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It's quiet when she sees her Archon once more.
This is their normal, and has been since her Archon's liberation—such an odd sentence, coming from anywhere else, whatever do you *mean* your Archon's liberation, Nilou? Lesser Lord Kusanali, for as humble as her title might seem, is still a goddess, still the Lord of Dendro, of dreams and wisdom and everything that entailed. Whatever could she have needed liberation from? Whatever could be more free than divinity?
She hears it sometimes, from those who don't know better, the foreigners that grace the air of her home with their presence, with their ignorance. And she could never blame them, why would they ever care to know of the strife of their sister nation? They could not be said to have a heart as wide and open as hers. So she repeats it as many times as her voice will allow, recounts the tale of arrogant scholars and her goddess and the First Sage of Buer with a smile on her face.
Oh, but when is there ever not? When can she say a smile has not painted her lips, spread across her cheeks, gleamed in her eyes that sparkle like fine jewels?
A small, delicate hand grazes against her cheek, pale as snow, and she knows she is not smiling now.
But neither is her Archon, she realizes as she finally comes to turn her head. Her goddess’ eyes—laced in white, as if moonlight coat her every lash, as if she had been plucked straight from the moon’s breast—stare at her, and they sing with life as always, but there is no joy to accompany it. Had she been the one to send away that smile? Was her own misery truly so infectious?
For a while, there is nothing but silence between them, somber in the way only grief can be. She almost suspects her Archon wishes to speak, that she's read her thoughts and is looking for a chance to ease her woes, but she knows better than that. She has never been the prying sort.
It's only then that she leans into her touch. Small as the palm cradling her face is, she can't help but feel comforted by it, if only because it belongs to her goddess, if only because she knew the fortune those tiny hands could bring.
“One of the cats I pass by on my route home died today,” she mutters, when she's certain she'll be the only one to speak, “and Dunyarzad tripped while we were out, and I couldn't stop worrying her condition had gotten worse again even though I know it won't, and Dehya got hurt and I nearly cried… oh, my Archon, what's wrong with me? Why can't I stop crying at each and every ail I see?”
She has no reason to ask. She knows why, knows that love comes too easily for her, knows that she adores life so very much that she can't bear any reminder that it will end. But the question comes anyway, escapes her throat like bile as more tears stream down her cheeks.
Her Archon does not answer. There is no answer she can give.
“...please don't make me wake up. Not yet. Let… let me stay a little longer, my Archon. Just a little longer.”
She weeps, then, fully weeps, as she tosses herself into her arms, buries her face into her goddess’ shoulder and lets herself grieve. She sobs as if no tomorrow will come, as if her tears will be stolen from her by the time the sun rises once more. She cries as if the very weight of the world has suddenly been set atop her shoulders, threatening to crush her beneath it, threatening to take away from her all which she holds dear.
There is no hesitation in her Archon's form as she holds her close, holds her as if she is a fragile treasure on the verge of shattering, as if she is precious. She must be, to someone. The Theater, or Dehya, or Dunyarzad, or—
No. No, she doesn't dare entertain the thought. Even Nilou was not worthy of her favor.
“Do you remember the night I first started coming to see you like this?” she asks, suddenly, and though she cannot say how many lifetimes ago that was, she knows the night well. She remembers she wept just like this back then, too, as if the world as she knew it was ending; she'd gotten tears all over her goddess’ dress as a result, had apologized a thousand times over despite knowing it would not matter when she woke. She can recall each and every detail with clarity, the memory perfectly preserved in her mind.
Yet when she speaks again, hand stroking her hair like a mother soothing her child, she finds herself at a loss, for she was certain she knew that night by heart. How could she have forgotten it? How could she have ever let the wisdom imparted upon her slip by?
“I said this not as your Archon, not as Lesser Lord Kusanali or Goddess of Wisdom, but as Nahida—as your friend; your heart is not a curse, Nilou. Your emotions are not a burden. The love you have for the world around you, for all you come by… it's what I adore most about you. I just wish you would love that part of yourself as much as you love everything else.”
…it was easy to forget that she was a person—that she was just as human as her, felt and loved and cared just as anyone else did. It was easy to think of her as her goddess, her Archon, lofted in the sky far above her head, insignificant and out of her reach.
Yet who else would be closer to the ground than Nahida? What other Archon would stand among her people like Nahida did?
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't be. You have nothing to be sorry for.”
She doesn't want to go yet. She can't go yet. Nahida never has enough time to see her outside of this, only ever sees her in passing otherwise, can't she just savor this a little bit more? Can't she just hold on a while longer?
“I'll be here when you wake up,” she says, and Nilou knows well she's lying. She knows she can't do that, doesn't have the time to spare on meeting with her subjects, no matter how close they are, no matter how much she wishes she could just spend the rest of forever with her. But she can't find it in herself to say no to her.
By the time she opens her eyes again, she is buried in her sheets with a little Archon curled up by her stomach, innocently snoring away.
She knows she hasn't really woken up yet. But she can pretend.