The plants in Eorzea do not change. There are fields of grapes and groves of trees and plots of melons that are always there. No matter how much time passed, I did not see crops disappear.

I came to the cornfield in Earth where I had come before, and there was no corn. Someone or something had removed it all, and all that remained were short pieces of stalk in the ground.

Yet my botany skill said there was corn there. I could see vegetation clumps here and there, normally hidden in the corn stalks, and when I went to harvest from them I found corn. So I spent the afternoon harvesting corn in a cornfield with no corn.

Thinking too much is not thinking. Feeling is not thinking. I have learned that when thoughts and feelings fill my head with noise I cannot truly think about any of them. If I wish to think when this happens I first need to not think. I believe this is Husband's "zen".

I felt the thoughts and feelings filling me when Husband spoke of "fate" and "story" in my world. I knew I needed to understand what he had said and what I felt about it, but when I am thinking too much to think it makes me restless, feeling like I need to go somewhere and do something. Hiding under a blanket does not help as much as swinging a hatchet or a pickaxe, or perhaps a sword. So I came to this cornless cornfield to think of nothing more than the next ear of corn, and the next after that.

I now have one thousand, one hundred and twenty-eight ears of corn. And I am able to think.

From the moment we met on the street in Ul'dah, there were things Husband did not tell me. Had he told me then that he was from another world, I would have believed him; I had met other people from other worlds. What he told me was that he was a scholar from another land who had studied Eorzea, which explained how he knew so much about my land but had never swung a sword.

It did not explain how he knew me when he saw me, or how he knew so many details of my adventures. I did not think the minstrels' tales were so specific, nor did I remember sitting for a portrait. But I did not dwell on these things. He was interesting and engaging, moreso than anyone else I ever met in Eorzea. He always had something new to say. He sometimes made me laugh.

He had a sword when I met him. He told me he planned to be a gladiator, and then a paladin. He said he wanted to be able to protect, that he hoped it would be useful. At the time I thought he meant useful to others; I now think he meant useful to me.

But it was a long time before he spoke of his homeland. Sitting with him in the Quicksand I pressed him to tell me who he really was. He simply smiled and said, "I'm the leading man." He said it was a joke, and that there was a story behind the joke. He has not yet told me that story.

"final fantasy fourteen i'm the leading man": "Balthier, real name Ffamran mied Bunansa, is a playable character in Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. He is a sky pirate who globetrots Ivalice on his airship, the Strahl, with his partner Fran. During an attempt to steal from the Royal Palace of Rabanastre, Balthier encounters Vaan robbing the palace treasury. When his plan goes awry Balthier finds himself a part of a conflict between political forces that could lead to war." "Princess! No need to worry. I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies."

In all the time Husband has spoken of Final Fantasy Fourteen, I did not stop to wonder about a Final Fantasy One through Thirteen.

"final fantasy": "a Japanese science fantasy anthology media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and developed and owned by Square Enix (formerly Square). The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science fantasy role-playing video games. The first game in the series was released in 1987, with 15 numbered main entries having been released to date."

Or, it would seem, a Fifteen.

I have been to Rabanastre. It was in ruins. Perhaps this Final Fantasy Twelve speaks of another world where Rabanastre was not destroyed. Or perhaps it depicts the past...I have met time travelers too.

But this Final Fantasy Twelve is a video game, one that tells a story. As Final Fantasy Fourteen tells a story. Someone heard or read or imagined the story and made a video game about it. And that story looks very much like my world. I discover this now by playing the game. Husband discovered it by coming to my world.

Husband has theories about this. One is that the makers of the games had abilities like the Echo and could see my world as if it was a dream or their own idea. Another is that my world is one of infinite worlds, and that any story written would look like some world somewhere. Yet another is that somehow many people believing in a world is enough to create it.

"final fantasy fourteen": "a 2010 massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for Microsoft Windows, developed and published by Square Enix."

It is 2021. I was twenty-four years old when Husband met me. The game is younger than me. It does not make sense that the game, or the players of the game, could have created a world and my parents and my foster parents and me, and somehow had my entire life happen before Husband came. Though time passes differently in different worlds, and time in the game passes very quickly. I saw two sunsets in the game while playing one afternoon.

And time passed differently in Eorzea for Husband than for me. He experienced things I had already experienced, spoke with people I knew had died, could not speak with people he had not yet met, could not visit Ishgard until he had experienced everything I had before I fled there.

He called it "phasing". He talked about "time lines" and "time sequences" and "time loops", that he and I had our own time lines, in which we would see the same things but not together, and that the world would change for us accordingly. Having now played the game, I think this may be what the game calls the Main Story Questline.

I did not know before meeting him that one could revisit a dungeon, that a dungeon was in a time loop that allowed one to experience it over and over. He insisted we try, and so we conquered Sastasha multiple times. The Scion soldiers that accompanied us never seemed to think anything was amiss, though they never seemed to focus on anything but the battle. Husband and I could discuss the dungeon, or skills, or even crafting, and the soldiers would simply stand at the ready.

