Story & Voice
Lore beats, character story moments, and voice lines to learn more about Lily.
Character Story
1When the Age Was at Peace
The sun goes down where the shadows creep;
Fireflies swing their lanterns through the grass;
I count the stars till they fall asleep..."
The song came down the lane with a light step under it. The singer's shadow lay slanted across the flagstones and shivered whenever the wind came, as if it were not hers at all but something the dusk had lent her for the evening.
"Oh, look who it is. Our garden fairy. Lily's home."
The neighbours waved her over, and Lily, in her black-and-white dress, lifted the flowers from her basket one and two at a time and put them into their hands.
"May you laugh today, and again tomorrow."
She was the florist's daughter, and to her parents and practically the whole town, she'd been their treasure, their little princess. In spring she turned the garden over with a little trowel. In summer she danced to the cicadas. In autumn and winter she'd breathe on the window till it fogged and draw the whole family on it.
A garden fairy, the whole town's little princess, was to pass her seasons among the flowers, watching them open and watching them fall. That was to have been the whole of it...
Then one enormous noise broke the peace. She would remember the order of it all her life. The northern sky went dark. The birds rose out of the wood and spread across the light in a grey shadow. No one spoke. When it had passed, the world seemed emptied, and the lane was so quiet you could hear a pebble turn over on the flagstones.
"What was that?"
"Couldn't tell you. Some celebration in the city, maybe."
People put their heads out, had a look, and went back inside.
It was only afterward, long afterward, that Lily learned what it had been: the first shell of the war, on its way to her home.
2When We Gave Promises
There were no flowers, no cake, nobody from home. What welcomed her was the smell of disinfectant, which hung in those corridors all year and never thinned.
"New, are you? Right, then. Down to the laundry."
Sheets, blankets and pillowcases stiff with dried blood, heaped up and waiting for somebody to wash them. That was her first day's work at the Alliance. Early on she still wondered what had been done to the person each sheet came from, and said a small blessing over them. Then the blood got under her nails, and into the detergent, and into the water and down the drain, and somewhere in all of that her mind was rinsed as blank and white as the linen.
She lay awake all night holding her feelings down. In the dark she understood, better than she ever had, what she had come here to do. She had come so that more people would walk out of the war alive.
"Prof. Rabelle from Clotho Doctors Alliance will lead the grand rounds on 16 August..."
Rabelle ran the Alliance in those days, and once a week he walked the wards with doctors and nurses from every department, so that the patients would be better looked after. Before long, Lily was one of the figures at the back of the group.
"Who's the attending on this one?"
"Me... Professor..."
A hand rose slowly at the end of the line, and everyone turned to find a girl who looked younger than any of them. She came forward with her ears burning and began turning the pages of a thick file. She had been meticulous. The patient's temperature, day by day. The state of his mind. The dreams he had had. Even what he said in his fever.
"Professor. A surgeon can close a wound he can see. The ones he can't see are still there, and they open and close on their own. If a man is to be healed all the way through, Surgery and the Mental Health Care Center may need to take him on in joint treatment."
When she finished, there was not a sound in the ward. The silence held until Rabelle closed the file in his hands.
"What's your name?"
"...Lily. Lily Grace."
After that, she became one of Rabelle's students, and soon the Alliance began to take the soldiers' minds as seriously as their bodies.
She was quick. She never stopped. And she caught what the others let pass. By any measure, she would make an exceptional doctor. But Rabelle saw the weakness in her early, and knew what it would cost her.
The day before she graduated, Rabelle called her to his office.
"Take this as my last piece of advice to you. Not from your teacher. From an old man."
"The most dangerous thing a doctor can do is lay her own heart against somebody else's wound. You hurt when they hurt. And it goes on until you can't tell which of the pain is theirs and which is yours."
"There's only so much you can carry, Lily. Don't go past it."
She wanted to tell him, "I'm not sure I can." What came out was, "Thank you."
It was the gentleness she had been born with, and it was the burden she was born to carry.
3When We Remembered
"Mr. Delio, how are we today? Anything you'd like to tell me?"
Lily sat down by the bed. She called him mister, though what she was looking at was a student of eighteen or nineteen inside a uniform cut for a bigger man.
"Don't waste your breath, doctor. He hasn't said a word since they brought him in."
Lily didn't give up. "That's all right. I'll sit with him a while. Mr. Delio, here's an idea. I'll talk, and you listen. How's that?"
