, trembling, the flowers around her neck ripped bare of their petals. Gustave had kept his promise and watched as people came and went after the Gommage, looking through what was left behind.
One pillow, he secretly decided, he would keep for himself to remember her by. Just one.
He gave one to a young couple; the lady was expecting a child. Grandma would have loved to know that one of the precious pillows she spent so much time sewing would be used by a small child.
Another pillow went to a lady that didn't look that much younger than Grandma. Gustave remembered thinking that in just a couple years time, that pillow would be left on the streets again, and who knew who would take it then.
One last pillow remained. Dark green satin covered in a beautiful and carefully embroidered pattern of golden leaves and branches.
Gustave was about to grab it and run back home, but the figure of a tall man suddenly appeared from behind him. The boy let out a gasp and shrank back, recognizing the dark uniform embroidered with golden thread, the number that glittered on his armband.
Expedition 58.
« Who's pillow was this, kid?» the man asked, carefully picking it up to turn around in his hands, before looking up at him with clear eyes.
Gustave hesitated just a moment.
« ...my grandmother's, Monsieur. She made them herself. » he mumbled.
« ... Figured. You're lucky to still have met your grandparents, kid. Treasure those memories; if we fail, you'll be one of the last generations that will be able to claim they knew them. » the man said with a sad smile.
Gustave hadn't thought of that. That in the following years, there would be less and less grandparents until they would all disappear.
People wouldn't get to grow old enough to become grandparents. And after that... they wouldn't grow old enough to become much of anything.
« ... But you won't fail, will you? » he asked in a whisper, eyes wide.
The man laughed.
« Of course we won't! Tell you what, kid. How about I take this pillow with me on the expedition? I'm sure it will help me sleep well as we head for the Monolith. I'll take good care of it, and bring it back to you! »
Gustave looked at the pillow. He wanted to keep it, but... this would help the Expedition, even just a tiny bit. Grandma would have been proud.
He nodded, silent.
The man had walked away with a booming laugh, waving.
Gustave had never seen that pillow again.
Expedition 58 had disappeared just like all the others the following years, swallowed up by the continent and whatever Nevron that must have lived on it.
Year after year, he had watched them depart on their ships (and a giant wheel, once. Expedition 50 had been crazy like that), never to be seen again, and he would briefly wonder what happened to them... and to that single, insignificant pillow, and that man. He hadn't even asked his name.
Now, years later, as he himself stood on the same ground his countless predecessors had treaded, he still found himself looking for both of them, as dumb as he knew it was. That pillow had probably been torn to shreds years ago. And that man... had suffered the same fate, probably.
And yet... Gustave still searched.
Every past expedition's flag they used as a resting point, every old, ruined campsite littered with corpses frozen black with chroma they happened to find, his eyes would briefly scan the area, almost subconsciously.
« Scary how fast we got used to it.»
Snapping out of his thoughts he turned around to find Lune staring forlorn at three figures on the ground, huddled close under a half broken tent. She gestured to the vegetation that had crawled all over the three human figures wearing black and gold, hiding them from sight almost completely.
« To... all this. It's just... that there's so many of them. » she added in a low whisper.
Gustave replied with a stiff nod.
He understood exactly what she meant. Anywhere they went, they would find traces of past Expeditions.
After a while, your mind started to just stop paying attention to them.
Flags still standing, billowing in the wind, proudly announcing that the people they had belonged to had made it there. Campsites, some with old, rusted kettles still propped up on a long extinguished fire.
And corpses.
So many corpses of fellow humans, perfectly preserved by some sick trick of the Paintress.
In Lumière, every Gommage people disappeared in flower petals and ash, not even leaving a body to bury and mourn behind.
Here, they were destined to never decay. All little background details of the masterpiece made by the perverse goddess they called the Paintress.
Some were laying just at the edge of the road, as if they were just sitting down to take a brief nap.
Probably succumbed to poison or infected injuries; Expedition 33 made sure to avoid eating anything they found around them, as to not commit their same mistake.
They continued.
Many were covered in dried up blood, laying next to the Nevrons they had perished from; Expedition 33 killed any Nevron they found still standing, feeling just the faintest twinge of satisfaction at the idea of avenging them by channeling power through the Picto runes they would sometimes still hold.
They continued.
Too many to count had their faces frozen in pained screams, fingers clutching at empty air as they lay suspended in the air, pierced by spires sprouting from the ground, or thorns, or laying broken after a mortal fall. Expedition 33 made sure to always check their footholds, cushioning their fall with a burst of chroma as to not suffer the same fate.
They continued.
Sometimes, in the heat of battle, Gustave would dodge a lightning fast Luster's charge just to watch it slash a fellow Expeditioner's body apart, or thrust his sword into the ground to channel a surge of Power towards his comrades just to realize he had stabbed through the back of someone long gone, the body half buried in ground and moss.
The first time it had happened, he had puked part of their measly rations out as soon as the battle had finished, feeling sick to his stomach.
Now he didn't think anything of it anymore. If they didn't want to join all their comrades, they didn't have that luxury.
