He even puts in the first figurine Sam had ever obtained from the Earth Born gacha he keeps the others displayed on a rickety wooden shelf in his home, dusted infrequently, displayed in order of rarity. He puts in his old frying pan, the one he brought with him from Potcrock Isle, the one he used to cook countless meals for the white-haired child. So John places her memory card of Earth Born into the chest, wrapped carefully in a scrap of cloth, the game never beaten. Sam left very few belongings behind when she had disappeared, taking with her the clothes off her back and the red boots that Alva had gifted her an eternity ago. There is no body for John to bury, but that doesn’t mean he cannot bury anything else. So he accepts the gift, pays half the price while secretly slipping the remaining half to the elderly man’s wife, and takes it home. “Ye look like ye need it, sonnie,” the old man tells him in a gruff voice, accent heavy, and no matter how much John tries to protest, he gets shut down. He purchases the carved chest from an elderly man with nimble hands and a surprisingly sharp eye for detail, who pushes it into John’s arms and accepts nothing but half the price of salt he was selling his handiwork at. He buys a large chest from the nearest town - it’s not Greenberg, but rather a kindly place by the name of Woodvale, where the villagers are kind enough to let him live in the outskirts of their woods as long as he comes into town sometimes to help them with their jobs. But Sam had dissipated into starlight in his arms, becoming nothing but the void of the universe itself, and so John improvises by doing something else. Somehow, that hurts worse than if he had a corpse to place six feet under - buried in the middle of the forest, surrounded by lush greenery and sleeping under the watchful gaze of the blue skies. All it does is make his feelings of agony and grief rush back in like a tidal wave crashing over his soul as he prepares dinner alone in his forest home. It doesn’t help that he swears he can hear her voice from time to time though, telling him to take care of himself. John isn’t sure how long he stands there, shaking hands wrapped around the wooden handle of his shovel like a lifeline, but eventually, he realises that the sky has grown dark and he can’t make out Sam’s name on the tombstone anymore.ĭistantly, John thinks to himself that maybe he should head inside for the night. It’s like a tight coil in his chest, like a snake strangling his heart. And all he can do is clench his white-knuckled fists as all the feelings he’s repressed come bubbling up to the surface of his throat once more. Now though, as he stares at the tombstone in his hands, as he exits his house to a little clearing a short walk away from the run-down shack he found and fixed some time ago, as he carries the stone slab under one arm, a shovel in his other hand-Īll John can do is stand across from the grave after it’s been wedged into the soil, sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the verdant clearing. (It reminds him of Greenberg sometimes, staying here, but he’s long-since shelved those thoughts away for another time.) Even after that event, all he had to do was busy himself, pressing on with life by taking the train absentmindedly until one day, he got off at a random stop and built a house along the edges of the forest. And John’s been able to put off thinking about it for a while, after the initial surge of worry-fear- grief that had flooded his soul while watching the young girl crumble away in his hold. Regardless, his mood drops at the thought of the white-haired girl marvelling over something new he made, if only because the recipient of the tombstone he carved is Sam herself. ![]() The thought is slightly morbid, but Sam was always his biggest cheerleader, enthusiastically pushing him to do something or other during the time they spent together. John wonders, for a moment, if Sam would have liked it too. It’s nowhere near as elegantly carved as the few graves he’s seen while travelling around the world, but it’s still something that he made. ![]() But the man still feels a tiny bit of pride as he brushes away the dust from its surface, admiring his handiwork. The lettering on the grave is crooked, the letters S-A-M wonky and irregularly sized. It’s the least he can do after watching a certain white-haired girl disappear into stardust in his arms. But John continues to chip away at it day after day, as the seasons shift from the rainy days of spring to the sweltering humidity of summer. He’s not particularly good at carving into the slab of rock John was always more of a master chef, a pro at scavenging the mines, a professional at whacking enemies with his pan before finishing them off with a bullet from his gun. John carves Sam a grave out of the smoothest stone he can buy.
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