"Oh, so now you get to decide what's funny and not?" The younger Raoul brought a hand to his lips to stifle a laugh. "I didn't know I was in the presence of His Majesty Raoul, Arbiter of All Things Funny."
The older twin did not reply, instead stepping over lightly. He waved a dirty hand across the space in front of the younger's face, testing to see if the child in front of him was real. He received a disappointed frown from the latter, who crossed his arms and began tapping his foot on the road impatiently.
"That's very uncanny," Older Raoul commented. "Why is there a younger version of me in my path?"
"You already know the answer," Younger Raoul shrugged, kicking up a pile of dust. "This place is the link between your heart and soul, mind and body, past and future. Think of it as a place between the material world and the spiritual world."
He continued, scanning the entire area before breaking out in a chuckle. "Our Path looks terrible. You should really do something about it."
"It's not exactly my fault." Older Raoul followed his eyes. A breathy sigh followed instead of a chuckle. "If what Krocko said is true, then the reason The Path manifested this way was because of my past traumas and present grievances. But that also means it's possible for me to change it to something more appealing to the eyes."
"You catch on quick, for sure. But how do you plan on going about that?"
He shrugged, and then pointed to the largest part of the path that led straight ahead. "By following wherever my path takes me. Something might happen."
"Fun," his younger replied. "You don't have a concrete plan other than that, I'm guessing."
"I don't, no."
"Well, it's not like there's much to do in this place other than walk. Lead on then, older me. I'll just tag along for the ride and watch."
The older's eyes narrowed, but he nonetheless started on his way. The younger followed a few feet behind him, eyes already sifting through the foggy wasteland, trying to find something of note amidst all the emptiness.
The two slicked the center path in silence. For more than seven minutes they hiked, following the wide beaten trail ahead like moths to a flame. With each step the horizon would shrink—or so the older Raoul thought, but in truth the obscured environment made it hard to gauge whether they had made any sizable forward progress. He only gritted his teeth in dissatisfaction and muttered something incoherent about trusting the process.
The younger Raoul made himself busy by messing around with the path, having taken to dragging the pointed end of a lengthy stick across the center path with a nonchalant attitude. Every once in a while, he would gently slap one of the many metal lanterns they passed on the side of the road, chuckling when it swung back and forth.
Fifteen more minutes would wind past, although to the two Raoul-s it felt much longer. Neither the digital wristwatch nor his smartphone held any use in his path—any attempt at viewing the time would only return in the form of rapidly-changing ones and zeros where the displays were supposed to be. There wasn't any cryptic meaning in the numbers in Binary, either.
Finally the older groaned, moving over to crouch down beside a lone metallic lantern attached to a thin brass body with its tip stuck to the ground. "We aren't getting anywhere. It seems this path might be truly endless. I've tried to keep an eye out for any landmarks so as to gauge our location, but the thick fog makes it hard to discern anything."
"Meh," the younger one followed, sitting down on the other adjacent spot to the lantern. "My stick's all worn down, too. So? Got any other ideas?"
"No, not really." He exhaled deeply. "If I was given a clue on what to do, then maybe I could start figuring out a plan. As it is right now, I'm worried I might not be leaving any time soon."
"You've really gotten boring as you've grown older. If you were my age, you'd be rushing headfirst into the fog."
"Speaking of older…" he eyed the younger Raoul. "What are you? You've been following me for a while now, but I've never asked. Are you some kind of mental image my path has conjured up?"
"Well, I'm you."
He narrowed his eyes. "I figured that out from the moment we met. I was curious about the nature of your existence."
"I'm not sure what you want me to say. I'm you, just younger." He dismissively crossed his arms, mild annoyance evident in his expression.
The older Raoul narrowed his eyebrows and leaned back, placing his open palms behind him to keep himself upright. "Fine. I'll ask a different question. Do you have my memories?"
In turn, the younger Raoul's brows raised, the sudden question catching him off guard. "No. At least, not all of them. I recall everything from my birth to the day the four of us parted like it was yesterday, but beyond that it's blurred. It's like looking through a picture book containing photos of our life's best events, but it suddenly cuts off around halfway through."
That explains the lack of perception. The older Raoul thought to himself. Looking back, it was the distancing from everyone around me that taught me how to glean details from just looking at things, but I never had use for that when I was younger and more active.