But still, he would take a moment to stop and look at them if he could.
« It didn't look like that many people when we watched them leave every year, right? » he asked Lune as he crouched near one of the figures on the ground. One was still clutching a pistol. He didn't know if that meant that they had used it on themselves or just considered it.
This one wore an armband with a 75.
She had been laying here, frozen, since before he had even been born.
Lune cautiously crouched near him, not before scanning their surroundings to check for Nevrons - but there weren't any. Maelle and Sciel were keeping guard near the flag post, a bit further ahead.
« No. Every year, it looked like the Expedition struggled to gather people, but I guess that over the years... it quickly added up...» she frowned, leaning closer to the other two figures on the ground, brushing leaves away to look at their armbands.
« ... They are all different.» she said in a low voice, just a tiny hint of that spark of excitement that would color her voice when something caught her attention, but more subdued. Contained.
Gustave furrowed his eyebrows, not quite understanding what she meant until he had a look himself.
They all wore different armbands.
He felt a painful lump in his throat and forced himself to swallow it down, taking a steady breath.
They were huddling close, so he thought that they had been comrades, maybe lifelong friends, choosing to spend their last moments next to each other.
But those Expeditioners had been separated by decades. Yet each of them had chosen to crawl under that tent next to the others. There wasn't anyone else of their same expedition near them, so they must have been alone when they did. Probably desperate for the slightest human contact.
Like when he had sat down under that tree, and grabbed the gun to-
He forced those thoughts away and looked at the three armbands.
Expedition 75, 63 and... 58.
His eyes widened when he saw something peeking out from under the figure of the man wearing the 58 armband.
« It can't be...» he whispered, moving closer.
It was him.
The man he had given the pillow, all those years ago. And there it was.
Carefully nestled under his head as he lay on his side, dirty and somewhat frayed, but the pattern was unmistakable.
« Wait... is that a pillow?» Lune muttered. She sounded more appalled than shocked. « Who brings a fancy pillow with them on the Expedition?» she asked.
« ... says the one who brought a gramophone.» Gustave replied with a slight grin as he leaned closer.
He delicately tried to pry the object from under the man as Lune sighed, putting her hands on her hips.
« ... Really? Chroma and Pictos I understand, even weapons, but... are we really resorting to stealing pillows now?» she asked.
Gustave huffed, opting to hook his mechanical arm under the man's shoulder to try and roll him over instead. As soon as he did, something that glittered caught his attention.
« ... He left a journal.» he whispered, touching it and channeling just the slightest flow of chroma into it to read it. It was protocol in the Expedition to leave both written and audio recordings; if anything happened to the written part, if it got destroyed or lost, at least the audio caught by the chroma left flowing in the area could be heard and transcribed again.
« .... I hope this works, never been any good at these- » the voice from that man crackled to life around them. He sounded pained, his breath laboured, as if he was speaking through gritted teeth.
« Here's Mathieu from Expedition 58. I'm... I think I'm one of the last of my group. Our ships got separated in the storm, no idea where the others are. Got attacked by one of those freaky human looking Nevrons... What a joke. I suppose that's a fitting end for me- »
There was a pained laugh, followed by a hiss of pain.
« - chased by a lovely, angry lady. I've decided to sit down here, next to two past Expeditioners... Hopefully it will catch someone's eyes and they stop here. »
Gustave listened with wide eyes, not taking his eyes off the journal.
That man - Mathieu, he finally knew his name now - coughed a couple of times.
« ... Losing so much blood. I've got tinctures, but they're wasted on me. To whoever finds this... use them. Use everything we have on us. I... just want to feel like I at least helped someone... »
Lune took a shaky breath next to him, and Gustave lowered his head, his hand still on the man's shoulder. It was hard and cold like a bronze statue. He squeezed it nevertheless, as if it could still give some comfort to who it had belonged to.
« It's night... the stars at least are beautiful out here. This is a long shot, but... to that kid I met the night before departing -»
Gustave's head snapped back up, incredulous.
« ... sorry for not keeping my promise. I couldn't return it to you. I-» his voice got interrupted by another fit of coughing. By the end of it, he sounded in incredible pain, every breath shaky and with a raspy undertone to it.
« I at least got some good use out of it. Slept as peacefully as a baby out here. Weird. I'm... I'm losing consciousness... how...»
The journal ended here, his last words trailing off into silence.
Gustave took a deep breath. With a grunt of effort, he delicately finished rolling over Mathieu on his back, and grabbed the pillow. The man had his eyes closed, and he looked almost peaceful, the only one of the three figures not having his face contorted in pain.
Gustave straightened himself back up, delicately brushing leaves and moss from the pillow. Lune simply stared, lips thin, looking ready to speak up again.
Gustave looked at his fallen comrade one last time.
« ... You kept your promise, you know. » he whispered.
Lune's expression relaxed. She didn't say anything, as she simply understood.
Gustave looked back at her, dissolving the pillow and the journal in a flash of chroma to keep safe.
« Let's go back to camp. »
They continued.