Tell me something nice
Like flowers and blue skies
Like flowers and blue skies
If it had been a different world, a different lifetime, she may have scowled at the approaching stranger, perhaps a warning glare and a warding wave of Ruinam. But that is a lifetime long passed, eons of starlit tears have since passed, her vigilance at the sight of men abandoned long ago. Her trust in them is still wary; she is still very much hindered by her childhood spent surrounded by powerful women who taught her of the resilience of the Matraan. They would tell her that men were beasts, savage and foul with their boisterous displays of masculinity. And Sayyida had taken that to heart, had learned to never put trust into men the same way she did her fellow sisters — but that was lifetimes ago, and worlds away.
As her head raises, amber eyes meets the soft turquoise gaze directed her, dwarfed by the glowing giant. She almost recoils at the sight of someone else, grasping for a spear that isn't there on instinct alone, having been surrounded solely by her stars for too long. His looming shadow is interrupted by the soft glow emitted from his body, bathing her in blue as she lays vulnerable before him. There is silence between, weighted by her sorrow, by her mourning of old gods and dead friends.
His words are abrupt to her ears, which had grown so used to the sound of her own heart, to the sound of her painful howls and broken cries. Under normal circumstances, perhaps she would have refused to answer, would have turned away without a second glance. But there is something comforting in his dappled body, in the faint starry glow of his skin, reminiscent of the lights of the Hinterlands that she'd only ever heard stories about. She can remember the painted leaves plastered to stone, dancing across its surface as the elders told their tales of the northern lights, detailing the spectacular colours and how the sky had been alive with light and colour.
If he hadn't reminded her of that, if he hadn't approached her or concerned himself with her grief — perhaps she wouldn't have felt the need to say anything, would have kept her moments of mourning to herself, would have held her tongue. But the familiarity of his false sky and the weight of her sorrow pushed her to it. She thought that maybe, just maybe, indulging a stranger with her grief would somehow make her feel better, would remove the painful weight from her chest. Midnight lips part, searching for the right words, for the foreign feeling of Common syllables tumbling from her mouth. The words were jagged, jarring, her throat raw from centuries of screaming, choppy and unfamiliar. "I have seen too much death," she begins, thick accent laced within the syllables of her sentence. "Watched my people die. I could not save them." Her voice cracks, her gaze drops to the grasses beneath her that catch rays of sunlight upon their glossy surface, trying to distract herself from her slow unraveling. It hurt so much more saying it aloud.
"I do not want to be helpless anymore," she finally confesses, but she does not feel any better. She feels like she has admitted to weakness, that she has finally revealed her biggest flaw — she could not save her people or her gods, she could not save Pyrrha or Edana. Many years ago, Sayyida believed herself capable of slaying a god. She wielded Ruinam with that confidence and passion, prepared to run the rivers red if it meant protecting her sisters and Halla. She thought that her spear would pierce the heart of a god, painted by the ichor of Cosmos, thought that somehow she was the one destined to bring his cruel reign to an end. Oh how things have changed, how fate has cruelly beaten down that naive little girl, how quickly she realised this cursed mortal body of hers would never be enough. It was too late now, for the blood was already on her hands, the bodies of her people beneath her and the guilt of their deaths weighed heavy upon her heart.
Had this been Nordlys, she would not have entertained a man for so long, would not have confessed the weakness of mortality to him, would not have batted an eye at him — but this is not Nordlys, and so she feels like she must spill herself out before him, as if that will clear her conscious or lessen her burden. "How does one change the past?" Amber eyes search dark features, almost begging for a response, as if this stranger who so closely resembles Cosmos' sky may offer the answer she so desperately needs. She would give anything to go back, to save her people, to prevent Pyrrha's pain and her own — an ambitious idea, to return to the moment of disaster and face the darkness head on, to spare Nordlys and its inhabitants a horrible fate. Was she brought here to witness the death of a nation once again? Perhaps she was the harbinger of chaos and destruction, the sign of the end, placed here simply to watch darkness swallow up this land too.
