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His lithe form glides over polished wooden floors, humming a tune that could rival the far-flung God of Song. Gilded strands sway to and fro as its owner flits from one end of the room to another. Liquid gold falls over tanned porcelain as twin carmines shine with vigor. Fleet footed and graceful, Kaveh sways his hips in unprecedented gusto and dances to the silent rhythm of his soul. Broom in hand, sweeping became an artful masterpiece in the hands of an expert artist. Hands, delicate despite his craft, move to organize leather-bound books full of obscure ancient texts.
Kaveh didn’t question how none of those books are actually his, nor are anything he comes across but still dutifully organizes.
As he takes codices to sort, his hands bumps something solid yet one that doesn't feel like the familiar leather of the books he had been arranging. Curious, he reaches unto the darkest crevices of the bookshelf. Dust covers his vision as the phantom smell of old pages reach his nostrils, eliciting a cough that a pale hand quickly smothers. He then feels through vintage wood, digits bearing tidings of a knowledge seeking scholar.
He pulls out an intricate box bejeweled with shining Nagadus Emeralds, carved out of the most beautiful Adhigama wood he had ever seen. In his years as an architect, he had seen countless gorgeous materials and yet the sheen of this old box easily swept all of that experience away. It looks hand-made at the volition of a brilliant craftsman. A labor of love whose crafter he may never get the chance to meet.
Kaveh opening that box felt like Pandora releasing all the plagues upon the world and leaving behind hope. Silence blankets him in suffocating quiet, but the words on these worn pages had never been as loud.
Trembling fingers hold yellowed paper, and despite its age the stark black of the ink-born lines in it remains ever so vivid. It is a composition of a symphony for an audience of none, written for a stage in which one lonesome figure waltzes solo. But in this fateful box full of emotions, Kaveh comes to understand that this musical composition he calls life was never really a sonata.
A pair of ruby reds flit through elegant cursive, and hands that have built countless magna opera feel the roughness of worn pages. It is as if he could still smell the phantoms of the mint scent it used to have and taste it upon his tongue.
The first letter is the ramblings of a hopeless scholar who had found what love truly was like in this cynical world. There is no preamble, no doubt, in its conviction.
I never knew light until I found him. I never believed in love at first sight.
The House of Daena had been my place of solace. It was my refuge from the storm. A haven of books could never betray me. It could never hurt me. Books are more companionable than humans are, thus I built my home upon these words of ink. In this monochrome world, I structured the foundations of my happiness upon these pages. I thought the palaces I built from these paragraphs were impervious to anything.
Until he came along, bringing with him all the colors I have never seen. There I realized that these paragraph filled palaces I built were mere sand castles in the face of true brilliance. He was like a hurricane bringing down the kingdom of my ideals and terraforming my entire world.
Will I ever get to see him again? Or am I just Icarus yearning for an unattainable sun?
Kaveh’s breath hitches as his eyes search these lovelorn lines for that familiar sarcasm. He finds none of it, however, and he loses himself in its unfamiliarity. He can feel himself falling into uneasy waters filled to the brim with memories he had long since buried.
The skeletons in his closet are finally seeing light once more after a decade of collecting dust in the dark.
I have come to know the sun’s name, and that is “Kaveh”.
He’s my senior of two years, studying under the Kshahrewar Darshan. I’ve found him to be quite the talker, and his brilliance knows no bounds. I am no boaster, and I know full well that arrogance is the Achilles heel of many scholars. However, it had come to my attention that none could ever keep up with me nor could anyone stand my sharp tongue and scathing words. Humility is a virtue, they say. Yet Kaveh poses a challenge, an incentive to reach even greater heights.
I once thought that only like-minded individuals can truly understand one another, and therefore nobody could ever comprehend my words and phrases for we don’t think alike. None had ever matched me in my thoughts. Only my own reflection in the mirror could ever contend with me.
Little did I know that the reflection in that mirror is not my own, but that of golden locks and eyes of ruby red.
Kaveh is a man full of words, yet none in his colorful vocabulary could ever put a name to this feeling. His hands cradle the paper like it was a precious gem, but his heart threatened to beat right out of his chest. He heaves breaths too heavy for a man merely reading words upon paper. One could even say that it seems like he carried such a heavy boulder up a mountain, an allegory that might just be the truth at this point. Upon his shoulders is yoked the boulder of realizations that he is forced to bring up the mountain of his denial. If Alhaitham felt like Icarus, then Kaveh is Sisyphus pushing that boulder up towering and seemingly never-ending hills over and over again.
