the flower that we'll never grow again
⤷ post-anamorphosis: team scepter reunion.
“With the city, huh...” he parrots Sephiran, trying to think it over. Was that it? He envisions the city streets again, a place he could never go.
“...it WAS different from the streets I first showed up in. That's true,” he concedes. “I'd grabbed it thinking it looked like it might be important or special... It's kind of like when you see a beautiful weapon, isn't it??”
A work of art that's in a whole other caliber than everything around it.
“...Is that why people hunt for beautiful things, do you think?? We can't help but be drawn to it...” Leif's hand idles with the brush in his grasp, unsure what to paint. “A long time ago, you told me you don't think the blessings of the earth were meant for us.”
The past of this world blends with the world that could be nothing more than the past now.
“If that's so... why must we be drawn to them?? What is it... all for...?”
Sephiran’s expression doesn’t shift, even as the boy returns to an old conversation in the guise of a lesson- just as airy and soft as before. For a moment, silent, wondering how long his words had sat with Leif, or if it were just now that they resurfaced.
It didn’t change the nature of the situation, regardless.
“Have you not answered your own question?” Not unkindly, Sephiran returns, “It seemed important. It was special to someone, even if not necessarily you.”
A pause, as if granting time to consider, or perhaps to simply allow himself a moment to admire the flowers blessed enough to be real. Unlike the subject of the painting, they were mundane enough not to be preserved in anything beyond memory.
“Perhaps so we seek to shape the world in its wake. Or I could make grand claims to whom the beauty belongs- but it matters not, either way. There was someone who cared enough to preserve that flower, just as you try to now.”
“When the next finds your work long after you have discarded it, its beauty is not meant for them, either.”
