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The next year was the hardest year of my life. The snow that night was responsible for the flood, and I had associated snow with my loss. Thankfully, it didn't snow in Kippo again for a long, long time, but two places on Fa'Diel would become instantly be places I didn't want to go - Ice Country, and mountain ranges in winter, particularly the Lofties.

The "funeral" was held two days after the flood - it wasn't a funeral as such, as there was no coffin, but it still had all the proceedings. My parents had tears in their eyes for the whole time, but I openly bawled throughout it. There was many times the priest had to stop because I had simply grown too loud. I was even threatened with being sent home. I wasn't given anything to read or say, because I wouldn't be able to do it. Reuben and Kara had put together the eulogy - it was tragic, seeing how much potential lay before him.

Most of the village was there - Syoro Yarapren, Rumpil, the schoolchildren - but Keroco and Dogo weren't. I bet they were in their house, snickering at my terrible misfortune - an eye for an eye, as they would later say.

We then threw flowers - mainly Kippo Rentars, the colour of his skin - into the stream and watched them float away. That is why I have a flowerbed of them in my front garden. You would not believe the trouble I had to go through to get them through Yamauchian customs - had to test the seeds for any diseases and verify that the plant would not become a pest.

I then went into starvation over the next week. In the end, I had to be taken to the local doctor who gave me appetiser tablets and ones for acute depression. The tablets brought some level of sanity back into me, but they could never replace Ark Beruga Yoshi von Kippo.

They didn't rid me of my sadness either. I wasn't sent to school for about three weeks afterwards, so I was given plenty of time to think. A fortnight after the funeral, I tried to drown myself in Yoshi Bend, but the burning in my lungs brought me to the surface. The next day, I went to Yoshi Bend and tried to cast a Salamando fire spell to burn myself, but it failed. Then I went on a walk on the opposite bank trying to find a monster that would kill me like Returin, but there were none. Rumpil, who was coming back from Pandora after buying stock, saw me.

"What are you doing here, young Dyluck?" he asked.

I shrugged.

"Let's take you home."

My parents took his word that it would be natural that I would be disorientated and my mind would wander, and my feet would take me places that I didn't even know they were going.

A day later, my parents had both gone to the front of the inn, my mother to take care of the visitors and my father to serve customers at the bar. I then sneaked into the kitchen and stole a knife. I took it to my room and looked at it, pointed it at my chest a few times, but I never had the courage to push it between my ribs. My mother came by my door at one stage, and saw me, raced over and took it out of my reach. She then hugged me, didn't say anything, and walked away.

My parents decided that I would go to school again the next day, to get my mind off Ark. The empty desk beside me didn't help at all, and Dogo was all too delighted to see his pleasure back in easy reach of him.

"Better watch out for that water," he smirked as I created a shoot of it from the tip of my forefinger, "it might sweep you away."

I snapped and jumped across the desk he was on the other side of and started to strangle him. A few of my schoolmates and Syo. Yarapren prised me off him, but my hatred was fuelled, and I tried to get him again and again before I realised my futility.

He was merciless, and there were many times I would try to hurt him. Once I gave him a black eye. But his replies were stronger, and on that occasion he punched my chest, winding me. Keroco almost started a fight with Reuben many evenings - he would storm into the inn, grab Reuben by his collar, pull him towards him so that his face was about two inches away, and yell at him about how "his beastly son" had hurt his poor little defenceless boy.

In my fighting with Dogo, I eventually ended up with a broken leg, and was on crutches for a few weeks. Many times he would rip them from under my arms. I made a promise to myself that I was going to get Dogo, even if it was the last thing I was going to do.

I believe that every cloud has a silver lining, and what happened three months after the flood proved it. Keroco's patience had worn extremely thin, and my mother saw him come out of Rumpil's store with a few bottles of kerosene. Normally, you don’t buy more than one bottle of kerosene at once.

She warned my father that something was amiss, and my father told the local police officer, Goturi. He decided to keep watch on the inn during the night, and sure enough, Keroco came by with a box of matches and the bottles of kerosene. He arrested him, and we were requested to appear at the court case in Pandora City. I was even called to the witness stand, and I told the jury, with a few sobs, how he had bashed me when I was younger.

Keroco was sent to prison for many charges of malicious intent and assault among other crimes. Dogo was sent to Potos where his mother lived, who had divorced from Keroco for good reason. A little moment of sunshine had broken through the clouds of my gloom.

However, this couldn't replace Ark - the pain was still very, very strong. I found a friend in Syoro Toripe, who gave me advice and could make me feel better. Many music lessons resulted in not a breath of air being blown through my potosa. My ability dwindled a bit, naturally, however he had told me something that I instantly held dear to my heart:

"Do you believe he's alive? If you do, then he is."

I tried to believe that, and the spark grew into a small flame over time. With those words began a passion of mine: wandering. I was now of the age, under village law, that I could leave it by myself, so many days I didn't have school were spent simply wandering. The majority of the time I would go down the stream to where Ark was taken from me. There was a tree there that had large seedpods, and I would write letters to Ark there and put them in the pods - they would close watertight, so I'd throw them into the stream and watch them fall off the edge into the hole. I would write about how I missed him, how I wanted him to be back, how life was going up here and what was going on and stuff like that.

I saw that Reuben and Kara had put Ark's robots away in a cupboard, and I believed that he would want them. So, I scraped enough pocket money together to buy a few large buckets with screw-top lids from a store in Pandora City when I went over there for the first time by myself, and hid them under my bed. I would put a few robots in a bucket at a time, test it out in the bathtub to see if it would sink, then sneak it out of the house in my Mana Storage. Then, I would go to the tree and float them down the river.

I was sure that Ark would be gratified that he had his robots with him. That feeling provided some relief, but as I saw the last bucket float away, I cried as I sat and played my potosa - I missed him immensely, and would do so for a long time yet.