He called the time loops "instances". He also used that word to talk about battles with primals and other large monsters, or forays into large complexes with many more soldiers than with dungeons. So many things occurring in time loops, and I had not known because I had only done them once.

Yet nothing about it was strange to him. He simply accepted all these things of which I was never aware. He would try this, and try that, and be satisfied with the result, and moved on. Which means the world he was encountering was familiar to him as was the game.

But he did not tell me this. Not until much later did he tell me that people in his world thought my world was not real, that when they saw my world in the game they thought it was only the game and nothing more. A painting rather than a window. A video rather than a view.

A story.

And it was a story he already knew. He knew to expect this dungeon or that quest or that encounter. I did not need to explain to him how to fight the battles, or what his new skills meant. Though I did sometimes need to guide him through new cities, and now I know why: the cities look so much smaller in the game.

Certain things did seem wondrous to him, as if he had only heard of them before, which would have been true if he had been the scholar he claimed to be. Others seemed disappointing to him, like Hullbreaker Isle...not because of anything in it, but because "it's not as funny when the NPCs step in the bear traps."

He was right. When I used Rescue to pull him into a bear trap it was much funnier.

But these things were all part of the story he knew. He knew his future, and decided when he would step into it. And when his story finally caught up to mine in Kugane, it meant he knew both our futures.

And he did not tell me this.

He did not tell me I would come to feel sorry for villains. He did not tell me friends would die, or sometimes only seem to. He did not tell me that time and time again worlds would hover on the brink of destruction, waiting for us to rescue them.

And he certainly never told me that if we did not want these things to happen we could simply...stop. That the world would wait for us. That the fighting and the horror and the grief and the tragedy would linger in our future but not confront us until we were ready.

He demonstrated it, though. It is clear to me now that he at least suspected things would wait for us. He dallied in the Diadem, harvesting rare materials for his crafting pursuits in the Firmament. He explored and hunted in Eureka and Bozja. He spent time furnishing our house and sending airships and submersibles off on missions.

And when I complained about accompanying him on these outings, when I pointed out that there were people to save, he insisted, insisted that there was time, that we should be at our best for the trials ahead, that we should be strong in mind, body and soul, and that one way to do that was to relax.

He did not tell me he knew what those trials would be. He did not tell me of the expected yet surprising betrayal, of the world-shaking revelations, of the pain I would feel as my body struggled to hold itself together.

Yet he experienced these things too. As our timelines took us to the same places and the same events, he walked into them knowing how unpleasant they were to be.

I want to be angry with him for not telling me, for not preparing me. But I think about it now, after gathering so much corn, and I think I do not know what I would have done had I known what would happen. I want to think I would have still done what needed to be done. But perhaps I would have hesitated. Perhaps I would have doubted. Perhaps I would have spent the time dreading what was to come. Perhaps with enough dread I would not have been strong in mind, body and soul.

Instead, Husband did all the dreading for both of us. And still he walked into the future.

A few weeks ago we watched a video called Edge of Tomorrow. It was about a man who lived a day over and over, fighting against an alien enemy, dying each time only to wake up again at the beginning of the day. He died again and again, and a woman who fought alongside him died again and again, and he saw her die again and again.

In the middle of the story they came to a house. They rested. He tended her wounds. He made her coffee. He told her of the basement under the house that had food, a place she would be safe while he went on ahead. Because he did not want to see her die any more. She went on anyway. And died again.

I want to be angry with Husband. But it is hard to be angry at someone who did not want to see me suffer sooner than I needed to. Perhaps, if I had been the one to know our future, I would have done the same.

And what good will anger be now? We are no longer in that world. We are no longer living in a story he knows. Even if we are now in a story, it is one neither of us has read, so we are facing the unknown together. In Edge of Tomorrow the woman asked the man, "So what happens now?" He answered, "I don't know. We never got this far before."

And if Husband is right, we left behind copies of ourselves in Eorzea...or we are copies of them. Perhaps this anger has a place there, where Eorzea him and Eorzea me are still living a story that he knows and she does not. Though Husband said he did not finish the "post-Shadowbringers content," so perhaps they too are facing an unknown future.

It has long since gotten dark in this cornless cornfield. I have gathered corn and I have gathered thoughts. It is time to go home.

*****

Husband was in bed when I got home. His laptop was plugged in on his nightstand. He was awake and watched me come in. He did not say anything.

He would have served the children at the diner by himself while I was out thinking and gathering corn. I had said I needed time and he had given it to me.

He had found himself in a strange world, and his first thought was to take up a sword and become a gladiator. To be useful. Perhaps to me.

He is patient when I do not understand his world. He is kind when I do not understand my body. He is fiercely angry when I am threatened or slighted.

He was waiting to see what I would do.

I undressed and got into bed with him. We put our arms around each other.

"Is it true that the leading man never dies?"

"I can think of seven movies where he did."

"Seven."

"I can make a case for eight."

Perhaps there are times I would not mind if he did not tell me something.

"Please try not to die, Husband."

"Of course, my love. For you."