Today is November 6th. The birthday of a good friend of mine: Tauros. He has passed away last year. I have come to terms with his death, but I do still miss him.

Recently he had been on my mind. His favorite game was Final Fantasy IV (known as Final Fantasy II when it was originally released in English). Back when he came from America to Europe, we drove together for a bit, and he had music from the game playing in his car. It meant a lot to him. I remember how the Mist Dragon from FF4 appeared in FF14, the MMORPG that I'm playing. I shared pictures of it, and he was very glad to see "his game" get representation like this.

The upcoming expansion to the game, Endwalker, is heavily related to FF4. The developers have even said that they were trying to limit the FF4 references in the game, knowing they'd have an entire expansion as a love-letter to the game. Thinking about FF14 leads me to thinking about FF4, and thinking about FF4 leads me to thinking about Tauros and how I miss him. I wonder what could have been. I think about what I could tell or show him from the game once it comes out. Maybe he would have noticed something in the trailer that I missed... It's sad to think that it's not going to happen. That he's not around anymore.

However instead of just accepting the sorrow and letting it wash over me, I decided to put my emotions to use and create this picture: I took the shot from the Trailer for Endwalker, where the Warrior of Light stands on the Moon in the Paladin armor (much like Cecil from FF4), and put the fursona of Tauros in the role.

I have made some mistakes while making this. People familiar with the Endwalker trailer will see that I flipped Tauros horizontally. I also have depicted the planet very differently than the promotional artwork does, as it was difficult to replicate, and I just decided to depict the FF4 world map instead. As everything that I make, it's very imperfect, but in regards to this piece, I feel quite glad of what I put together, and I'm sure that my friend would have loved it.

Thank you for everything, my dear friend

Tauros @ His character
Final Fantasy 4, Final Fantasy 14 @ Square Enix
Art @ ME!