Work Text:
Infantile amnesia. What a ridiculous concept, had Edna thought, but of course humans would be so fallible: after all, they were humans, the most hopeless creatures possible. Edna, by virtue of being a malak, shared no such design flaws with them—and damn glad that she was about it.
Every malak upon being born was bestowed an innate blessing, with the ones of earth malakhim spurring growth, giving life, and granting support. But it was upon reading one of the books that Eizen brought from his travels to the closest city that Edna realized why, despite her own blessing bringing good health, she still fell prey to the strangest of incidents time and time again.
There were malakhim who, the stronger their desire to protect, the more their natural blessings reversed themselves. These malakhim were called angels of death and, as Edna lost herself further into the book pages, she found stories upon stories of these malakhim getting shunned and expelled everywhere they went.
This was it. Eizen was different. Eizen was like these malakhim, had always been, and Edna happened to be right by his side.
Maybe it wasn’t only humans who were flawed, Edna realized.
Still, this had never been her brother’s choice: much like Edna’s own blessing, Eizen couldn’t control his. Eizen’s blessing also did nothing but react to his feelings, which meant that all the misfortune Eizen caused Edna was out of love.
Edna watched the flames devouring the book, turning its cruel words into ashes. She knew it wouldn’t make the reality of Eizen’s twisted blessing disappear, but it at least meant that Eizen wouldn’t learn about it. For as long as Edna could remember, and maybe since the very first moment she opened her eyes, with her conscience still immature and her body small and needlessly sleepy, Eizen had been by her side. Curses, accidents, or even death, none of it mattered to Edna. She wanted to be with her brother. She needed her brother.
And so, Edna kept the secret sealed away deep inside her heart, where no one else could find it. Eizen was everything Edna had. Eizen was the only thing Edna had. And Edna knew, with the certainty of the gathering black clouds that anticipated a storm, that Eizen would leave her if he ever learned that he was the cause of Edna’s incessant disgraces.
Unfortunately, Edna’s best efforts were never going to work against a curse of misfortune.
Eizen announcing that he was leaving—that he was leaving her—shook Edna to her very core, as if someone had pushed her off the edge of Rayfalke’s summit and into the darkness of the abyss below. Edna screamed and begged, her voice becoming incoherent and hoarse, to no avail: she was only allowed to draw a self-portrait on Eizen’s pendant before watching, with blurry eyes, Eizen’s figure becoming smaller in the flat horizon until he finally disappeared.
The day that Edna lost everything wasn’t pouring. It wasn’t even cloudy. It was beautifully bright, damningly so, and Edna cursed upon the sun and the skies for daring to mock her misery.
Shortly after Eizen left, a turtlez appeared in Rayfalke Spiritcrest to hand Edna a letter.
Edna knew it was a letter from Eizen without looking at the sender, or opening it to check for a signature. Unfortunately, the relief and happiness that was born in Edna’s heart from finally hearing about her brother soon turned sour: Eizen’s letter, rather than containing a promise to return as soon as possible to Edna’s side, was nothing but superficial scrawlings and empty platitudes.
Edna made a fist with her hand, crumpling the letter, and then asked the turtlez to return the obvious token of apology—‘Souvenir’, Eizen had called it—the letter came with. Eizen had left without her approval, and he was sorely mistaken if he thought that he could ever buy it from her.
Weeks followed the days, which soon transformed into months. More letters came after the first one but, though Edna accepted and read them, she refused to answer. By the time Edna gave in and finally sent a letter to Eizen, she didn’t bother addressing her brother’s hollow words: “I don’t care how dangerous it is, I want to be with you.”
No more letters came after Edna sent that one. Time eventually lost its meaning and, by the time Edna blinked, a whole decade had gone by.
Edna’s joy at seeing Eizen again was short-lived, stomped on like a small and unnoticed flower under a boot, once several humans gathered and turned into daemons.
This was no mere coincidence. Rayfalke Spiritcrest had little to no malevolence, and humans had no reason to come this far up such a steep mountain. And Edna could read it in Eizen’s eyes as he fended the daemons off her with his bare fists: that Eizen fully believed this to be his fault, for daring to return to Edna’s side before finding a remedy to his twisted blessing.
Right after the battle, Eizen turned on his heels to face Edna, his shoulders burdened by an invisible weight. “That’s why I told you it’s too dangerous,” Eizen said, repeating the same words that Edna hated to hear.
Watching the way the wind made the ends of Eizen’s old coat flutter behind him, black and long like a pair of wings, it finally sank to Edna that she would never see him again. This was their end.
What about me. Don’t I have a choice in this, Edna wanted to ask, but didn’t. She didn’t beg nor scream at Eizen’s back this time. Completely stilled, Edna’s expression remained unchanged as her brother disappeared into the flat horizon again, with not even tears to disturb her face.
The appearance malakhim’s forms took in the physical plane depended on their soul’s very essences. Eizen and Edna’s wasn’t an exception, being twin souls: their connection had manifested itself as the vivid image of human twins. And yet, even if what Eizen once told Edna were true, and that was the reason why their souls called for each other since the very first time they met, what was all that worth it anyway if they were forced to be separated?
Lying down on a flat stretch of stone at the top of Rayfalke Spiritcrest, Edna rolled over and turned her eyes away from the sky. The mantle of night draped over the mountains, but the starry sky over Edna’s head was nowhere near as magnificent when Eizen wasn’t by her side.
“Wish upon a shooting star, and your dream will come true,” Eizen told Edna once, back when it felt like they were the only two people in the world. Edna couldn’t tell if Eizen heard it somewhere else, or he just made it up on the spot and was treating her like a kid again. It didn’t matter either way, because the result was the same: no matter how many times Edna looked for and prayed to the shooting stars, her wish wasn’t granted.