It was like a light bulb clicked open in his brain. He suddenly sat up. "It's only come to me now, but the only point of interest in my path that I haven't examined yet isn't the surroundings or myself, but you."
The young Raoul tilted his head in confusion. "What are you talking about? I am you."
"I know that," he waved him off dismissively. "I'm just worried I might have spent this past length of time trying to look around me when it would've been better starting off at the first oddity that struck me."
He continued. "I have a hypothesis. But I would like to know if you are willing to help me."
There was silence between the two for a few seconds. The younger Raoul finally creased his brows after a quarter of a minute passed, and nodded in approval. "I suppose. It definitely beats sitting around here doing nothing."
"That's good to hear."
The older Raoul excitedly stood up, gesturing for his younger to do the same. Without another word, he gestured for him to follow, and soon enough they were hiking the central path again. Stillness gave way again as the former spoke up.
"Your lack of memories is most likely The Path telling me to reconcile with the past. When I first plunged into meditation with Miss Marrow's assistance, my mind gravitated to my friends. However, I understood after a short while that the source of my power—my Driving—wasn't them, but my own selfish desire to reclaim my past self and establish my own self-actualization."
He remembered that day about as vividly as his younger self described. His mother was still in the denial stage of her grief, and was slowly beginning to drift into her rigid, controlling self. It was the first time she had shown a complete change in her personality; when she personally made sure to cut off all his connections to Idri, Avil, and Calliope. Even when he had snuck out of home to meet them at that same sun-swept golden hill, he was only met with Merlin's first display of force in the thirteen years she had been parenting him.
She was one of the strongest wizards in the world. What could an adolescent teen barely halfway through his first cantrips do?
It was no coincidence that the younger Raoul's memories had been cut off there. That was a throbbing center for his childhood trauma.
"Even when I'm out of the house and in my own world, her influence still manages to reach me here." He huffed an exasperated breath. "But in short… I believe to progress here would require the both of us to fill in the gaps in our memories. Or in other words, we might be due for storytime."
The younger Raoul's eyes were shut during the entire half-minute explanation. At the end of it all, he flicked them open, but kept his gaze to the floor. "You're saying my fear for the future is causing this roadblock."
"Correct. But I don't want you to worry." He clenched his right hand into a tight fist and slammed it against his chest repeatedly. "We've changed. From my understanding, Driving isn't only a matter of conviction, but also the willpower that you possess to steer the world into the future."
He flashed a confident smile. "And it may be a bit selfish and self-centered of me to say this, but as of right now, the world is me, and I am the world. Nothing matters more than achieving the freedom I long for."
The younger Raoul broke out into a spitter-spatter of laughs. He held a hand to his mouth, attempting to stifle the endless cackles that spilled forth, but to no avail.
"Way to really bring in the fremdschämen, me. I don't think I've ever seen someone look so cringy while resolving to do something. Sounds like you nabbed that line off a film. What was it?" He coughed, deepening his voice to mimic the older Raoul. "Ah! "And it may be a bit selfish and self-centered of me to say this, but as of right now, the world is me, and I am the world." Horrid, man."
There was no end to the biting with the child, and it almost left the older Raoul feeling embarrassed. He nonetheless kicked up a pile of ash at him. "Okay, that's enough. You assured me you would help."
The ash hung close to the air and breathed its way onto the younger Raoul's clothes, sticking directly to the soft fabric and sliding directly into his nostrils. His cackles shifted from intense glee to momentary, breathless gasps of air. "So funny," spilled out. He was still sticking to the joke. "But yeah. Go ahead. We've got all the time. Why don't we make a fire? We passed by hundreds of sticks while on the way here."
"I didn't notice."
"Obviously. You were in your own world, muttering to yourself like a crazy old man."
They stuck together and continued on the center path, stopping every once in a while when there were sticks to be found close by. An entire ten kilometer had gone by right as they had gathered enough firewood to craft a sizable fire, and they made camp about a few feet shy off the road. A small instance was all it took for the two Raoul's to put together a clumsy bundled creation of wood and ash, of which was set alight by a Ignite cantrip from the older.
The both of them space opposite each other.
"Let's piece together everything starting from your point of view. From before that separation."