Journey's Dawn[]
Mina is a renowned traveler whose journals are widely read by the Aurorians of Astra. In one of her travel logs, Mina describes a regret she has held in her heart ever since she was a young girl. When she was growing up in a village along the banks of the Gold River, she formed a deep friendship with a knight from Lumopolis named Sheriozha, but, in the end, they had to go their separate ways. In this story entitled Journey's Dawn, the veils on both the Lumo Knights and Luminatics will be lifted one by one.
Introduction[]
For Mina, those days confined to the banks of Gold River as a teenager are unforgettable. Back then, her life lacked both excitement and meaning, leaving her to endure the most basic of existences. But all this changed when the caravan appeared.
Volume I: Gold River Memories (Volume I)[]
Many times have I sat on the banks of the Gold River, watching the sun move slowly across the sky.
The frigid water lapped my calves, and I felt my stomach twitch. Sif's father was out in the river fishing with his net. He would often look back and smile at us, his hand behind his back, but I knew that his palm was covered in brown scabs.
Sif was barefoot, running back and forth along the riverbank. She deposited the mussels she collected in a big pile next to me, then had me pry them open with my knife and scoop out the meat while she waded in to wash the cuts the gravel had made on her feet.
The sun shone brilliantly on us.
There was nothing quite so difficult as going to Sif's house to eat. I had to try very hard to eat at exactly the same pace as her because I always felt horribly impolite whether I finished before or after her.
Sif's mother was kind enough to give me dried fish and bacon to take home to my drunken father.
"Things would be much better if only your mother was still alive," she said.
Sif's mother liked to comb my messy hair back with her fingers. When she did so, her eyes were always tired, and she appeared to be looking across a long distance at someone else entirely.
She and my mother were good friends, just like Sif and me.
When my mother died, my father and I lived off the good will she had generated.
Father was afraid I would catch him drinking. He always stood far away from me when I returned home, but the smell of alcohol was too strong to hide. He would order me to put the food on the wobbly wooden table, then have me go wash my clothes. After he fell asleep, I would go looking for his hidden liquor bottles.
They were everywhere. Under the bed, in piles of clothes, in the ashes of the stove...
I would always rinse them out in the river and tie a fishing net rope around their necks, tying them into strings of ten. There were two nails pounded into each side of the bedroom windows, and I hung the bottles there. A shining little sun reflected off each bottle, and they made crisp clinking sounds as they knocked against each other.
Until that day, this was my only form of entertainment.
(to be continued)