Chapter Text
“What are the stars whispering to you?”. That’s where we left it in the last post. Like I already said, I believe this question is Lune’s first step towards reconnecting with Sciel and she succeeds, because Sciel’s answer is a confession: “Actually, I’m the one whispering to them”. We can hear the vulnerability in her voice. She’s sharing something very intimate with Lune here. As such, we see her face from a frontal view, clearly lit for the first time in the scene. We fully see her now and so does Lune. Until this moment, we’ve been seeing Sciel lying down on the ground, gazing at the night sky, but, just like Lune, we didn’t really know what was going on in her head.
With her question, Lune tries to understand that. What is it about the stars that has Sciel so captivated? What secrets could they be revealing to her? Is she seeking answers in the starts? Lune’s question speaks of the way she understands the world: as a source of information and meaning, waiting to be unraveled. Lune aims for the bigger questions, like the inquisitive academic she is.
However, Sciel reveals that, actually, she is the one who's whispering her secrets to the stars. As she says this, the camera slowly zooms out of her face and then, we finally see the starry sky she’s been whispering to. A beautiful night sky, where the moon’s closeness stands out in front of the tiny stars, which are barely the size of the fireflies that mingle with them as they fly around.
From this point on, with Sciel’s revelation, something very beautiful starts happening in this scene: the sky and the moon begin to reconnect with the actual sky and moon as witnesses. The same as the time they first met. The shot of the starry sky is a bridge between Sciel’s confession and Lune’s reaction to it. “Oh?”, Lune says, intrigued, encouraging Sciel to go on. Right after that, the shot of the starry sky changes and the camera focuses on Lune again. She gives Sciel a wide smile as she turns even further towards her. She doesn’t close the journal, but at least Sciel has all of her attention now.
As Sciel begins explaining the origin of her intimate approach at stargazing, we see her in a wider shot than before. “It’s something my dad and I used to do”. There’s a wide space beside her, an empty spot left by the absence of her father. It’s just her talking to the stars now.
If I’m not mistaken, this is the only time in the game that Sciel mentions her dad and I think it’s no coincidence that she decides to tell Lune about him, of all people. Lune was there when Sciel was grieving him, so Lune must be somehow connected to the memory of her long-lost father. It’s easier for Sciel to talk to Lune about him, because Lune already knows about him.
Lune’s reaction is to remain quiet and listen carefully, aware of the very personal territory this is heading into. In their world, talking about their parents can be a very delicate topic and, additionally, she witnessed firsthand how hurt Sciel was after the loss of her father. So, yes, she does know, and she’s probably getting a déjà vu feeling.
As Sciel keeps opening up, recalling what her dad taught her, the camera, once again, brings us close to her face. “When I was scared…”, she glances at Lune, before rising her eyes towards the sky, where they will remain as she keeps talking. “…or anxious…”, she has a reminiscing look. She probably remembers moments with her dad as she looks at the stars, moments that warm her heart in the dark of the night. Light and darkness are, once again, a duality painted across her face.
“…or even when I was happy…”, as Sciel says this, we see her distorted by the light of Lune’s journal. I like to believe that this could be a representation of how Lune sees what Sciel is saying. She can’t fully listen to her talking about her dad without thinking of her own parents. She probably never shared many carefree and heartfelt moments with them. Her relationship with her parents was distorted by their mission and so are her memories of them. Just like Sciel is in this shot.
“He’d say…”. Lune’s still intently looking at Sciel, contemplating and understanding the beautiful nature of Sciel’s bond with her father. “…share it with the stars…”. We see Sciel and the sky. The moon at the center, aligned with Sciel’s face. “When it’s hard to talk about things…”. Could she be looking at the moon as she says this? “The stars’ll understand”. The stars… Or the moon. A girl named after the moon, the one who is now listening to her as a fully grown woman, understood her that night, when it hurt so much to talk about things. The camera lands on the night sky once again as Sciel finishes speaking and it lingers there for a bit, in silence. The moon’s presence is hard to miss in the night sky. That’s probably what imprints Lune into Sciel’s habit, somehow: every time she talks to the stars and sees the moon, she remembers that night with Lune.
Next time we see Lune, she is looking towards the sky too. Now she understands what Sciel was searching for in the stars. What Sciel seeks in the stars are answers about herself, about her own life. By encouraging this habit of talking to the stars, her father taught Sciel the importance of expressing and externalizing her feelings. Whatever she might be going through, even if it’s hard to voice, she can tell the stars about it. The stars are eternal, unlike the people she might lose, and they will listen silently and attentively, allowing her to figure herself out with no judgement. This habit could possibly be the foundation of Sciel’s emotional intelligence. That is the legacy her dad left her: work on yourself, grow fond of the beautiful world that surrounds you, build intimate bonds with it and let it help you build intimate bonds with those around you.
What a beautifully tragic coincidence it is that, exactly the day she lost her father, Sciel met Lune under the starry sky. They might be different people from that day, fully grown now, at the edge of their lives, but the stars are the same that witnessed the moment they shared that night. This fact could be visually conveyed by the overhead shot in which we see them from the star’s perspective. They are at the edge of the cliff, each of them next to a different source of light, doing something that connects them with their long-lost parents.
As we see this image, a music box replaces the bawu and the piano in Lune’s campfire theme. The tender and youthful sound of this music could represent the memories of their childhood that might be silently flooding their minds but, in this context, it could also speak of the loss of innocence and the violent introduction into adult life that came with the loss of their parents. A loss of innocence that Lune and Sciel witnessed of each other, a loss that made them find each other under the night sky.