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“Lesser Lord Kusanali, what exactly are we doing here?”
Nahida looked up at the seemingly young man by her side, wearing a mild smile she was elated to see no longer infuriated him as much as before. She led the both of them under a rough stone archway, seemingly grown rather than formed through geological processes, and into what seemed to be another realm altogether; one of soft green light, filtered through giant disc-shaped leaves far overhead. Anyone would feel small here, like a whimsical children’s dream.
“…Lesser Lord Kusanali?”
“Just a little further,” she replied, lightly skipping ahead, delighting in her surroundings. This environment very closely matched the feeling of the dreams she’d spent most of her life in, but this was real! Was there anything more delightful than dreamlike reality, as opposed to realistic dreams? She was positively giddy with it.
She ventured a look up at her companion, just as he pointedly took his questioning gaze off her, and failed to prevent his indigo eyes straying to their otherworldly surroundings, briefly widening in wonder before he visibly stamped it down. She bit back a giggle.
“All right, I’ll indulge your silly games,” he huffed. “Can you really afford to be wasting this kind of time, though?”
He still didn’t call her Nahida, despite knowing her preference for her self-chosen name. But he’d already done away with Buer, and she knew the reason for his stubbornness. He’d never let himself get too close too fast again. Names and their manner of usage were important. Names, once given, were to be taken seriously.
Even if some names brought feelings of conflict and unease.
“I wanted to show you some of Sumeru’s rarest plants,” the Dendro Archon replied as the two of them stepped out into a glen of the giant stalks rising up from and out between smaller, bulbous trees, all surrounding a little lake. “…Kintsugi.”
He winced a little. A moment later he let out a humorless huff of laughter. “The Archon herself, all the way out here for some botany? Well, I don’t suppose Amurta could cultivate these at the Akademiya or Pardis Dhyai, but still.” He gestured at the giant discs overhead. “I’m listening, I suppose. Not like I have anything better to do.”
“Not those,” the Dendro Archon shook her head. “These, down here.” She halted at a slender purple flower sprouting in between the lush, dewy undergrowth, its green leaves tipped with lavender. “How much do you know about padisarahs?”
He stared at it. “I know they also grow in the city.”
“Not like this,” Nahida insisted. “Trust me? I promise there’s a point to all this.”
“There’d better be,” he muttered, crossing his arms, glaring at the flower like it’d personally offended him. Then, tipping his head back in annoyance, he started off. “Your people revere these, although they also use them in meals and crush them for spices.” He scoffed for a moment. “…Typical, really. I hear they can be very demanding to grow, even in a land overflowing with Dendro. And I believe there’s a… symbolic aspect to them that I’m sure you’re about to lecture me on now.”
“They were created by my former self,” Nahida spoke quietly, “in memory of a dear friend.”
Kintsugi blinked.
“I have no memory of it anymore,” she continued, “but the real, original padisarah was the symbol of the Goddess of Flowers. When she died, the flower went extinct with her. I tried to recreate it to honour her, but could never recapture its vibrant original colours.”
The puppet shivered, gritted his teeth. “So it could never live up to the original. It’ll always just be a poor imitation. An insult.”
Nahida gently rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I’m sure my former self did the best she could with what she had. And… that she had sound reasoning for her actions.”
“Well, yeah. We’re talking about the God of Wisdom here, after all.” A pointed stare. “Aren’t we, Kusanali?” The beginnings of a slightly manic grin tugged at the corners of his mouth, all but daring her to make a wrong move.
“Aren’t we?” was her simply posed counterquestion. “Kintsugi?”
“Why did you bring me here?” he snapped.
Nahida didn’t answer, merely beheld him with those great, gleaming green eyes, full of piercing questions and answers maybe even more so.
He turned away.
Kintsugi.
He’d been both oddly touched and viscerally disgusted when the Traveler had named him that. The art of mending broken pottery with gold… wasn’t it enough that he saw himself as an object, and a broken one at that? To have his name be a reminder of the Traveler’s thoughts on the matter, to have it tied to him in a way he could not escape… but on the other hand, the process of kintsugi was meant to mend and strengthen the object while honouring the breaking, weaving everything that came before into a more beautiful new beginning, thoughtful and honest. It showed a depth of understanding on the Traveler’s part that he…
…that he was frankly highly uncomfortable with. He almost regretted giving the Traveler the opportunity to name him. Almost.