The next letter is a repertoire of memories both of joy and of woe. It spoke of the frailty of human life, and how loss would only feel heavy if you’re actually face to face with it despite already being already aware of its possibility.
I never knew that grief could be so debilitating. But here I am now, alone and cold in a house meant for two.
The one who shaped me into the man I am now is gone. She was the one who rebuilt my world when it crumbled as my parents were claimed by the sands. Under her wing I grew and found myself. She stood as my mother and father, my everlasting rock. She was my teacher, my closest confidant. She was my everything. She taught me how to love and what it's like to be loved. She became such a constant in my life that I failed to remember her fragile mortality.
I never had a particular dislike for death. I have always believed that it was just one of the undeniable realities of life, like many others. But now, I can’t help but wish for a little bit more time.
Uhibbuki, teta (I love you, grandmother). I don’t know how my world would continue now that you’re gone.
Kaveh feels his chest cavity swell with emotions all too familiar. In the dips and curves of elegant cursive, he remembers a precious diadem broken at his very hands. In the stark black of its ink, he sees a fading vision of a smiling face with hair the same shade of blonde as his own. In its words, he finds himself looking at a distant ship bound for a foreign land and the face of a woman whose whole world turned upside down yet still hopes for a better tomorrow.
In its entirety, he envisions bicolored eyes with a head full of slate colored strands sitting in a forgotten corner of the House of Daena. Once again, just like that day, he is left breathless. Yet, contrary to that day in which everything finally fell into place, he feels the whole world come apart.
He dares to pull out another letter, and this time he felt his breath stop in both anticipation and apprehension. Kaveh smells the paper before he even reads it. Cinnamon and coffee, his two favorite scents, are woven into each written word full of unfathomable emotions.
I have captured the sun. But I ended up burning the bridge towards it.
I should've known that stars aren’t meant to be tethered, that birds of paradise should be left to roam freely in the skies. I was naïve to even think that I’d be able to ground the unfettered light. Is this the price I have to pay for that complacent hubris? For here I am now, with all my accolades yet none could ever compensate for what I’ve lost.
For who I’ve lost.
For what are these acknowledgements and honors when the greatest glory I have been afforded is a chance to be by his side?
Yet once again, I find myself by my lonesome in a house meant for two.
He realizes that he had seen Alhaitham annoyed, happy, maybe even angry, but never sad. He never saw Alhaitham cry. But the letter in his hands had dark patches and smudged ink, salt in cinnamon. Coffee diluted by tears.
Oh how he wishes to turn back time.
I never knew relief until I found him again, never believed in repairing bridges that have long since burned down.
In the grand scheme of things, a decade flashes by in an instant. Yet everyday seems to stretch on forever as I wait on a mere what-if. I had hoped and hoped, even if it meant bringing my own heart through the wringer. I had grown accustomed to the dark.
I had grown accustomed to being alone.
But, like always, I am but a moth to his flame.
I found him, alone and despondent. In his unprecedented radiance, I have forgotten that stars burn the brightest at the end of their lives.
But I refuse to let alcohol and pain be the notes to his swan song. I will recompose this piece to be the most appropriate tribute to his perfect soul.
Kaveh is a builder, through and through. He engineers buildings into being. He makes dreams transform into reality. But ironically, he is so quick to break relationships. The maker becomes the undoer, and suddenly all those years studying design and architecture weren’t enough to repair what he had irrevocably broken.
He doesn't know if he still had it in himself to read another letter.
But he had always had a penchant for self-sabotage.
However, the cursive that greets him is unlike the ones before it. It's familiar, like the distant memories of family dinners and laughter. It is the echo of a bygone time in which the world had been kind.
To the Grand Scribe, Alhaitham:
I hope this letter finds you well. I must admit, I hesitated reaching out to you as I haven’t met you to know how you would react. The uncertainty scares me. Up until now, I am still a coward who runs away from the past that continues to haunt me even as I turned my back on the nation that harbored my suffering. In my grief, I failed to see that I also turned my back on the only good thing left in my life. On the only person who stood by me when I couldn’t stand up for myself. I failed to recognize the flame that struggled to burn in my encroaching darkness.
