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Milo has only ever known of grandiose things.
For years, he watches the pillars of the museum scrape the sky, the sun cast the walls of the museum shades of auburn and flaming gold. When he falls in love it’s always in waves and meanders, be it with the wrinkles etched upon the face of his grandfather, or the stars that spin in the boundless skies so far away from him, or down to the flowing poetry in languages only the dead can read. People search for places that take them to higher grounds. They search for places that secure the land beneath their soles, that fills their wallet with more money than they know what to do with, but here is Milo Thatch, in search of places beyond people’s wildest imaginations.
Go big or go home, they say.
Go big, Milo agrees. Always go big, then go bigger. Milo has gone beyond places he dares to imagine, but at the very end of this vast world is home. He has travelled across land and sea until he stumbles upon a place where he thinks is the direction of going big, only to find that he is home, after all.
Here he watches the way light is trapped between Kida’s every strand of hair, her lilting laugh bouncing from wall to wall until it plants itself in Milo’s heart, he wonders, where does this leave him?
Milo has only ever known of grandiose things, after all. If there is love, it should also come in the same feverish way like all things he’s known.
Yet here, miles and miles away from a civilisation he’s grown up with, there are no fancy gestures he can pull out at will. There will never be strolls on streets as they watch night lights flicker out, kisses exchanged in the last row of the cinema as the protagonists whisper sweet nothings in each other’s ears, carefully scripted proposals that involve waltzing among gardens of magnificent estates in dresses made to fit princesses.
This is alright though , Milo thinks. He’s not a quitter, after all. If there’s anyone who can manage to make the smallest of things flourish into something magnificent, it will be him.
It occurs to him that anniversaries are a good place to start as any and sets out to work. “A feast for the queen,” he tells his beloved Atlanteans, “but please don’t let her find out I’m doing this for her.”
They oblige. These words may technically be orders from the king, but one look at the unsheathed passion that burns in Milo’s eyes as he talks about their beloved queen, and it doesn’t take much convincing to get their help any more.
“You see,” he tells them, in a kind of bashful way that would melt anyone’s hearts. “I’ve been trying my best to find out what are the best fruits that can be gathered here, or any kind of seafood really. But I’ve also never been the best cook. I don’t know if I can actually do any of these recipes justice?”
To Milo’s pleasant surprise, he starts receiving offers all around, from the children who roam the place and know the best berries, from the mothers who have perfected their recipes over generations, from the fishers who know how to navigate the seas as they know land itself. Help comes trickling in, and Milo spends the fortnight leading up to the anniversary humming in the houses of friendly housewives, carefully tending to brambles that barely hang on from the weight of the ripening fruits, and sandwiched between waves. He busies himself trying to make the best he could with all these resources foreign to him, only to find, at the utter dismay of the kind Atlanteans who have lent him a hand, Milo Thatch is many things, but a cook is simply not one of them.
On the night of the anniversary, Milo briefly contemplates gifting her one of the better prepared dishes prepared by one of his tutors, but when Kida slips into the kitchen humming and wraps her arms around his waist, he’s caught off guard.
“What have you been doing, dear?”
Desperately, he tries to sweep it all aside, “It’s nothing, don’t worry yourself-”
“Are you making something for us? For me?” Kida unhooks her fingers and peers, and before Milo can stop her, takes a sip from the stew laid out.
“Oh man, I’m so sorry sweetheart,” he begins defeatedly, words rushing into each other. “I was supposed to prepare something lovely for our anniversary, where every ingredient is gathered by myself, where I personally go through the entire cooking process, and now I’ve just ruined it and have nothing to give you-”
He falters when he watches tears streak down Kida’s cheeks. “Sweetheart?” he asks hesitantly. “You don’t really have to eat any of this, it’s alright, we could always-”
“Shh, listen to me. It’s fine.” With tear-rimmed eyes, she tips her chin up to look Milo straight in the eye. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
Taken aback, he begins, “I don’t understand, I mixed the sequence of the instructions up, added the wrong proportion of ingredients. How?”
“But you put a lot of love into this, didn’t you?” Kida’s face splits into a smile, and Milo feels his heart dip. In the best kind of way.
“Oh,” he says. “ Oh ,” he simply says.
All’s well that ends well they say, but Milo thrives on chasing after ambitions larger than the Mediterranean itself. He chances his big dreams onward, for there may be a time to stop, but Milo is going to make sure it is not here.
