Falling asleep had been so easy. Too easy. Sorey, for all his talk of accepting his fate, had dreaded that moment with a leaden ball in his stomach, churning terror in his throat. Or maybe it was just leftover shock. The seraphim he'd loved most in all the world were dead and scattered to the wind. It had all been his fault. This was the right path - he was sure of it - but that didn't make it a good one. It was simply the best bad idea they'd had left. And somehow, he still had it in him to fear for his own fate. Deplorable. Maybe sleeping for hundreds of years would take the edge off. Make the pain go away, if only for what would feel like an instant. And in that moment, Sorey welcomed Maotelus into his soul, and the blinding agony of it tore his consciousness to shreds.

Waking up was different. It was a slow, gradual process. Painless. He felt as if he were floating, memories of formless dreams scattering the closer he came to waking. The first thing he noticed was the sun. His eyes weren't open, but the feeling of sunbeams striping his skin was unmistakable. The second thing he noticed was how easily he could breathe. The last concrete memory Sorey had was one of a choking, crushing malevolence that felt like it could never be quelled. But here he was, feeling far too comfortable, the sun shining, and breathing as easily as, well... breathing.

And that was when the realization hit him.

Sorey's eyes flew open. He regretted it immediately.

"Agh!" He clutched his hands to his eyes, feeling them tingle from disuse. "Mother of-! Dagnab, sonuva... Mmm!" Nobody was around. It wasn't like he couldn't curse, although from how raspy his voice was, maybe it was a thought. Edna had taught him something she called 'the F word' and a few variations of it, but somehow it didn't feel like the right time. No, if he was going to whip out an F bomb, he wanted it to be because of something other than his own stupidity. Of course his eyes hurt. They hadn't seen any light in what had probably been... Gods, how long had it been?

His stomach dropped through the earth's upper mantle. It could honestly have been hundreds of years. Alisha, Rose, Sergei... they were probably all long dead and buried. Three more to mourn. Three more ice shards that would stay in his heart forever. He coughed wetly, trying to crush back tears and expel dust from his lungs at the same time.

"Hello? Who's there?" a voice called. Sorey wasn't sure he recognized it. Something sounded familiar about it, but he couldn't place it for the life of him.

"Sorry about that," he tried to answer. His voice gave out on the second syllable and the rest like shreds of mist shortly before another coughing fit came on. It really must have been centuries for there to be this much allergen buildup. His lungs were going to hate him for weeks. He couldn't believe he'd honestly been looking forward to this.

Footsteps echoed in what must have been a hallway from the sound of it, getting closer. "I warn you, if you're up to no good, you're-!" and then a panicked gasp. Something (it sounded metallic) crashed into the stone floor, liquid sloshing everywhere. Sorey opened his eyes to the tiniest sliver he could manage. Anything else was still too painful, the morning sun still stabbing straight into his abused corneas. From the fuzzy outline, it looked like a young boy. That, or a very short man. He must have been carrying the wide-brimmed bowl of water that had been dropped, not that the boy was looking at the ground. He was staring straight at Sorey, slack-jawed.

"Really am sorry about this. Didn't mean to startle you," Sorey whispered. That, at least, came out clearly. "I don't suppose any of that water's still in the bowl, huh?"

The boy blinked a few times and finally noticed what he wasn't carrying anymore.

"Oh! I- aww, crud. I mean, well, I-" He bent and grabbed the bowl back up. "Yeah; there's some left in the bottom, but it's... It's not much, Mister Shepherd, sir."

"Not much is more than none. If you had some other use for it, I understand-"

"No! No, this was... uh, it was kinda for you, anyway."

"Really? Fantastic. No idea how you knew I'd be waking up, but there's something about gift horses and mouths I'm supposed to remember. Can I have it, please?"

"Er, right away, sir!"

Sorey sighed. "It's just Sorey. Don't worry about it." Some things didn't really change much, even separated by however many centuries it had been. But the bowl was in his outstretched hands and if he didn't knock back at least a gallon of the stuff, he was never going to be able to speak like a normal person. It was kind of on the warm-ish side, and vaguely brackish, but it was definitely better than nothing. A headache that he hadn't even noticed brewing cleared, and he felt almost back to normal. Now all he needed was to tear into a mabo curry bun and life would be worth living again. "Ohh, I needed that! Thanks again, by the way."

