Work Text:
Mud and fallen leaves squelched under her borrowed boots as she made her way through Avidya’s rainforest, care put in every step not to lose her footwear, the journey pulling on only just-recovered muscles. Wet leaves barred her way, forcing her to push them out of the way with almost every step.
It was clear this particular stretch of forest path hadn’t been taken care of in her absence – and it was only fair, as she’d really been the only one using it anyway. The jungle was quick to recover and reclaim, and all she could do was respect it. For one, it was far quicker in its recovery than she was – and after all, her reverence and wish to connect with the one embodying the vigour and resilience of the rainforest had been her entire life’s work, once.
Once, not so long ago, and right here.
Haypasia was on her way back to her old meditation cave near Gandharva Ville, one last time.
She’d borrowed the boots at Tighnari’s insistence. The rainy season was beginning in fits and starts again, and the forest path was a lot less forgiving than before her extended stay in his care – and that wasn’t even taking into account how much she’d weakened ever since the strange thunderstorm that’d injured her caretaker.
She felt like a failure. She’d never managed to achieve Paripurna Life, to truly connect with divinity, instead remaining stuck in Satyavada Life – and more than that, all her studies were completely obsolete now. The mystery she’d chased had been solved in full. Lesser Lord Kusanali had once again emerged into the world, her words plain for anyone to hear, no meditation or spirit borneol needed.
It was the spirit borneol that’d led her back here into Avidya Forest. Her meditation supplies were no longer needed for either her or any students coming after her. Tighnari hadn’t been happy to hear she still had supplies out here; spirit borneol was not a harmless fragrance. It contained plants and fungi directly created by the Dendro Archon – Kalpalata lotuses, Sumeru roses, Rukkhashava mushrooms – but also other compounds, like the toxins distilled from the skin of tree frogs. Medicinal in small quantities such as the ones she used, yes, but dangerous when falling into the wrong hands such as those of local children, or unwitting curious wildlife.
The scholar pushed yet another giant, dripping leaf out of her way, glancing up at the sky. Grey clouds roiled overhead. No lightning, but certainly no shortage of rain…
…fortunately, she’d reached her destination just in time. Just as the first plump drops began joining those already lingering in the sodden canopy and soaking into the soil, Haypasia squelched her way up the small incline towards her former meditation cave, up the half-buried logs the Forest Watchers had implemented as a makeshift staircase, and inside. No sooner had she slipped into the sheltering gloom than the downpour truly started, falling like a rushing, silvery grey curtain behind her, all but blotting out the forest.
Haypasia let out a small sigh, wiping her face, slicking back her short, damp hair. “Made it,” she murmured, just a little pleased with herself. She reached into her satchel, pulling out a small firefly-powered lantern to light up the cave.
Her old basket ‘mailbox’ where the Forest Watchers had sometimes left food for her when she hadn’t emerged from meditation for a while. Her old firepit and stumpy seats where she used to cook for herself, now overtaken by new sprouts in the ashes, and moss and mushrooms on the stumps.
Her now-unlit standing lantern beyond that, and the area where she’d slept and meditated. And beyond that, the small marble shrine to the Lesser Lord at the very back, a few glimmering crystalflies dancing through the air near it…
Her Forest Watcher boots softly trod across the cave’s earthen floor, only disturbing the moss and dead leaves that’d blown in in her absence – and then coming to an abrupt standstill.
Someone had come into the cave before her, slowly blinking open his eyes from what seemed like meditation, arresting her with a sharp indigo glare. Haypasia could swear her heart stopped instantly.
He was ethereal; the most beautiful young man she’d ever seen, sitting on a mossy root near the shrine, the surrounding crystalflies showering him in verdant sparkles.
He was delicately poised, birdlike, almost inhuman, and dressed in ornate foreign garb – somehow pristine, so very unlike her mud-spattered clothes. He seemed as detached from the earthly realm as she was tethered to it. For a moment, she was convinced she was looking at the very divinity she’d fruitlessly searched for in this very spot. His Anemo Vision only enhanced the sense of ethereal magic – the source, first and foremost, was him.
Then he let out a raspy, humourless scoff, far from delicate and divine, and the spell was broken.
“Hah. Of course you’d come back here.”
“W-what…?” Haypasia fought to gather herself, not to gape. “What do you mean?” Did this apparition know her, somehow? “Who are you?”
The young man glanced around, not bothering to answer that. “This is a nice quiet spot. Well, it was,” he sighed.
“I’m sorry to disturb,” she managed.