She came every day after that, and she told him what she remembered from before the war—what her family's garden had looked like, which flowers came up brightest, which of them were the toughest.
The days wore on. The shells drew nearer and fell back again, now like thunder traveling the rim of the sky, now like the earth turning over in its sleep. Then one afternoon, after the cannons fell silent, as she was settling into the chair to begin, Delio turned his head and pointed at a pot on the windowsill. "Doctor. That flower you told me about. It's open. It really is tough, like you said."
Lily held her breath. It was the first time he had spoken.
"My home's in the south of the Federated Cities. We had a fruit tree by the door..."
He talked a great deal that day. His home. His sister. His school years. While he talked, a smile got away from the corner of his mouth, and there was nothing in that hospital worth more.
Lily listened and said nothing. Her eyes stung, and it was all she could do to stay in the chair, so she folded her hands on her knees and gripped them hard, the way one would grip at something running out between the fingers.
When he came to the part about graduating, he stopped, as though the memories had run out on him, and his face closed over again into the coldness it wore the rest of the time.
"I'm tired, doctor. We can pick it up tomorrow."
Lily drew the curtain for him and quietly said goodbye. In the office afterward, she wrote in his file: Recalling good things is itself a kind of healing. I believe this is a good start.
The next morning, before it was properly light, she woke to hurrying feet in the hall.
The officers had sealed off Delio's room. By the time they let her in, the bed was already gone. There was only a stool in the middle of the floor, and a rope above it.
"Why... He smiled yesterday... Why..."
She thought about that last smile and understood, slowly, that it had been a farewell. A man at the edge of a cliff turned round one last time before he stepped off and took in everything in the world that was beautiful—his home, his sister, his school years—carefully, once more, and then did not look again.
"Doctor? What's the matter, are you unwell? Another one's in from the front, and he needs joint treatment. Everyone else is in the ward. You're the only one missing."
The officer's knock snapped Lily out of her thoughts and back into the room.
"I'm fine. I'll be right there."
Lily packed Delio's file away, and packed her own feelings away with it. She still came to the ward every day, and still talked with the soldiers who were left. But now she would look a man in the eyes before she opened her mouth. She had learned that some smiles are farewells, and some silences are cries for help.
4When We Are Forgotten
She could still hear the cat saying it.
Free? Free to go where? Something deep in her mind made the choice for her, because her feet had already set out for the one place her memory still held onto: home, the Federated Cities.
"Fifth Sector. Miss Lily Grace?" The official at the border turned her papers over and turned them back. They were a Resonator soldier's identification. He scratched his head and kept turning them, as though a different answer might work its way up to the surface. It was a long time before he found anything to say. "Welcome back, Miss Grace. Only your country isn't here any more. This is the New Federation now. Welcome to the New Federation for the first time."
"Not here any more? What does that mean?"
She took it for a joke at first. But there were the strange streets, and the strange buildings, and the strange way people looked at her, and she understood...
Time in the Somnoire does not keep pace with time in the world. The Federated Cities she remembered had crumbled while she was away.
She wanted out from under the stares. She wanted to go home, even if only the thinnest chance of a home was left...
Clinging to that chance, she stumbled through the city, asking strangers, and from the broken pieces she could still describe, she assembled a direction home. But at the junction, Lily found that her house had become a tower burning with light from the pavement to the roof. A restaurant had taken the ground floor. Men and women in fine clothes were arranged along the window, and the lamps lacquered their laughing faces bright, so bright. She stood on the other side of the glass like someone from another world.
"Good evening, miss. Will you be dining with us?"
"Our little princess is back. Go and wash your hands. Dinner's ready."
The waiter's voice fell exactly over her mother's. Her mother used to call her in to dinner from behind that door, in a voice that went up high and long. Now, standing here, she heard the old voice fall and smash on the ground.
The night came the whole way down. Lily hauled her case along a street that was taking her nowhere and stood in the gaps between the lamps, where the light drew her shadow out long and wrung it out of shape. And there she understood at last. The age had walked on past the Federated Cities, and shed the soldiers along with them, and nobody anywhere still held the memory that any of them had been here.
She folded down onto her heels, buried her face in her hands and cried. It went on for a long time before she got up, took the handle of the case, and walked on. She did not know where she was going. She knew only that she must not stop, because the moment she stopped she would truly have nowhere left to go.