So maybe Milo is terrible at Atlantean cuisines. But he doesn’t have to stop here. He may never have had much of a green thumb, but every time he dreams of gardens filled with crystal-energy-blessed Atlantean roses that shimmer under the waves, Milo is determined to do whatever it may take to make this a reality.
“This is for Kida,” he tells himself when he once again finds himself at the mercy of the kind Atlanteans who can’t seem happier to help him out when they know of his goal.
For days and nights, he tends to these flowers, waters them in love and song. The Atlantean children sometimes visit. They tell him Milo’s keeping them company by being the most fascinating thing to happen to Atlantis for a long time, but Milo suppose it’s more of the other way round. He tells them stories of the surface, he tells them tales that originated from a civilisation that has diverged from them many years ago, of princesses and princes and witches and magic, but it always seems to be his own tale they ask to hear over and over.
He watches not just these roses flourish, but also the smiles of the children as he slowly takes it upon himself to step in as the tutor they never got. When they do eventually bloom, not a single one of these children ask him for any of these blossoms, but Milo sees the way the light in their eyes flicker out when they see a garden of roses that shine aquamarine not for them. He snips these flowers off, one by one, in exchange of the smiles of these people he has grown to love, then for more of these people, now his people, until everyone in Atlantis has bouquets of roses courtesy of the king.
At the end of the day, Milo has no flower garden for show, but only a single stem of rose for Kida. But when Kida throws her arms around him, thanking him for being the unexpected hero that no one knew they needed, Milo feels his heart bloom more grandly than any rose could ever.
“You have made the people so happy, how is that not already the best possible gift a queen could ever possibly want?”
Still, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s already at wits end. Milo doesn’t have the perfect candlelit dinner for the love of his life, nor bouquets of roses.
What he does have (or what he almost has, anyway), is a huge scare when he sees Kida being carried in by some Atlanteans one day, barely concsious. Her eyes are closed, skin paling under the moonlight.
“What’s wrong?” He asks the two people who have brought her in, though his eyes do not leave her for even a fraction of a second.
She collapsed in the middle of doing something , they tell him, even though Milo didn’t quite catch what it was. If anything, they looked far more distressed than Milo was, watching their queen collapsing before their very eyes. “It’s okay,” he reassures them. “I’ll be here for her.”
After he lays her down gently in bed, he can only stare, not knowing what to do next. Under the waves of the ocean, the tides and placement of the moon have taught them to tell time better, and the entire nation has been preparing for their celebration. One of gratitude, and of hopes of prosperity. For the past few days, Milo has seen Kida hustling around making rounds, making sure all her people were doing well, busying herself with the festivities.
“We Atlanteans are hardworking people,” she had smiled gently when Milo urged her to get more rest. “If a day like this comes where everyone can let loose, I want to make sure it's perfect for them all.”
The crystal shines on Kida’s chest, shining a faint blue against her skin. It calms Milo down, knowing she’ll be protected and that this is nothing he’ll have to worry about in particular. Without noticing it, he starts to hum, then sings her the lullabies of his youth. Some in English, some in languages that no longer came to him naturally in speech, but still find ways to roll off his tongue easily as he taps into the wells of his childhood memories.
Here in Atlantis, it’s so mesmerising how everything is simply so blue , really. On the other end of these waves that parts Milo from land, he imagines a full moon, shining gently on the rest of these lands that have been dyed the colours of sapphires.
He doesn’t know how long time has passed, but eventually in his arms, Kida stirs.
“Oh thank god, you’re fine,” he exhales, then leans in for a closer look. “You are fine, right?”
“Milo?” she calls out to him after a small pause.
There is nothing out of the ordinary for this particular moment, only the same person he’s loved at her first laugh glowing everlasting shades of cerulean in the heart of Atlantis. But yet, all the tides and shapes of the moons he’s studied couldn’t possibly tell Milo why time stills right here.
His face morphs into what he hopes is fondness, the same expression that matches Kida’s. His voice comes out barely a whisper. “Yes, Kida?”
“I love you.”
“I too, sweetheart. Will you ever learn to take care of yourself?”
“If I never, you’ll just have to do it for me, won’t you?”
Milo has only ever known of grandiose things.
But here, under filtered moonlight and lullabies that no longer echo, things feel perfect just as they are. There may never be torrents and hefty gestures of affection that he gets to shower Kida with, nor ground-breaking professions of love that steal her breath away, but the dreamy look in her eyes that flicker when she studies Milo like he’s the most wonderful thing to grace her existence with, everything else, grandiose or no, seems to melt away.
Here, Kidagakash Nedakh is as much in love with him as he is with her, and maybe that is about as grandiose as things get.