The boy just nodded, apparently a mixture of awed and shell-shocked.

"May I ask your name?"

"M-me? Oh, uh, I'm Rigel."

Sorey smiled. "Like the star."

"...The star?"

"Rigel is the brightest star of Hourglass constellation. It's equatorial, so you can see it from every ocean in the world. For aeons, sailors and adventurers alike have used it to navigate." Sorey's smile dimmed a little. He and Mikleo had learned stellar navigation for their journeys. A real archaeological expedition they'd been planning one day, and they weren't going to do anything stupid like get themselves lost.

"Wow. Well, my ma tells me I'm a little on the dim side, so I guess they sure called that one wrong, huh?"

Sorey tried to choke down a giggle and failed.

"So," Rigel said. "Mister Sorey? Are you really...?"

"...Really?"

"Really the Shepherd from the old tales? I mean, my ma says you've been here, just sleeping like, since she was a little girl. But there's no way that's true, right? And she says you used to be friends with Great-Grandma Rose back when she was little."

His breath caught. "Rose has a great-grandson? I... my Gods. Is she still-?" Sorey couldn't bear to ask.

Rigel heaved a big sigh through his nose. "Um, she kinda... died a couple of years ago. I was still pretty little. But she was, like, ancient. A hundred and seven, if you believe it. Some people say the seraphim kept her alive to be so old."

He honestly felt like laughing and crying at the same time. Of course Rose lived a full life. Had a good family to call her own and lived to be a ripe old age. And of course she stayed friends with seraphim. After all, a fair few had been jointly timesharing her body-

Wait.

"The seraphim."

"Huh?"

"You just said some people say 'the seraphim kept her alive'. Which seraphim? Did she ever say?" Sorey's heart was beating wildly. It couldn't be. He shouldn't give himself false hope. It would only hurt more in the end if it turned out not to be true.

"Oh. I mean, we're all pretty sure Great-Grandma Rose was kinda nutso if you take my meaning. Everybody knows humans can't see seraphim. I mean, except you, of course, Mister Shepherd. Uh, Sorey. Anyway, she kept talking to the air a lot and jumping around and then saying somebody hit her with an umbrella. She also kept calling the air a pervert. Gotta say, though, before she died, I learned some pretty intense language from her. Had my mouth cleaned out with soap for repeating some of it."

Sorey could have punched the air a thousand times and screamed for joy. It was them. It was seriously them. If Edna and Zavied (because who the hell else would it be?) were alive, then so was Lailah. So was...

So was Mikleo.

Maybe Rose was gone. He'd mourn her properly as soon as he had any real grip on this strange new world of his. But Sorey knew for fact that whatever happened from this moment on, he could weather it if only he had Mikleo. Somehow... somehow this whole ridiculous thing would get a happy ending. He wasn't sure how, and he wasn't going to question it. There was no way he was going to jinx it now.

"Okay, Rigel. A last, very serious question, and I promise you I'll stop being weird." Rigel puffed for a moment, feeling the weight of whatever came next. Accustomed at last, Sorey opened his eyes fully, letting their brightness shine for the first time in nearly a century.

"Do you remember if she said anything about where 'Meebo' went?"

(A/N): I'm... just. So. Into. This? There were some major plot-hole related issues that I had with ToZ, but Sorey and Mikleo's love story is the most compelling romance I've ever seen written into a Tales mothership title. Maybe they weren't explicit about it (because I'm pretty sure that's kinda illegal in parts of Japan) but from interviews with the voice actors, writers, and directors, it's really obvious where they wanted to go with this. They were not even subtle. If you seriously doubt me, look into the stats/descriptions of your Water Armatization. It's nothing but thinly-veiled sex jokes. Don't get me started on the sauna scene. Mother of Christ.

Also they made a pun by responding to a claim that there was no romance in the game by saying they "watered it down". I swear to God you can't make this shit up.