My Kaveh, my son, I failed to see him.
But you never failed to see him, not even once.
I know these are bold words from someone who hasn’t even met you, but I hold hope in your character. Before the world came crashing down on us, Kaveh had mentioned you a lot. He spoke fondly of you. His eyes always lit up with a vigor like none other. Professor Zaha Hadi even sent me a letter once, saying how wonderfully you two worked together on your thesis project. That child, Tighnari, also reached out to me saying that you two “fight like a married couple”. He must have gotten my contact from his father. Oh, how I wish to be brave enough to see that for myself. I yearn to see what a man my beloved sunlight had become, and in turn I wish to get to know the man who had enraptured the sun.
The General Mahamatra appended his letter to Tighnari’s once, telling me that Professor Cyrus wants me home for a drink at Lambad’s. Looks like there really are things that never change, no matter the years apart. He added that I should see for myself the “man that Kaveh had ‘grown’ to adore.” He even inherited Cyrus’s terrible sense of humour.
He’s loved, oh so very loved. Maybe, in a kinder and gentler life, I would have the courage to say how much I love and miss him straight to his face.
I do miss my homeland, I really do. But I miss my son more.
Oh, how I wish to be brave enough to set foot in Sumeru once again even if only to see those precious ruby reds and locks of gold.
I may have turned my back on my son, but I will always be his mother. I worry for him, but my own cowardice keeps me from reaching out. I’m terrified of his rejection, or worse, his apathy. Or maybe perhaps, I’m afraid of seeing a fragment of his father in his smiles.
I don’t claim to know you, because if you’re anything like your parents then I know how difficult it is to parse your personality. But I still hope that you’d take care of my little light.
Please, don’t leave him in the dark just as his father had. Just as I had.
Sincerely, Faranak
That’s the final nail in the coffin that broke the dam. Kaveh is aware enough to hear the door open, but in the myriad of emotions swirling in his heart he fails to acknowledge who had just returned.
“Kaveh? I’m home.”
Their eyes meet for a moment, until Alhaitham’s gaze drifts to the paper in Kaveh’s hands.
“Kaveh, I—” Alhaitham starts, tone urgent and desperate for once. Kaveh wonders, briefly, if he also yearns for this just as much as he himself does. He knows he had read the letters, and that the clean cursive had been unmistakable, but he still finds himself in utter disbelief. He feels like he’s in the border between a dream and a nightmare, stuck between longing and a deep-seated sorrow. “So you’ve been in correspondence with my mother?” Kaveh’s voice trembles, quiet and afraid. It’s thin ice and cold waters below. One wrong move could plunge him into oblivion, never being able to swim back up to shore again.
Then, like always, he falls. He falls until the world goes out of focus.
But, like always, Alhaitham is there to pull him out of cold waters and into the warmth of strong arms and a loving home.
Alhaitham had always been home.
He sees Alhaitham’s figure approach, feels his calloused hands upon his face. Sweet nothings and apologies fill Kaveh’s ears, accompanied by the smell of mint and Adhigama wood. Yet, he couldn’t register what Alhaitham is actually saying. He feels like he’s underwater, not quite drowning nor breathing.
He hears a muffled voice fraught with “I’m sorry”s, like a mantra repeated to console one’s spirit.
“Why are you apologizing?” Kaveh, by some miracle, manages to find his voice. In its brokenness, he could no longer recognize the sounds that came out of his mouth to be his own.
“Because I hurt you.”
Short, precise, yet so genuinely raw.
“I hurt you.” Kaveh counters, as if quantifying each other’s sins would mend their broken hearts and rewrite their troubled history.
“That hardly matters when I’ve hurt you, too.”
“But I hurt you.”
“And I hurt you.”
A beat passes by with just two pairs of glistening orbs staring straight into each other’s souls. Unable to bear the silence, Kaveh brings Alhaitham closer. In his embrace, he finds the confidence he needs.
“I’m not mad, Alhaitham. It’s just…” He starts, and Alhaitham hums in acknowledgement. He mentally notes that Alhaitham had always been this patient with him. He had always waited for him. His heart aches a little more. “My mother…it’s been six years since I last heard from her. None of my letters ever received a response. I thought that she left me alongside the memories of my father, and for so long I punished myself. I never knew that she’s just as afraid as I am to know the truth.”