There was nothing in this world worth truly regretting. He’d learned that the hard way, too.
He turned back to Nahida, his eyes flashing. “Why, Kusanali?”
“Because padisarahs are not all there is. There is another flower here, hidden quite well, a secret of the forest realm.” There was a sparkle in her emerald eyes, a riddle, a sense of wonder that was uniquely Nahida. “Do you want to see it?”
She always managed to bring out a sense of curiosity in him, no matter how he tried to crush it. It was infuriating. “Ugh. Do I have a choice?”
A childlike giggle, an unfurling, an outpouring, an overflow of purest Dendro… and everything shifted.
All of a sudden, there was music in the air. Music that seemed to skip the ears and arrive straight into the mind.
Kintsugi’s eyes widened.
“Welcome to Mahavanaranapna,” Nahida spoke, her voice slightly reverberating, at one with the music. “The Great Dream.”
The sky had gone violet and hazy, the air itself strewn with inexplicable little lights, like luminescent pollen. There was a new sense of vitality to the world, like an all-encompassing breath of life, yet also a timeless sense of stillness – unchanging, stable, ancient. Kintsugi caught himself faltering at it, this sense of peace suddenly washing over him and through him.
And then he saw them.
Little creatures hiding in the shade of every leaf, every bulbous tree suddenly turned into a home; diving away as his gaze caught them, giggling and chattering amongst themselves and not at all doing a good job at hiding. By his side, Nahida giggled as well. “Don’t worry!” she called out. “You can come out, he’s good!”
A growl rose in Kintsugi’s throat at this, but all he could utter was a quiet, incredulous “You. ”
Nahida looked up at him, eyes shining and narrowed in mirth. “I knew you’d be able to see them. In fact, you’ve met them before, haven’t you?”
“This is where you live?! ”
Nahida let out a laugh like the tinkling of little bells, skipping forward, meeting the Aranara halfway as they came forward as well. “Sumeru’s dreams hold more truth than you think!” She looked back, following his wide indigo gaze to one Aranara in particular. “…You’ve met Ararycan,” she realized in delight.
Before Kintsugi could speak, the blue Aranara came waddling towards him, looking up with a proud, defiant smile the wanderer could not help but mirror, if only in the subtlest of ways. “Welcome, blue Nara,” the little creature nodded, one hand on the little sword on his hip, the other on the brim of his mushroom cap. “Great hat, just like Ararycan’s. The forest remembers you. Surely we were great friends!”
“Funny how you always assume the best,” Kintsugi muttered, but there was an unmistakable fondness to his voice that did not escape Nahida. She joined the two of them, smiling her enigmatic little smile. “The forest does remember,” she spoke.
Kintsugi looked down at her, his fondness fading. “Does it, now?” There was a bitter mocking to his voice, and it was easy to guess what he was thinking of now. “I sincerely doubt it.” He looked away, obscuring his expression with his hat, his next words barely audible. “…If it did, it wouldn’t allow me into its precious dreams.”
The Great Dream continued on, unperturbed, its little lights glistening in the hazy air.
“Vana remembers what really matters,” Ararycan piped up then. “No good thing will ever fade away, and all suffering will come to nourish something beautiful.”
Kintsugi opened his mouth, but found his every thought stuck in his throat, impossible to utter. Before he could untangle himself, Nahida spoke again.
“This is the flower I really wanted to show you. Not a padisarah, but a viparyas.”
He looked.
With the unfurling of the Great Dream, the world had shifted in tangible ways, even affecting the flora around them. A different purple flower was before them now, one he’d never seen before; four sepals like delicate loops surrounding an almost luminous corolla, pale golden and feathery. He couldn’t bring himself to inspect it more closely. He didn’t have to – Nahida explained further.
“It’s exclusive to the Great Dream, a myth to the outside world. It grows from the memory of life in the soil itself; it has no seeds. It effectively creates itself from dreams and memories alone – happy ones. It’s sustained by happiness, laughter and song, like here.”