5When We Reach for Tomorrow
In a classroom at
No murmur ran along the rows. Nobody clapped. The students had no idea what they were supposed to feel. Sympathy? Anger? Grief?
Then Lucilla knocked on the door. "That's all for today, everyone. Lily, come with me."
Lucilla walked her up to the President's office. It had always been Lily who brewed the tea, Lily who did the tending; that was what a doctor was for. At Startorch Academy she found herself on the other end of it.
Lucilla eased a cup of coffee across the desk to her. It must have been too hot; Lily flinched at the first mouthful and made a small noise like a startled squirrel.
"Careful. Too hot? Too bitter? I'm still no good at coffee, clearly. You don't have to force it down..."
"I'm all right, President Lucilla."
"I don't just mean the coffee. I mean all of it, everything you've been carrying. If it hurts, you don't have to keep..."
"No. This is something I have to do. I promised them I'd tell as many people as I could what that war did to the people in it, so that it never happens again."
Sometimes, Lucilla thought the girl before her was every bit as stubborn as she herself had once been, back in the days when she staked the fate of Startorch Academy on the table and stood against
"Well. All right, then."
"President, where are you going?"
"Giving you some privacy. What I meant to say was: if it hurts, you don't have to keep telling it. And if you want to let it out anyway, then cry out loud. There is always some corner of the world that will take a person's crying. And don't worry, the President's office is very well soundproofed."
The door clicked shut, and the room was hers. She took the cup in both hands and smiled. The President probably never knew that Lily had made an agreement with herself: no more crying alone.
And President Lucilla really was no good at coffee. Lily drank the cup down and found herself drowsy instead of sharp. She let go and went under on the sofa... and somewhere in the blur of the dream she came back to the Dream Abode, in the Somnoire.
"So you've come. You've got your color back. How is the world outside?"
"Mm. Better than the dream. Gentler."
Lily told the keeper of the Dream Abode how her life at Startorch Academy had been.
"And are you happy now? Content? Does anything in you kindle at the thought of tomorrow, even a spark?"
Lily nodded, and the keeper of the Dream Abode took the nod for an answer. It stretched itself out long, and nothing at all showed on its face.
"Good. It suits me too, your staying alive. So go on using those eyes of yours and see more of the real world for me. Now, time to wake."
When she woke, Lucilla was already back at the desk, working.
"Ah. You're awake..."
"Mm. Thank you, President Lucilla. I've been a trouble to all of you. I think it's time I was on my way."
"Have you decided where you'll go next?"
"The New Federation... I want to look at it again, and get to know it properly this time."
Voice Lines
Thoughts: I
They say that when we die, we turn into stars... so the ones who love us can look up and find us anytime they so please.<br/>I once dreamed those stars came down and became people I could hold. I didn't have to look up anymore. Didn't have to cry. I sat beside them on a beautiful train, riding through the stars, flying through the night. I thought my time would stay frozen right there, forever. Then a new passenger stepped aboard. And time... started moving again.
Thoughts: II
The war split my life clean in two.<br/>The first half was an ordinary perfumer's life. If I had to paint a picture of it, I think... it'd be filled with the smell of wheat on a sunny day. Earth after rain. The sweetness of flowers in full bloom. Those wonderful, happy smells that always made me look forward to tomorrow.<br/>The second half belonged to the battlefield. I became a medic. The smells I knew started disappearing, until only one was left: the sharp, cold sting of disinfectant. It seemed to erase every other smell that had made up my world till then, and I started dreading what tomorrow would bring.<br/>Then I escaped to that train. And somewhere along the way... I stopped smelling anything at all. The smells of the perfumer, the smells of the medic, neither part of me seemed to matter anymore. All I had left was one thought: "Lily" ought to disappear along with all the smells.<br/>It wasn't until one particular dream that I finally understood...<br/>All that beauty, all that pain—they kept weaving together, blending into something new. A fragrance that held the sweetness of life, and the weight of it, too. So I want to give it my all to follow that scent back to all the beautiful things I thought I'd lost.
Thoughts: III
Would you like me to pick out a scent for you? Hm... let me think. I'd start with an oceanic-woody accord as the base, and finish with a white musk. Yes, I think that would suit you. You're a wanderer, roving across every corner of <te href=850079>Solaris</te>. The tide may carry your voice away, and the wind may blow away your scent. But an oceanic-woody composition like this? It's you. It carries both the freshness of sea mist, and the quiet, solitary calm of wood.<br/>You walk your path alone, but little by little, you've been making your way into this world. I can feel it. That warm heart beating in your chest. It moves you, always in the moments that matter, to step forward and help. I feel like I saw such a figure in a dream once... So I'd finish with white musk, to bring out that unique quality of yours.<br/>Do you like it? If you do, I'd be happy to blend it for you.