“It’s better to be afraid than insist on living under the pretense of sweet lies.”
Kaveh pulls away and bears into those bicolored eyes. Alhaitham, as always, holds his gaze. He once again matches him in everything they do. “As a truth-seeker, have you ever been afraid of knowing the truth?” Alhaitham levels him with a patient gaze, teals and reds scanning his face for any signs of jest or jeer. “Of course. As they all say, ignorance is bliss.” Kaveh laughs, mirthless and hollow. “I’ve never really thought you to be tolerable to ignorance.” Alhaitham ponders, averting his eyes to the side. He’s at a loss for words, because even now as Kaveh is crumbling, he still knows Alhaitham better than he knows himself. “There is beauty in not knowing just as there is in knowing.” Kaveh brings a hand to his cheek, pulling his gaze back to his own burning rubies. “And I never thought you to be one that beats around the bush, too.” Then, a laugh more exuberant than the last rings quietly. In it, Alhaitham hears Nabu Malikata’s songs. In it, he parses out hope. “What are you really trying to say, Alhaitham?” In a hushed tone, he whispers: “Please convince me that this is real.”
And Alhaitham breaks.
Then, in a flash of green, Alhaitham is on his knees by Kaveh’s feet.
“I worship you. You’re the sun, the most brilliant of stars that I had ever seen. But I’m just the moon, forever waiting for your eclipse even if it means shrouding the world in darkness. I’d give anything to be in your orbit, for my sole existence persists only because of you. You are everything to me. I live only because I know that I want to pursue your light.” He looks up, and for the first time in almost a decade and a half of knowing each other, Kaveh sees Alhaitham cry. “I resented you so, so much. I despised your idealism. I discouraged your dreams. I hated that your light shines upon the ugliest parts of my soul and fishes all those terrible things to bring them to shore.”
Tears now spilling forth in endless rivulets, Alhaitham declares even as his tongue is laden with the taste of salt and fear:
“I regret many things, Kaveh. But one thing that I won’t ever regret is loving you. I’m sorry that you had to be the subject of these shallow feelings.”
He takes one of Kaveh’s dainty hands on his own sturdy ones, resting his forehead on his knuckles as if in prayer.
“But if this is love, then I finally understand why it is blind.”
By the gods, he loves this man.
Alhaitham makes the best mistake of opening his eyes, for the sun that catches on Kaveh’s hair haloes him in a way that paints him as the self-sacrificing saint that he is. There’s a thud, then the sound of rustling, and Alhaitham catches a whiff of cinnamon and coffee before he even feels Kaveh’s warmth envelop him. “And I resented you, too. I hated the fact that you knew me better than I knew myself. I’m proud, I know it. I couldn’t accept that some dreams must remain as dreams. Because…” Kaveh pulls away, and through the taste of salt and tears, smiles the brightest of smiles Alhaitham had ever seen.
“What has realizing my ideals done for me, anyhow?”
Alhaitham opens his mouth to respond, but Kaveh is quick to place a charcoal scented palm upon plump lips.
“And yet, I would not have it any other way. For it is my ideals that led me to you first, and once again it played its hand for us to meet once more.”
Kaveh rests his forehead atop Alhaitham’s, blanketing him in the mourning flower scent of his hair. From this close up, he can see the individual lashes on Kaveh’s eyelid. He notices the kohl he so meticulously placed smudge through tears. He hears the gentle sounds of his breathing, and suddenly they were eighteen once more spending endless vigils in the House of Daena with only the taste of coffee upon their tongues fueling them.
“And I would fall in love with you over and over again, no matter the lifetime.”
Maybe even through the ruination of time, the bitter taste of tears, the memories fallible in the hearts of mortality, and the smell of leather-bound books and charcoal, only the words written on these worn pages tucked away in a lone box hidden in a forgotten corner of a beloved home immortalizes what once was. A wordsmith’s craft, because despite his eloquence in language, the beauty of building simply for the sake of building eluded him. Until a builder, radiant and beaming, showed him what it was truly like to make and unmake.
Memories, that of a yearner’s devastating love and a mother’s wish, are preserved in black ink that shines bright even as the pages of the letters upon which it is written is tempered by the passage of the ages.
-
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out
Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?
O fearful meditation! where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O, none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
-Wlliam Shakespeare, Sonnet 65