He sighed again, giving an airy, dismissive gesture. “Nevermind.”
He seemed like he owned the cave, belonging here in ways she never had. The scarce light was doing something peculiar around him, as if he was bending and refracting it in his own ways. Haypasia scrambled for something else to say – the rain had trapped her in here, and she felt like she was intruding. “I… I once attempted to reach Paripurna Life here. To attune fully to Irminsul, reach enlightenment and find answers in flawless divinity.”
“Mh. You do know your god is out in the open now,” he remarked.
“I know,” she chuckled, very conscious of the sore spot he’d unwittingly poked at. “I stopped. I’m just picking up some leftover supplies.” She’d located them as she’d spoken – half-covered in moss already, there were her boxes and vials of ingredients, her burner with remnants of finished spirit borneol. The young man scoffed again as she went to retrieve them. “Must be strange. Your nebulous divinity, out there improving infrastructure, and liking sweets and hopscotch.” He gave a mirthless grin. “The divine is insufferably mundane when you get down to it, when you actually have a closer look, huh?”
Haypasia bashfully looked up at him, still impeccably perched on the root, the crystalflies unperturbed and lazily drifting around him. “I suppose I’m just finding myself, now.”
“Hah.” He glanced around, as if searching for something she couldn’t see. “…Aren’t we all.” His eyes fixated back onto her. “Why’d you even want to contact divinity in the first place?”
Why did she feel compelled to speak, to tell him everything? On the other hand, why shouldn’t she? It was not like any of this was a secret. It might feel good to let it out, for once. “I’m a Rtawahist scholar. We look to the stars to try and divine scraps of meaning, but… just once, I’d hoped to speak to someone who just knew, who could just give me all the answers. If not Irminsul, then who?”
“Ah, yes,” the figure sighed. “Clawing for knowledge by any means. Should’ve figured – but the gods have this annoying habit of spitting in the face of mortals, dangling meaning and truth just out of reach.” He glanced down at her, a slight smirk curving his lips. “A Rtawahist scholar looking for answers outside the stars, though… I appreciate the irony, and the sheer disrespect of it.”
I denounce the world and laugh in its face…
Haypasia jolted.
Something about all this, about this young man and his wry demeanor, was awfully familiar. Something seemed to itch at the back of her mind – something she couldn’t put her finger on, and for a brief moment it was maddening.
“…For a moment there, I thought I did reach Paripurna Life, though,” she murmured, holding his gaze. “Thought I really had connected to some higher being. Only… there were no answers. It took me a while to realize, I was so overwhelmed, but there were really only more questions.”
Why was she telling him this? Why was she still talking? Did he somehow have a hold on her, drawing out her innermost thoughts?
“I felt like I was overcome by deep emotion,” she still rambled on. “Some deep and heartrending sorrow, and a… a yearning so deep I thought it just had to be divine.” Her eyes darted this way and that, attempting to grasp at those fleeting glimpses of what she’d seen and felt before she’d collapsed in Pardis Dhyai and ended up in Tighnari’s care. “I can’t recall the details now,” she had to concede. “…If they were ever clear to me at all. But it did feel like enlightenment at the time…”
…Such a majestic god, such a noble will, such sublime emotion!
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound very scholarly,” he remarked. “The Akademiya would probably want it documented far more clearly than those mad ravings.”
She was aware she was staring, the set of her eyes probably more than a little manic. The young man held her gaze, his own expression cool and unimpressed – and all of a sudden a wave of shame washed over her, and she scrambled to recover, to apologize. “I’m… I’m sorry, I…”
“You don’t know what came over you. Of course.” He held up a soothing, placating hand, and Haypasia quieted. “…Who are you?” She shouldn’t be weird about this. She shouldn’t! She should stop digging herself any deeper than she already had – he must think she was crazy!
“Me? I’m no one in particular. I’m just a wanderer.” He glanced around the cavern, unperturbed. The crystalflies lazily fluttered away towards the exit, taking their sparkles with them. Something scurried through the dried leaves littering the floor, but Haypasia couldn’t quite catch what it was. One moment she caught a glimpse of blue, the faint sound of a humming voice, but the next it was gone.
“The rain’s almost stopped. You should be on your way.” He nodded at her scattered belongings, and Haypasia gave a numb nod, beginning to gather them, to truly return the cavern to nature, devoid of unnatural concoctions and academic instruments. Only the remnants of the campfire, the stump seats and the hanging lantern would remain, and those would soon be overtaken by the jungle completely.