Thoughts: IV
On that train, so many soldiers' last wish was simply to go home. They all said "home" meant happiness.<br/>For someone like me, what would "home" even be...? Hm, perhaps it's the Somnoire?<br/>I had my own little room there, and company to talk to. Even if... they were three inscrutable cats who came and went as they pleased.<br/>Sometimes I'd brew flower tea, and they'd curl up beside me, and we'd watch all sorts of dreams drift by outside the window. Happy dreams. Sad dreams. Empty dreams... I'd take a sip of that warm tea, and it would spread through me. Was that... happiness? Or was it just the warmth of the tea?
Thoughts: V
Do I have any plans for the future?<br/>I don't rightly know. The "future" always felt so far away to me. I could never quite picture what it might look like. But someone in a dream once told me: "A blank canvas means endless possibilities. You can paint it with whatever colors you choose." So maybe I don't need to worry so much about what's coming. Maybe all I need to do is paint today, as best I can, with whatever colors I've got.
Lily's Hobby
I do so enjoy the process of making perfume. It takes so much imagination and creativity. Standing at my workbench, surrounded by all those little bottles of essential oils, I sometimes feel like a painter before her palette. Except my colors are invisible. I have to rely on my sense of smell to catch 'em, and coax 'em all into singing together in balance.
Lily's Trouble
The New Federation's culture, its way of life—it's all changed so much since my time. Since I came back, I can't help but feel like I don't quite belong anymore. There's so much I've got to learn if I want to find my place in this new world.
Favorite Food
I do so love a creamy fruit cake. The fresh tang of the fruit balances the sweetness of the cream perfectly. And the decorating! There's just something lovely about piping those little scallops and swirls. Ivory and Ebony have been trying their hand at it, too. Though kittens being kittens, they always manage to turn our "lessons" into outright "cake fights." You should see the kitchen after we're done...
Disliked Food
Anything with a strong, pungent smell... I can't help it. My whole body recoils. I imagine it's because my nose is so finely tuned, being a perfumer and all. When I'm around that kind of food, the smell just about takes over every thought. My mind keeps whispering: "It stinks. Trust me, it stinks," over and over...
Ideals
My dreams... Suppose it's more like my reason to keep going each day. I'll carry the memory of that war for everyone who can't. I'll stop that tragedy from ever happening to anyone else. And I'll hold onto those words I wrote in my diary—"May your soul wander no more." One step at a time, till my very last breath.
Show more voice lines (63 remaining)
Chat: I
I still keep a diary. But I reckon I ought to change how I start my entries now. No more "Day such-and-such in the world of the dead." Instead, I should write the month and day. And the weather. Something like, "Clear skies..."
Chat: II
When the war first broke out, I had all these feelings bottled up inside. I wanted to find some way to let 'em out, but who was I supposed to be angry at? The officers who gave the orders? The enemy? I don't know... Sometimes, I even doubted myself—did this world hate me? Maybe that was its way of punishing me.
About Anna
Lady Anna and I were close friends when we studied at the Clotho Doctors Alliance. We were sent to different war zones after, but we never stopped writing letters. Right up until I was sent to the Fifth Sector...<br/>Luckily, we both made it out alive. When I saw her again, she'd become the New Federation's "Queen of the Deep," with powerful folks kneeling at her feet. But even now that she's taken her place among the powers that be, I'll never think ill of her. We always stood side by side, ever since our days in the Alliance. She's saving people in her own way, I'm sure of it. So... until we can stand beside each other again, I won't let myself break!
About Meta
Meta calls itself the owner of the Somnoire and likes to compare itself to a <te href=850083>Sentinel</te>. But it doesn't carry that same weight or authority. Honestly, it's more like a child sometimes—mischievous, playful, curious about every little thing. I know it's got secrets, plenty of 'em. I know it probably saved me for its own reasons. But I don't need to know why. I have this life now, this quiet, simple life, and that's more than enough for me.
About Rabelle
Professor Rabelle was one of my most important teachers back at the Clotho Doctors Alliance. He taught me more than just medicine. He taught me what it truly means to be a healer. That all we can do is give every last bit of ourselves to save every life we can. And trust that will be enough.