“Stupid, useless stars,” Edna muttered.
If only Eizen was anyone else, Edna thought. If only she was anyone else, Edna thought again. But Edna wasn’t anyone else: she was Edna, Eizen’s sister, and she loved him no matter how much distance and years separated them. It was written in her soul, after all.
She loved him even if that wasn’t enough for him.
“I want to see you again, Eizen.”
Edna voiced her wish for the umpteenth time. The stars remained unchanged, sparkling without a care about her feelings.
Eizen’s letters came to a halt and, with how unlucky he was, Edna couldn’t help but fear the worst. If Eizen suddenly turned malevolent, then what was she supposed to do?
A disturbance on her domain stopped Edna’s thoughts. She raised her head, frowning. Who could have come to Rayfalke Spiritcrest? Was it the turtlez? Did Eizen finally send her a letter?
Opening her umbrella, and invoking the power of the earth, Edna jumped down like she always did. After an easy calculation, and now back on firm ground, she folded her umbrella again and waited. Whoever—or whatever—it was would need to come here, because all of the mountain’s paths converged into this one.
But, against all of Edna’s expectations, Eizen’s tall and dark silhouette was the one appearing on the rocky mountain’s intersection. Edna watched Eizen in silence as he approached her, taking in every detail of him that she could, with the only color coming from a hair that was just like hers shining with the light of the setting sun behind him.
And then Eizen stopped in his tracks, so close but still too far for Edna to reach out and touch him. Eizen looked wearier, like all the weight of the world was now sitting on his shoulders, and Edna could swear that he was thinner and paler than the last time she had seen him.
Still, Eizen was okay. He never became a daemon. He was okay. He was alive.
Edna didn’t understand the reason for Eizen’s sudden return. Her brother couldn’t there to give her anything. Eizen always sent her his gifts through the turtlez, presents that Edna had eventually accepted, though not without a bitterness on her tongue that wouldn’t be washed away even with all the palmiers of the world—Eizen’s gesture was nothing but a bad imitation of times long gone.
It wasn’t until Edna locked eyes with him, Eizen staring back, that she realized.
Edna’s grip on her umbrella’s handle tightened. How many times did she dream with Eizen coming back to her? How many times did she fantasize with what she would do once she saw Eizen again? Sometimes she ran to him with weak legs, slapping him with tear-strained eyes before hugging him; Sometimes she stood where she was, blinking rapidly and failing to hold back the silent tears running down her cheeks, and then Eizen was the one who closed the distance and hugged her.
Edna stayed in place, almost as if her brother’s arrival had nothing to do with her. Her strongly desired time was now, yet she didn’t run to Eizen’s arms, nor cried like she did when he left the first time.
Eizen used to tease her about being a crybaby, but Edna could no longer remember the last time she cried. Maybe her tears had just dried up, as if at some point her heart had realized that nobody—him—would come, no matter how much she cried. If crying would only give her an annoying headache, then it was useless.
Not that her lack of tears to shed precluded the enduring hollowness in her chest.
Edna stared at Eizen, considering everything she could say but wouldn’t. “About time,” Edna muttered in a flat voice.
Edna was almost proud about how her voice came out, neither desperate nor needy.
Edna jolted upright, the necklace around her neck swaying with her movement, and called out for a name she hadn’t in years.
Two arms wrapped themselves around Edna in response, causing her to flinch. “It’s alright, Edna,” said a familiar voice, clear and right at Edna’s ear. A voice that Edna had almost forgotten, relegated for too long to only her most indulgent dreams and fantasies. “It’s alright.”
A voice that changed everything and nothing, because a looming sense of doom still gripped Edna’s heart. She could still see it, a reality that was too horrible for her to bear. A wind seraph who had promised to put her brother to rest. A human boy who promised Edna that they would find a way to save Eizen. Edna joining the human boy because she wanted to believe in Eizen’s salvation, a salvation that didn’t mean killing him.
But a ring circled Edna’s finger, the fabric of Eizen’s long coat enveloped her, and even Eizen’s strong arms wrapped around her and refused to leave. It took Edna several more beats of her racing heart to realize that she just had a nightmare, that Eizen was with her, that he was not a dragon. That, if it started raining, Eizen would be there to hold her umbrella over them. That, if the ground collapsed under her, Eizen would be there to catch her.
Edna hugged Eizen back. There, inside Eizen’s arms, in the designated spot only for her that shielded her away from the world, Edna could almost believe that everything was alright.
Almost. The amber eyes with vertical slit-shaped pupils were fading from Edna’s mind, but nothing felt like back when Eizen would carry her everywhere in his arms. Much like Eizen could not always disguise the shadow in his voice, a darkness stronger than before he left her, Edna could no longer drown against his large frame as back when everything was blissfully simpler. Everything was different now—Wrong. The worst already happened once. Eizen already betrayed her once.
Before Eizen left, Edna could believe in him without a shadow of doubt. But Edna had changed, and so had Eizen. And even though Edna wanted to believe in the strength of Eizen’s hands gripping at her sometimes, almost like he wanted to leave indentation marks on her, she knew that he could also find just as much strength to leave her again. Edna didn’t dare to ask Eizen about his travels, nor about the reason for his sudden return: she feared that the spell keeping them together would break if she did.
Edna raised her head to see the countless stars of the size of needles stabbing a sky that hadn’t changed, in all those centuries the two of them spent apart, like a pincushion. She had tried to live on her own—without him—but much like Eizen was the one who had smashed her to pieces, he was also the lacquer dusted with powdered gold that held those same pieces from breaking apart again.
How many centuries would it take so everything returned to normal—so they returned to normal? Maybe they never would, Edna dreaded. Maybe not even eternity was enough to make up for everything that had happened between them.