“What did you want to talk about?” Suwa asked after they had moved a ways, and after hearing him, Sezio stopped to looked up at the sky.
“This place is truly amazing.”
“It is. There's still a lot of work to be done, but I can already see what it was you were looking for. No one would be able to be here without you.”
Sezio laughed. He wasn't trying to be insulting, but he found amusement in Suwa's words. His little band of random gehm that had formed around him always talked like it was him that was keeping them together, but they kept him together just as well.
“You know I'm not alone,” he finally said as he turned around to face Suwa, but Suwa just looked at him, confused. “I mean that, our accomplishments here, they're not mine alone. I did not come up with the idea for these houses. And none of us built them by ourselves.”
“And it was Belo's idea to learn how the beasts maintain the forests and field they live in. Even if he couldn't do it himself, it was the knowledge we gained from that that allowed us to grow our gardens filled with food.”
Sezio laughed again while remembering, “He tried his best though, didn't he? But you're right. That's exactly what I was saying—everyone has done something to get us this far.”
“Is this all you wanted to talk about?”
“Not completely. Suwa, what we've set out to do is unimaginable, and I doubt it will ever be possible in a single life. I wanted to tell you that you've really grown since we first met. You're going to accomplish even greater things from this point on, and I can't imagine a better person to help bring all the gehm together. But I still haven't forgotten what you wanted to do, and I'm sure you haven't either.”
“Of course not.”
“Good. That brings me to the main point I wanted to talk about. Our attempts to help the wild gehm we find and bring into the village have been incredibly successful. But I think it's time we add another approach to our method. There are other communities of gehm out there, communities like yours, and I think we're finally ready to begin welcoming them to join us. Of course, the final decision will be theirs—we're creating a haven not a prison.”
It wasn't the first time that such a thought had come to Suwa's mind, and he had even thought to bring it to Sezio's attention as well. But, if he considered the plan they had been following up to this point, maybe this was actually Sezio's intention all along. They already had several more homes than there were residents, and Moiya and Dobin had even begun giving lessons to children and older gehm who wanted to learn more about both the world and the activities within the village.
They were growing well, but it wasn't hard to see that their efforts were positioning themselves to grow at a much more rapid pace. That wasn't the only reason Suwa had thought of such things, however. As much as he was enjoying his life with everyone and the things they were doing, there were always moments where his mind wandered home. In his time with Sezio's group, and as someone the people in this community looked up to, he had matured greatly. Enough to realize that he was narrow minded with his goal before.
Originally, he thought it was up to him to save his village—that he was the only one who could do it—which might have been the case before he had met Sezio. After meeting Sezio's group, Suwa learned that it wasn't just him that could save the Endora tribe, and that thinking otherwise was both idealistic and arrogant. The reason his village needed saving at all was because it lacked community—or, at least what he now understood as community. There were many people together, sure, but now he knew that a true community needed unity as well.
If anyone was going to save the gehm, it would be the gehm themselves. By bringing gehm together as they were, they weren't saving them, they were giving them the means to do so themselves. Sezio must have already realized that when he made his seemingly impossible goal of bringing all the gehm together.
“So, what do you think?” Sezio had continued speaking without Suwa realizing.
“About what?”
“I would like your village to be the first one we invite into our community. There will still be many more, but I can't think of a better place to start. This is where our dreams combine, Suwa.”
Suwa looked around to see the people in the village busily taking care of the community's needs and then closed his eyes. He imagined himself and Rena working together in the garden. His mom would be busy teaching the children with Moiya and Feris would be able to explore every corner of their new home. He could even imagine the rest of the Endora tribe living peacefully without fear of Rashendala or any other beasts.
“When can we go?” Suwa asked and Sezio laughed.
“I assume that means you agree.”
“Who should I bring with me? Moiya? Dobin? Please don't tell me you're sending Luika …”
“Actually, this time, I would like to be the one who accompanies you. Is that okay?”
“Of course, it is! But will it be okay if you're not here?”
“If not, then there's a problem. This place was never meant to be a place where I needed lead. Everyone should be able to carry on even without me here. Think of my absence as an experiment to test the structure here. If everything falls apart, then we did something wrong.”
“That's not really something to joke about …”
“I know. Sorry. You should get ready. I'll tell the rest about our plan.”