About Lucilla
During my short stay at <te href=851069>Startorch Academy</te>, Miss Lucilla was ever so kind to me. It wasn't until later that I learned she was from the New Federation. When I told her my story, she didn't speak a word. She simply embraced me. The last person who held me like that was Cassandra. The two of them are quite alike... both warm, both steady, both a comfort to be near.
About Sigrika
Before I returned to the New Federation, I spent some time at <te href=851069>Startorch Academy</te>. That's where I met Sigrika. We became fast friends. She has a rare gift for knowing when not to pry. She never pressed me about my past, and she never tried too hard to lift my spirits. But sometimes, she'd wear this quiet, lonely look on her face when she thought no one was watching. That's when it struck me. Here was this bright, vivacious girl, and yet she had no one waiting for her after her lessons.<br/>I don't like to assume, but... I think she might've suffered a loss too. Someone dear to her. And that's why she clung to me the way she did.
Birthday Wishes
Close your eyes! I'll count to three, and then you can open 'em. Three, two, one... Happy birthday!<br/>I made this cake myself. Though I confess, Meta and the little ones pitched in a bit too. The candles are already lit, so go on, make a wish. I'll be right here, adding one of my own: "May your tomorrows be filled with the sun's light, and may this world treat you gently..."
Idle: I
Oh... no...
Idle: II
If I were to use that as a note... Mm...
Self-Introduction
Just call me Lily. If something's weighing on you, know you can always confide in me.
Greeting
Past sorrows scatter with the wind. I pray this fragrance guides you forward.
Join Team: I
Need a hand?
Join Team: II
I'm not much of a fighter, but... I'll give it my best.
Join Team: III
In your dream, I'll be there to light the way.
Ascension: I
All along, this was where the dream began...
Ascension: II
The "monsters" in my dreams... This time, I'll face 'em on my own.
Ascension: III
I'm grateful to Meta for the strength it gave me, truly I am. But to keep the promise I made to those soldiers, I need to grow stronger from within.
Ascension: IV
May every dream from here on become a beautiful memory.
Ascension: V
My fears, my worries, the ones I wanted to protect... they were all tucked away in a beautiful dreamland. I meant to stay there forever, to sleep and never wake. But then a dark silhouette, a face I can't quite recall, became a breath of wind and stirred me. In that moment, I knew. It was time to wake from that dream.
Heavy Attack: I
Needs a different note.
Heavy Attack: II
Let the fragrance fill the air.
Heavy Attack: III
A new scent.
Heavy Attack: IV
This time...
Heavy Attack: V
Nightmares...
Heavy Attack: VI
Aim...
Heavy Attack: VII
Be braver.
Heavy Attack: VIII
Fade away.
Heavy Attack: IX
And fire.
Resonance Skill: I
Dissolve, reform...
Resonance Skill: II
Hold it steady.
Resonance Skill: III
Notes converge.
Resonance Skill: IV
A little shake...
Resonance Liberation: I
This scent, into dreamland.
Resonance Liberation: II
May this dream never end.
Resonance Liberation: III
May the petals bloom once more.
Resonance Liberation: IV
Mm... bless your hearts...
Resonance Liberation: V
...Mm....
Resonance Liberation: VI
...Hehe. Soft like velvet petals...
Resonance Liberation: VII
Hm? What time... is it?
Resonance Liberation: VIII
No... One more, let me save one more...
Resonance Liberation: IX
Huh... was that just a nightmare?
Resonance Liberation: X
Dreams... end here.
Intro Skill: I
Take cover.
Intro Skill: II
Goodnight, my nightmare.
Dodge
Careful now!
Hit: I
That hurts.
Hit: II
Why... has it come to this again?
Injured: I
Don't worry, I'm all right...
Injured: II
Even so, no retreat.
Injured: III
I've felt this pain before...
Fallen: I
The flowers... have withered...
Fallen: II
It can't end here...
Fallen: III
Is this a dream, or is it reality?
Echo Summon
You be careful, now.
Echo Transform
Help me.
Enemies Near
Ready or not?
Glider
My body... feels light as a feather.
Sensor
I'll sneak up nice and quiet.
Dash
This I know, I can't look back.
Supply Chest: I
A blessing I'll treasure most gladly.
Supply Chest: II
May every day bring such kind fortune.
Supply Chest: III
Please, tuck this away for later.