“Are you still awake?” Oriali and Caligo :3
The world is a silent sheet of starless sky
There was beauty in this world, perhaps, but I never saw it. I never got the chance.
Whose fault is that?
It is a question I ask myself often, a question asked of me, as if someone else expects me to know the answer.
Perhaps it was my parents. They never wrapped me in blankets, the way I huddle them close to myself now. They never offered a room to me, the way that nice man in the other room did. He isn’t sleeping, not even after I bid him good night and closed the door. He sits on the couch, listening.
He’s here to keep me safe, I think.
Perhaps it was those people..the ones who called themselves my family. The ones with their strange spells and dull expressions and cold, lifeless voices. They showed me powers that I didn’t understand, and promised that I could have them if I showed my initiative. Oddly enough, it seems that everyone I’ve ever known wanted something from me.
They wanted more than myself, and I didn’t know how to offer what I didn’t have.
I still don’t know how.
The sky outside is itself, and nothing more. Each pinprick of light from a stray star is itself. No one asks the bedding or the creaky floor to be something more than itself. That nice man..Syllic..never tries to be something more than what he is.
You..all you wanted was to be yourself.
All you needed was to be yourself.
I never asked you for more than what you were. Nothing more than the pitifully little of yourself that you still possessed.
I watched you grow and change, and I was happy for you.
I was happy for you, the way someone can be happy when they see the sun rising over the edge of the horizon. The way I was happy when I watched my young student fumble over a spell or stitch up the tear in the seam of his sleeve.
I wonder where he is, now.
He seemed happy when I last saw him.
I wonder if, like you, he’s left me.
I was happy because you were yourself. That’s all you had to offer me, and you asked for nothing less than myself in return.
Footsteps pass by my closed door. Syllic is finally going to bed, it seems, though I hear his steps pause outside. In the silence, I can almost hear his breathing.
Are you still awake? he seems to ask.
The whole house settles and creaks in the quiet. The wind blows outside the windowpane, knocking against tree limbs. A cricket chirps a merry tune.
Yes.
I remain awake for a long while after that. I no longer know how to sleep peacefully. It’s too dark and silent without your dreams, without the sound of your quiet breath on the other side of the room.
Everything rings with your absence. All existence reminds me of your absence.
The world is a silent sheet of starless sky.