Unbidden, unwanted, understanding wrapped itself around the emptiness in his chest, squeezing it, filling it. Something hot and almost painful lanced through him, and he found himself lowering himself to one knee with the force of it all, playing it off as taking a closer look at the flower. One hand curled against his chest, rubbing absentmindedly.
“I ask you once again, Kusanali,” he managed. “Why take me all the way here to see this flower?”
“I think you know that already,” Nahida gentled.
“The Traveler knows about this place, doesn’t he?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“These flowers. And how they’re grown.”
“He does.”
Kintsugi gritted his teeth. “…He probably knows I’d have eviscerated him on the spot. If he had. …If he had named me… that.”
“Well, he didn’t tell me that much, but… he did say that as much as he’d considered Viparyas, he ultimately decided that name doesn’t fit who you are now. It fits who you were, back then, when you sprouted and flourished amidst life and happiness.”
“Kabukimono,” he muttered.
A name he erased. A person he erased. And yet, someone who yet lived in the dream of another samsara, inside him, part of him, ineffaceable despite it all.
Damn the Traveler, bestowing upon him the burden of two infuriating, insufferable names. Kintsugi, the mending of a broken thing, and…
Viparyas.
…the one who’d broken in the first place, so long ago. The one the Traveler had caught a glimpse of, and envisioned being mended with gold.
Damn the Traveler, always finding ways to cut right to the hollow where his heart should be, even without sword in hand. He huffed out a little laugh. As if that dull blade could ever really damage his form, anyway. No, instead, he’d…
Kintsugi reached out, despite himself.
The flower before him swayed and bent easily as he touched its strange, looping petals, its purple leaves with their pale, heart-shaped markings, letting him see it from every angle, letting him manipulate it however he pleased with no resistance or complaint.
He beheld the viparyas with disgust, bordering on hatred; here it was, staring right back at him. Alive and innocent and vulnerable, needing happiness to grow, how dare it? …Didn’t it know better?
And yet, he felt something else, too. The flower resonated with him, the dream resonated with him, and somewhere very deep down he admired it, existing and thriving despite everything, in a world such as this one.
Maybe the Traveler hadn’t seen him as an object after all. Or as a human, for which he was equally grateful. There were things in this world that were neither, that did suit him. That he might just have something good to say about after all.
Maybe there might be something good to say about this world, if it brought forth a flower like this.
Something fell, caught the light, and landed on the purple petals, lingering like dew. Ararycan placed a little blue hand on his knee, and Kintsugi didn’t push it off. Nahida gave the softest, smallest smile, and all around them, the Great Dream hummed on, ancient, eternal, full of hidden truths.
In the end, the Aranara offered him their dream flower.
“Take care of it,” they told him, holding out the engraved stone pot, rounded like a river rock. “Bring it happiness, tell it stories!”
Kintsugi looked appalled. “No way,” he hissed out. “What makes you think that is in any way a good idea? Taking care of… it’ll only slow me down, I don’t care about its pathetic needs!”
“You’re more than fit to take care of it,” Nahida told him, looking up at him with the utmost confidence, seeing right through him. “You’ll do just fine. You have so many stories to tell of your travels! And if you ever need help, I’m right here,” she chuckled. No plant would ever wilt in the abode of the Dendro Archon herself.
Kintsugi clenched his jaw, glaring down at the purple flower.
“Nourishing viparyas will also be most nourishing for blue Nara,” Ararycan quipped, with just a hint of slyness. “Most delicious and fulfilling!”
And Kintsugi heaved a sigh, unable to believe himself as he accepted the pot into his arms, and unable to believe how it felt to hold it.
There was one particular room in the Sanctuary of Surasthana decorated with an inexplicable mixture of Sumeran and Inazuman furniture. A Sumeran bed and countless potted plants creating a lush atmosphere, an Inazuman folding screen depicting birds in flight and a characteristic Amur maple tea set prominently featured on a karmaphala table… and one pot and plant that most people would find very hard to place indeed.
When the room’s inhabitant was home, the Sanctuary’s Archon could sometimes hear him muttering, humming, or even playing a little tune on the zither he’d purchased on Treasures Street. She’d pass by his door without a word, but her smile would widen every time.
Viparyas was doing just fine. And so was the dream flower.
She’d never had any doubt.
