Arel saw Nolan plow his fields. Nolan was a calm water compared to the uncertain sea that he was back then. Arel noticed that his rather stiff behavior was gone. When Nolan caught sight of Arel behind his fence. Arel walked to where Nolan was and greeted him.

“Hey, work going well?”

“Yes,” he said, placing his hoe on the ground. “The trees doesn’t need my growing. I can grow them by runes, but they still need constant maintenance. The power of the earth here is rich and the soil’s quality is superb.”

“Oh, you make me feel like an amateur,” Arel confessed.

Nolan kept that thin smile. “I did work in a farm once. Still, I found peace in doing such carefree work. The minutes under the sun is nothing compared to what I have been doing before.”

He saw that light. It was only at this moment that Arel realized that he was speaking to someone the dragon of the island think of as equal.

“So where are you going?”

“To Ania, I will help her.”

Nolan stared deeply into him. Arel took a step back. There was something in Nolan’s eyes that froze him from his steps. He couldn’t help but reached inside the pockets of his frock coat.

“She is the pulse of your heart, isn’t she?”

“Huh?”

“My pulse of my heart,” he smiled, as if remembering something. “That is a way of expressing it in my home. The way you looked at her, lad, it makes me think back to my foolish self.”

“I am not in love with her,” Arel stuttered.

“Sure, but if you are, let me tell you this. Good times they never truly last, believe me when I say this.”

Arel felt that heartbreak on his voice.

“Regret is painful, and when you lost her, you would think back at the days you had the chance, but didn’t. You’ll have dreams of what if that would never go away.”

Arel thought of Ania. “I…am uncertain with my feelings.”

“Are you?” he said kindly. “I heard from the sisters that you were with her throughout a war. You two survived a war and fought against the enemies. Ah, is it because you want to stay like this forever? Do you think it would stay like this? She is a pretty woman, Arel.”

“I don’t know,” Arel leaned on the fence. “We’ve been through thick and thin, and fought for our lives. I’ve saved her life and she had saved mine for countless times. I believe that our bonds are unbreakable, but I am just afraid to take that step forward.”

Nolan eyed him with this dull eye. “I find it unsettling to see how unhesitant you are. Time does not wait for the cowardly, and fortune favors only the bold. Arel, you are a soldier it seems, and a soldier fights. Are you willing to suffer the pain of rejection or suffer the pain of regret? I will not force myself into your own life, but as someone who owe you, it unsettles me to see you two like this. I maybe am projecting my inability to once act immediately, and hold no regrets, but I don’t want to see such bittersweetness from you two.”

*****

The plaza was serene as it was quiet. Birds hummed and the leaves from the trees fell softly on the paved plaza road. Ania sat on the stairs next to the church while holding on to a journal. One would think that she was a carefree girl, but in truth she was a woman who had been through war and under her belt was the lives of people who she had bled.

Nolan and Arel walked to where she was. Nolan strides to the stairs and sat on the side as if he had nothing to say, meanwhile Arel walked to where Ania was.

“Oh, you two are together?” she asked, her head tilting at the sight of Arel’s rose-like cheeks.

“Ania,” he said, a knee on the ground, “we have been through the toughest times, and the hardest battles. Yet, I am afraid, and only because a friend woke me to reality that I have come to here to say that you are the pulse of my heart, you are the beat that tugs my chest, and you are my sunshine on this darkness.”

“What?” she was confused.

“I know that maybe I am being too forceful, knowing that I have not done anything, yet here I ask you to be my woman.”

Her face was stiff as a board. Her lower mouth hanged down. Her journal tightly gripped on her left hand. She looked at Arel with confusion at first, then with softness, rage, and finally that of a person who gave up on thinking.

She craned her head to Nolan. “You gave him this idea?”

“Did you not want it?”

“I wanted him to realize it himself. Oh my poor heart, you just can’t do this to me.”

Arel seemed to tremble. Nolan stared at Arel which Ania noted. She turned her eyes on Arel, her hands guiding him to stand up. There seems to be understanding that both of them have.

“Well, looks like we have a change of plans,” Ania said, smiling up to her ears.

If Arel didn’t get the meaning of her smile then Nolan would have whooped him right there. Alas, Arel immediately took her by the arm, wrapped his arms around Ania and twirled her around. Nolan leaned back, a smile forming around his lips.

He didn’t need to do anything here. They needed a push and even a fool like him could tell. Nolan had fought for so long that he had forgotten about the simple things. He thought back to Vie who smiled as he pulled her out that well. To the comrades who had smiled at their coming death in hopes that they bring back the light to this world.

Nolan couldn’t achieve his own happy ending. That’s why he wanted to push the backs of these two. He sat back on the stairs, and supported his head chin with a hand. Nolan felt a warm on his chest, the light was broken inside, but it still worked.