[127 / 8 / ?]
Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">January 2, 1927, Lapizlazulli, Vitelia</span>
Claude Gaumont had been but a boy when the spark of the Emrean Revolution had blazed into a wildfire, and since the first moments, he had yearned to be one of his people’s champions. The war had gone on, and he had learned more and more about the cause, but when had strength and nerve enough to have a hope of deceiving a less conscientious recruiter and finished the most basic of training at arms, the war had come to an unceremonious end.
That had been half his lifetime past, and ever since, he had yearned to find the battleground where the fate of tomorrow would again be decided. Vitelia seemed to have been that place, and many others had thought the same. A wrong assumption. The Revolution in Vitelia, it seemed, had not been theirs, and Claude had been forced to flee his comrades in the face of a sudden downpour of defeats.
A minor noble called Di Avolo had sheltered the Revolutionary, a stray flower of the Red Garden that he had found and put in a glass vase. Both knew it wasn’t for Claude’s sake, though. He was a toy, an item in a collection. The shame was the price of survival and comfort. All of the others who had not fallen in battle had been rounded up and deported to the wastelands, or scattered and fled on their own. The Utopian Front had left the lot of them in the cold- and even now, Claude repeated to himself…
“Why?” He asked out the window, to the crowd outside, assembled to listen to the man who had vanquished the <span class="mu-i">Giardino Rosso</span>, to that man himself. “What turned the League against us, to side with tyrants?”
In the same room was his new patron- as well as a guest of Di Avolo’s, a young man around fourteen or fifteen. He had a certain handsomeness, but his grey eyes were heavy with a discontent, restless boredom, an empty searching that Claude felt some kinship with. A son of a friend of a friend of Di Avolo’s, visiting here to broaden his experiences, but the boy had little interest in the outside that Claude had seen besides looking at it from a window.
“What an obvious question,” Di Avolo said, “So obvious a child could answer it.” He glanced to the boy, “Well? Go on, tell <span class="mu-i">Signore della Rivoluzione</span> why the Revolutionary League deemed he and his lot unnecessary for their Dawn. We’ve discussed what has been happening here enough.”
Claude could not protest. Di Avolo kept him housed and fed on a whim.
“Do I have to?” the youth said dully, “It’s obvious enough to not be interesting.”
“Indulge us. Tell this man how he came to be here.”
Claude Gaumont had been but a boy when the spark of the Emrean Revolution had blazed into a wildfire, and since the first moments, he had yearned to be one of his people’s champions. The war had gone on, and he had learned more and more about the cause, but when had strength and nerve enough to have a hope of deceiving a less conscientious recruiter and finished the most basic of training at arms, the war had come to an unceremonious end.
That had been half his lifetime past, and ever since, he had yearned to find the battleground where the fate of tomorrow would again be decided. Vitelia seemed to have been that place, and many others had thought the same. A wrong assumption. The Revolution in Vitelia, it seemed, had not been theirs, and Claude had been forced to flee his comrades in the face of a sudden downpour of defeats.
A minor noble called Di Avolo had sheltered the Revolutionary, a stray flower of the Red Garden that he had found and put in a glass vase. Both knew it wasn’t for Claude’s sake, though. He was a toy, an item in a collection. The shame was the price of survival and comfort. All of the others who had not fallen in battle had been rounded up and deported to the wastelands, or scattered and fled on their own. The Utopian Front had left the lot of them in the cold- and even now, Claude repeated to himself…
“Why?” He asked out the window, to the crowd outside, assembled to listen to the man who had vanquished the <span class="mu-i">Giardino Rosso</span>, to that man himself. “What turned the League against us, to side with tyrants?”
In the same room was his new patron- as well as a guest of Di Avolo’s, a young man around fourteen or fifteen. He had a certain handsomeness, but his grey eyes were heavy with a discontent, restless boredom, an empty searching that Claude felt some kinship with. A son of a friend of a friend of Di Avolo’s, visiting here to broaden his experiences, but the boy had little interest in the outside that Claude had seen besides looking at it from a window.
“What an obvious question,” Di Avolo said, “So obvious a child could answer it.” He glanced to the boy, “Well? Go on, tell <span class="mu-i">Signore della Rivoluzione</span> why the Revolutionary League deemed he and his lot unnecessary for their Dawn. We’ve discussed what has been happening here enough.”
Claude could not protest. Di Avolo kept him housed and fed on a whim.
“Do I have to?” the youth said dully, “It’s obvious enough to not be interesting.”
“Indulge us. Tell this man how he came to be here.”
