Work Text:
Come, come, my little amber. Do you hear? Come closer, here, sit still—can you hear it?
A pulse. A heartbeat. The stellar structure rearranging themselves. Systems rebuilding, created. Impermanence of balance, seesaws of the scales.
Universes expanding, exploding. Laughter of caressed stars, twinkling brighter in the nightsky – behold, my dear, for the world is in glee! For a path has opened, beautiful anew, glorious, filled with tender flowers, gentle breeze, and warm sunlight.
This path echoes the Beauty, calling out Idrila’s name softly, Idrila, they whisper, holding their name in the cradle of their lips carefully, as though it were a dying star, easy to crumble, easy to hold, easy to call, Idrila, my liege, like a blooming flower.
Their voice is ringing out to the vast expanse of our cosmos—don’t you hear that? Don’t you hear winds brought by their breath, the waves breaking from their tongue, sunlight falling through their teeth? The rush of water weaved by their hands? Don’t you hear their language being passed on from eye to eye?
Go ahead, then, child of the universe, and feel their divine presence, an all-encompassing luminescence that wraps all of these worlds completely. Feel their gaze—warm, delightful, fond, omnipotent, kind.
Take it all in as it is meant to be taken. To be received. To be felt, across the galaxies. A shade from a giant tree tended with utmost care.
Bask aglow in the birth of an Aeon.
It starts, and ends, with death, they say.
Creation thrives in the aftermath of destruction; life, inevitably, includes its own end.
You’ve heard of tales about the Aeons, haven’t you? Of the tales in fragments, of epics and songs and poems and prose singing their names to the heavens, their mighty glamour impressing you.
Be that as it may, dearest.
As all the Aeons that have come and gone, there’s always something behind the curtain—something they don’t tell you, secrets they don’t dare utter, darkness they don’t let the light glance at. Something unspeakable, yet still knowable. But don’t we all have secrets? Don’t I? Don’t you?
But this isn’t about you, nor me, nor all the other Aeons.
This is about the one who has just opened their divine gaze and took a look at the expanse of the stars up above for the first time. This is about the one who just took their first step in the wake of the path of Destruction, of their own birth. The one who learns of death, before life, at their first breath. The one who sees Nanook in their first moments, with the blood of their world and the dust of their moon in their grasp. Learns that the fire and the golden tar that melts and burns their home are of that Aeon’s. That they’re responsible for their creation and their destruction, both.
They earn both the Abundance’s and the Destruction’s gazes at the moment of their birth, and it strikes the earth, as it does the heart. The sun shines brighter, clawing through the cracks; the wind blows sharper, cooler, icier; the waves inch closer to the foundations of our homes.
The Hunt and the Preservation pause on their relentless pursuits, the stars tell me; Lan, for the first time, turns back on the path they have strided, searching, slowing down on their feet—if one were to look closely, they will see the Reignbow Arbiter standing majestically behind the sea of clouds. Qlipoth, in turn, hears the majestic voice in their head say beyond the wall. Hear, past these barriers, and feel.
The Harmony are heard to be singing a new glorious song in great jubilation, plucking their Harmonic Strings in accompaniment of such celebration. The Elation belts out a gleeful shriek of their laughter as all of their masks turn to the direction of splendor travails, making the planets shake and the stars flicker at their mirth and giddy—it is as one little amber might think: gaining Aha’s gaze is as troublesome as their animosity.
The Nihility, the stars whisper, shifts ever-so-slightly on their trail, and the Dark Sun flares as though every planet in their beautiful void is exploding, storms and hurricanes and the ends of worlds. The Erudition and the Enigmata stop on their squabbles and arrives with a certain conclusion from this enlightenment (the truth will never change). The Equilibrium feels most joyous as they perceive their birth in spite of destruction—someone ought to put the Supreme Executioner in their place, after all. The Remembrance takes a glance at a shard of mirror, and for once, receives a relieving clarity within the chaos of discordant whirls of screams and whispers and shouts and wails; there is a wonderful sound of the heart beating, and they hold that shard gently in their palms, a memory distilling its place in their core.
The Finality continues onwards to the fate of the world, but not without tightening the new golden thread weaving into their webs.
Hear, hear, the desperate murmurs of the cosmos!
