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Do you feel most like a god when I’m at your mercy like this?
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Neuvillette says.
Focalors looks at him with only affection. A smile graces her lips, a tiny thing. “Then, tell me why I’m here, Chief Justice.”
There’s nothing he can do that can grant this half of the former Hydro Archon back to life. She is here now, in this wasting landscape, wailing in its desperation, lonesome in its lack of any sign of creatures, water, or life. Neuvillette is only all too aware this is a representation of his current mind state. “You’re not real,” Neuvillette says.
“You willed me here,” she counters. She takes a step toward him. She is barefoot, and he takes the opportunity to survey that there is blood seeped into the dirt at her feet. He traces his eyes back to her face.
“Anyways,” Focalors continues, so casual, so reminiscent of her airy human personality as the bright blue metal glow from her neck decapitates her. Neuvillette is unable to remove his fixation from blue blood sputtering out first from her neck, cascading down her tattered archon dress, her hips, her legs. The only thing keeping her head intact are her bird-twig fingers grasping it in place. “Can't you take responsibility for why I’m unable to rest in peace?”
Neuvillette wakes up gasping for air, and his face is wet. No one else had laid witness to Focalors’ final moments, and the reminder of her guillotine sentence makes his skin crawl. Neuvillette finds the one person who might even come close to understanding.
“You think she’s haunting you? As a ghost?” Furina glances down at her teacup, untouched. She sits at the edge of the couch, shoulders hunched. Since he had seen her last, she had completely deflated her bravado.
“I considered other possibilities, but I don’t think she’s known any other way to live but to be cunning.”
“Oh? Is that how you would describe mirror-me?” Furina crosses her legs and leans forward. Neuvillette blinks. At the mention of a description of herself – “cunning” – Furina morphs back into a persona to wear like a costume. Neuvillette wonders if there’s any difference between acting and lying. “Have you considered that this is just your grief?”
“I am perfectly sound of mind.”
“Of course you are,” Furina murmurs. “You know, when Focalors split us into two—divinity and humanity, I don’t think she split us evenly. She got kindness, and I got enviousness. She got patience, and I got longing. She got to be backstage, and I was thrust in the limelight.”
This is an unraveling, Neuvillete thinks. Here is a sign that deceit is not carved into every bone of hers.
“Somtimes, I wanted to kill her,” Furina laughs, just a bit pathetic. “Yet, I never thought she would actually die.”
For five hundred long years, Neuvillette has never had to make a verdict alone. Focalors, in the oratrice, confirmed and guided all his decisions; Furina took on all the pressure as the titled archon. What does justice mean to him anyways? That teetering scale at the Opera Epiclesis? Focalors restoring his sovereignty back from Celestia at the penance of her life?
Focalors left for him a nation and in her place, a warm seat. Neuvillette has never tasted a victory so hollow.
Justice, duty, sacrifice. Justice, duty, sacrifice, guilt. Justice, duty, sacrifice. Justice, duty, sacrifice, guilt. Neuvillette threads these words over and over in his mind like beads of a rosary, guilt a final nail in refinement of his self-torture. Morosely, he thinks this might be something he loops in his head for eternity, something to atone for the rest of his life.
"I've concluded that you're haunting me in my sleep," Neuvillette says.
Focalors laughs, a pretty, pleasant sound. "What an interesting theory, but no. I'm here because you want me to be."
"Will you be here everytime I close my eyes?"
"You know I can't."
Neuvillette clenches his hands, and he idly wonders if there will be lined crescent-mooned shapes on his palms when he wakes. He feels the compounding of five hundred years built up emotion raging between his teeth. His gums ache, and he only has her to blame for making him more human. "I resent you for dying. For leaving me here with the weight of your people. I've only known of a life with you, and I resent that now I'll have to learn to live a life after you."
"I'm cursing you then, just like I did to myself." Furina grasps his shoulders and smooths a lock of his hair sticking out, tip-toeing to see him eye to eye. "If it means you'll find happiness, I hope you resent me until the day you die."
Studies on hunger. Observances in deprivation. Neuvillette doesn’t know any other way to sustain his dreams. To him, this of utmost justification: only in these dreams will Focalors greet him, unload his burdens, and devour him bit by bit, piece by piece.
Focalors is gardening the next time he sees her. The formerly barren landscape is freshly fertilized and watered.
She wipes a sweat from her brow. "You should think about organizing your mind. It's terribly messy in here."
Neuvillette crouches besides her, helping her dig holes for her seeds. Beside them is a plot of land of padisarahs beginning to germinate, peeking through the soft earth. "What are you growing?"
"Anything and everything I find beautiful. These ones are glaze lilies," Focalors gently pats down the seeds. "You've heard of their story right? A dragon once loved loved this girl more than any other, but she died and all that was left of her were these flowers."
"Yes," Neuvillette says. His mouth feels very dry. "The tragedy of Liyue. It was because of war that they couldn't be together."
"But see, they were together and they still had decades to be in love. Sometimes love just doesn't last."
"I wanted ours to. Just as soon as I had you, I didn't. Do you see how unfair that is?"
Focalors responds laughing with her head thrown back, eyes crinkling. She laughs and laughs until her decapitated head falls off into the hole he dug with a thud. The dust settles, haloing her joyful face.
Half-god, half-human. Focalors, Furina. Two pieces of the same whole coil together like serpents around a medical rod. Life, death, life, death. The thing about mourning a half-dead, half-alive god is that there's nothing to bury, nowhere to go.
No one comments on why there are now fresh lakelight lilies by the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale for every court trial.
Furina finds Neuvillette at the Erinnyes Forest, where the soil is warm and the sunlight is kind and gentle. Wordlessly, she hands him some lily seeds into his cupped palm. Neuvillette curls his fingers and gingerly places them in his pocket by his heart. Neuvillette doesn’t think he has felt as close to her as he is here, sitting in serene silence, with their knees gently bumping into one other, their feet dipped in the wading waters. Here, he felt the graceful development of grounding roots beginning to form.