@solaceforge : ‘ when i first met you , you said what you needed was a time machine . where would you go if you had one ? ’
She remembers — she tries not to, most days, and every day the recollections get hazier — the familiar line. A script, almost, easy. Let’s go home meaning let’s leave, this world is starting to cling, or this world is starting to hurt, or this world doesn’t feel safe any longer. And then, the reply : of course. home is wherever we are together, meaning you’re right, let’s leave, because the world we were on never made home, it was always that you were there.
Home is wherever we are together. Lumine looks to Kazuha with their yellow eyes, no longer gold, too flat by half, and wonders how to explain that it’s not a where, because home was never a place. It’s not when, but who.
It’s a hard day for speaking. It often seems to be. Paimon isn’t here, just this once, to help, and Lumine isn’t sure she’d answer right if she were. It must be obvious, though, mustn’t it? To Kazuha, too, defined as he is by the moment that he lost someone essential to his existence.
Moments, with Lumine. Five hundred years prior to an unknown god, and more recently, to Aether alone. She’s not sure she can endure another loss, let alone one her brother chooses to inflict. She’ll die, if she isn’t dead already. She might be dead already.
It’s a hard day for speaking. The words don’t come easily. It takes too long to mutter even the single syllable that isn’t any kind of answer / that is the only answer : “home.”
Home is wherever we are together. Home is holding my brother’s hand. Home is something other than empty - dead - angry. Home is ———
Home doesn’t exist. His eyes close. When they open, the light’s dimmed further, just a bit.