The lamentations and elation, both combined. Grief and joy, heartbreak and happiness, everything with nothing. Does it make you feel strange, dear amber? Does it make you want to reach into your chest and see for yourself, what you’ve been striked with? What this Aeon brings forth?
Do they not make your heart break into millions of pieces, do they not make you like the way it sounds? Do they not make you aware of the enormity of your desires?
I’ve dreamed of the crystal chalice once again.
This time, it tells me:
Listen to the tale of a flowing river.
A small river, almost unknown, almost indiscoverable. And yet it flows, clearer and purer and consistent. It never grows foul, never stops flowing.
“What do you desire?” It splashes the shore, to the people that caught its gaze, “make a wish. Let me hear them so!”
And they do. They take their hands together, and they bow their heads, and they utter their wishes under their breaths, in their heads, to the river.
“I want to be kissed. To be touched.”
“I desire to rest in peace.”
“I want to come home. Somewhere, anywhere. There must be home for me.”
“I worry about my father. Let him be well.”
“I pray for my lover to travel safely. Guide him, please, mighty river. For me.”
“I wish to be rid of this heartbreak.”
And these wishes continue to go like this, and the river continues to hear them, to accept their offerings, because what else could it do, when it couldn’t make them all true? It simply listens, of course; it simply flows. And hopes, in their behalf, be it true.
‘The river is always there for you,’ these people say, as it streams endlessly, smoothly, flawlessly still, ‘not reaching back when you hold out your hand, not pausing in its course, but still there, still listening when you call out, nonetheless.’
And the river, indeed, is there when its world starts burning away. The river is there when their people starts pleading, praying for its help, when they start drowning in their own waters. The river is there when it reaches out, for the first time, with its tidal waves, and no one reaches back.
“Miyou,” a voice croaks out, calling out, hopeful, desperate, and the river—Miyou, their name is Mio, that’s them, they’re here, now, “Miyou, our dearest river…”
And the voice dies out. The hand burns, turns to ashes. All that’s left is Mio and the ashes in their hands, powder-like as it dissolves in their grasp, and their own heart bleeding onto the riverbank.
Nanook looks back, for the first time, then, and witnesses how a river survives their drought-driving fire, amidst the rotten, burnt garden of bones and flesh.
The river flows. The time does not stop. The music still goes on. Eloquent mouths keep filling the unfulfilled noises. We never stop learning. The heart keeps beating.
All by the hands of the Essence.
The stars like to gossip, you see, those twinkling lights—they said: the essence flows freely through every path, like a fertilizer growing flowers and trees and plants, even on Nanook’s fiery, destructive path. It takes all of Yaoshi’s hands and holds them, gentle as they are, and lets them be caressed as the Abundance laments at the unrecognizable faces they peer at. The Essence follows the Hunt, follows the chase, takes every blunt arrow to its roots, persistent, until Lan relents, until Lan rests, even for a while. The Essence takes its divine gaze at IX, at their nothingness, at its nihilism, and Mio wakes them, accidentally. Takes the darkness, takes them in stride with a smile, and the Nihility accepts the flower placed on their head before it disappears forever.
Finds Nous and offers their company, even if it does nothing to change the answers about the universe, and causes them more questions; left with small vines on their wires. Climbs on Qlipoth’s stubborn, strong walls as tiny little tulips seep through the cracks of the bricks, grins when the Preservation builds their walls around the flowers and the trees uprooted. Listens to Xipe/Ena’s rueful songs, at the harmonies of their yearning and love, leaving mosses in the trail of their caress. Finds themself crying, for the first time, at Aha’s masks, at how they hadn’t recovered that one mask they’ve always adored, at how they try to find something hidden between the fools he’s puppeteering, as though every laugh needs meaning.
The Essence, then, takes Fuli’s fragments in their hands, despite how it may prick their fingers, despite how distasteful the memories may be; they take it all, and piece it all together, attempting to fix Fuli’s Mirror—it shatters again, by the end, but Fuli thanks them, nevertheless.
Surprises the Equilibrium with a little shout from behind, a giggle echoing throughout the galaxies like a ripple through still waters. Feeds the Enigmata with more riddles to mull over, to be confused with themself, then laughs about it with the Finality—and Terminus looks younger when they laugh, the stars told me.
And so, when a believer finds their Path a little more fulfilling these days, then, you know who to thank for.