Only those, and the young man at the back of the cave, perched near Kusanali’s shrine. But he seemed to belong here, too. Part of the rainforest, not of the human world Haypasia would soon return to. And with him, something indefinable lingered in the cave, something almost magical, something she felt she shouldn’t be able to sense as a scholar. Scholars put names to things, documented them clearly, but she wouldn’t be able to put a name to this if she tried.
For a moment, it only fascinated her more, and she felt the urge to keep questioning, to ask him everything bubbling up in her mind. But he didn’t seem the chatty sort, and this might just be a returning flareup of the momentary madness that landed her senseless in Tighnari’s care in the first place. She’d do well to return to the world of rationality – to the Akademiya, to Rtawahist, and pick a new area of study to focus on.
She shouldn’t be weird about this. The world awaited.
With one last, brief hesitation, a look back and a shy wave at the young man, she left.
He gave a wry little half-smile and lifted his hand in goodbye as well, but only after she’d turned her back.
He felt strangely melancholic, watching her go. There went his only worshipper. Perhaps he might’ve gotten her to worship him again. Wouldn’t that have been fun? He certainly knew a lot more about the sky than she did – he was sure he’d be able to intrigue a Rtawahist scholar, of all people.
Then his blue Aranara friend emerged from the ferns fringing the cavern’s central chamber, and he looked up with a small, more genuine smile. “There was no need to hide. You know she couldn’t see you.”
Ararycan shook his head. “Mm! Not so, maybe. Songs about this one. Strange smoke, strange smells. Strange Nara sees many things unseen to others.” The Aranara looked up at him in question. “Nara Kintsugi knows her?”
He chuckled. “She saw me, once. But she forgot when I cut myself out of Sarva.”
Ararycan drooped at the reminder. “Yes… very sad. Not even the forest remembered Nara Kintsugi. But… roots and branches are regrowing. The forest will remember now. New songs and stories. Maybe he can remind strange Nara of what happened before? Be seen again?”
“Better not. Won’t do either of us much good.” Kintsugi hopped off the root where he’d been contemplating Kusanali’s shrine and its meaning to her people, killing time while waiting for the monsoon rain to end. He strolled through the cave, into sight of its entrance, just catching Haypasia vanishing into the dripping jungle outside. The skies were clearing, and the air had never been so fresh.
He halted just inside the cavern, taking a deep breath, folding his arms as the blanket of leaves closed between him and his former worshipper.
So, she’d been convinced of his divinity because of the intensity of his emotions.
Once, when he’d come to his senses after his foray into godhood, his fall from grace and his gradual emergence into who he was becoming now, he’d scoffed at the idea of Haypasia’s worship, casting it aside entirely. He’d thought she’d revered something that wasn’t him at all. Now… he considered that perhaps he’d been wrong in that.
Were his emotions the closest thing to divine about him after all? He’d always thought they made him too human…
A small tug on his sleeve. He looked down into a small, smiling face. “What is it?”
“Nara Kintsugi, thinking too much. Ararycan can tell. Face all scrunched.”
“Hmm.” He carefully schooled his expression, then hesitated. “What’s brighter – the light of the sun, or its reflection in a puddle?”
Ararycan shook his head. “Does not matter. Leaves drink the light. Roots drink the puddle. Both are good, and the forest connects all things.”
Kintsugi faltered, looking back to the forest with new eyes, as always when he came out here with the Aranara.
Divine or earthly… perhaps it really didn’t matter. Back when Haypasia had glimpsed him for the first time, all he’d really wanted deep down had been connection; desperately so, despite being in the middle of erasing everything he was at the same time. Perhaps exactly because oblivion had been so close. Just maybe, part of him had been terrified.
He’d wanted to become a god in order for people to finally see him, need him, maybe even moreso than the creation of a new world where everything would go his way for once. And… the conversation he’d just had with her was more connection than he’d ever made through any spirit borneol, and certainly more than if he’d managed to erase his personality in favour of something ‘perfect’.
Just like her, he’d also just been chasing answers after the heavens had spurned him. But he’d only found them when he’d stood still, and allowed himself to sprout.
Ararycan hummed up into the air to face him, still smiling. “Much better. Nara Kintsugi is doing much better, now.” The little being rose up further, spreading his arms, beckoning in invitation. “Come, come! Rains have stopped, Vana calls!”
And Kintsugi smirked, summoning his halo, joining his little friend in the air. “Lead the way, then.” His smirk broke into a grin, sunlight reflecting in his eyes as it finally broke through the clouds. “…Enlighten me.”
