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Fairy lights cast crimson and gold into the darkness. Not bright enough to cause him pain, but just enough to remain visible to his eyes, not just his heart. The soft glimmer projects Kaveh's leaden shadow on the wall beside him — a loyal companion in the solitude of his abyss.
The architect teeters on the edge of life, stripped of everything he once was. Poisoned by exertion, as if trapped in a fairytale slumber, he's confined to his bed. But his prison has none of the charm of a gilded cage; any activity is a luxury just out of reach, Kaveh's heartbeat and breaths are the only sensations left. Like a cypress tree cut too deeply, Kaveh can’t recover from his symptoms — it’s called severe ME/CFS, five letters like a writing on the wall.
Kaveh winces in discomfort as the door opens ever so slightly; his whole body tenses, his heartbeat accelerates. The additional presence of someone in his room is torture to him. Even feather-light movements, careful and muted, deteriorate him further.
Alhaitham navigates closer, the Tranquil Starlight in his palm cascading in an amber halo around him; he glances over Kaveh's precarious condition, then changes the bag to his feeding tube with caution.
‘Stay,’ Kaveh wishes he could want as mistful ruby eyes meet attentive teal ones; but he wouldn't survive the company. Minutes stretch into an eternity — time doesn't flow, and these harrowing encounters cannot end soon enough.
His face contorts from pain, his throat is sore and his muscles are heavy, almost paralysed. Kaveh's entire world has been reduced to his bed: he knows every inch of the four walls that enclose him like a coffin, and can hardly tolerate a change of scenery. Motion is foreign, makes him seasick, and drowns his body in helplessness. Now far over the edge, he demands for the commotion to stop — but fails to utter even a single letter.
Still, Alhaitham doesn't dismiss the invisible plea: he perceives the smallest twitch of Kaveh's hand — a warning for him to freeze in place for a few seconds, to grant Kaveh essential breaks to adjust.
Love might not require words, but living does — words, emotions, actions, they're made of everything that's inaccessible to him. His existence is incompatible with living, shaped only by missed moments, with no memories to make nor future to create. Like an empty sketchbook waiting to be filled with colour, or a blank canvas waiting to be painted on. Kaveh's no more than his discarded blueprints of what could've been, deserted to gather dust.
On the bedside cabinet lay six carmine hair clips, abandoned next to his teal ostrich feather: they’re positioned like tally marks, each one marking a year caged in his own bed. Next to them, a gift from Alhaitham: two feline plushies, snuggling paw against paw. One’s a lion, a meaningful symbol of Kaveh’s unwavering endurance; the other, a snow leopard, a tribute to Alhaitham’s resilience.
Mehrak is so close yet so far all the same. A while ago, she stayed for three minutes and brought him a glimpse of solace. It had been enchanting to indulge in this semblance of living: for mere seconds, Kaveh's eyes had glittered like sunbreak, and a few giggles escaped his lips; but then, the magical feeling of being alive had dissolved into overexertion. It's called post-exertional malaise, or PEM — three merciless letters like a writing on the wall.
Kaveh's desperate for an escape — can't comprehend that there is no relief. He's been cooped up a few years too long: his imagination has become too blurry, unable to offer comfort. His memories of feeling human have become too vague, far away enough that he might as well have dreamt them. Reality is distant, and it’s bewildering to think of how the world outside exists, evolves, thrives, indifferent to his absence. Only the present remains crystal clear, burying him alive in velvet sheets, day after day.
He wonders what miracle is keeping his body alive, but doesn't dare being curious: if he questions his scarce blessings too much, they might take flight, soaring high into the sunlit horizon. The view of pearlescent clouds twirling in the sky is one he hopes he’ll get to admire again in the future.
For now, and for many days to come, the number of times Kaveh can leave their home in a year stagnates at zero; in all this time, he hasn't felt a single ray of sunshine on his skin, hasn't listened to any chirping birds fluttering through evergreen landscapes. Kaveh yearns to be alive; but will he get his happily ever after?
Another twitch of a feeble palm, another immediate pause. Kaveh's consciousness fades, the familiar surroundings twisting into something surreal, and he can feel death looming near him. Surges of adrenaline keep him wide awake, but later he will fail to remember much of this recurring nightmare.
★★★★★
The never-dying misfortune he brought upon his loved ones leaves Kaveh guilt-ridden.
When he was just a boy, a little ray of joyous sunshine, there had been no writing on the wall except for a poster: a glamorous tiara with golden and teal embellishments. Ever the aesthete, he had of course been awe-struck.
“Why don't I win it, so I can let you play with it for a few days?” His father had suggested, unaware of the devastating journey that would start with this decision.
But it was because of Kaveh that he had entered the Interdarshan Championship; it was because of Kaveh that his father had met his end in a bottomless pit of quicksand. It was his wish for the Diadem that had cast this curse on his family.
He often wonders if his symptoms resemble that horrible death. His father must have felt debilitatingly weak in his last moments, as Kaveh does now.
When the first symptoms showed up, he had just graduated from the Akademiya; at the time, he’d paid them no mind, figuring they’d vanish soon enough. He’d continued to conjure up marvellous architecture, took pride in his imagination and in how he could harness beauty to create a better world, even for troublesome clients, even in the face of the most impairing symptoms. But eventually, his own suffering had intensified; and soon both he and the Palace of Alacazarzaray were withering beyond repair.
To Kaveh, duty meant doing the things his heart may well regret — brushing off the inevitable aftermath as his ability to push through decreased in no time. With restless determination, he sacrificed all mora available, along with his remaining health: resting had always been his nemesis, completely against his nature, just like huma birds keep flying high and never return to the ground. This had saved the Palace, but sealed Kaveh's fate — the Light of the Kshahrewar extinguished for good.
He's aware of the burden he must be to Alhaitham — aware that he's dragging him into this misery. Kaveh doesn't get why he stayed, but Alhaitham offered to watch over him without a second thought, as if it was the only logical choice. Kaveh feels undeserving of the care he receives: his generous heart worries about fellow sufferers who, despite their access to free healthcare, might lack this life-saving attention. He grieves over the cruelty of this fate.
He wishes for independence, for any chance to give back, but all he can do is hope that he might get one last straw of luck: the kind of magical recovery one can't find in a potion bottle. If myths like Aranaras are real, then one day a cure might be more than a fantasy.
After all, the Paradisaea is also known to embody eternal hope within the cycle of birth and death; and hope has always been the wings that carry him through hardships. Hope, and his longing for the mesmerizing beauty this world has to offer, keep him earthbound.
★★★★★
Decay knows no rest: a new calamity is always ready to strike, loss following in its trail. Once the fresh feeding tube bag is secured, Alhaitham peeks one last time at Kaveh to make sure he’s still breathing.
‘One day, you'll be alive,’ Alhaitham wants to whisper, but he decides against the wordcount and weight of a fragile promise.
Instead, he smirks and settles on a fond “see ya”. Alhaitham can't observe any chuckle or pout, but assumes them to be there internally, for Kaveh's traits persist with grace underneath the corpse-like sight. A faint inhale later, he leaves. The agony he witnesses on repeat haunts him like a phantom.
Alhaitham perches on the divan with a ghastly sigh. Serene sunshine beams through the stained glass windows, casting an iridescent pattern on the numerous books around him: it's a deceptively peaceful view, full of teal, but entirely devoid of crimson.
The parlor is dead silent as well, and he does prefer silence — but not the lifeless kind caused by Kaveh's absence. Ever the scribe, he takes note of their encounter, highlighting the thin smile and shattered gaze; on rare occasions, he treasures a few spoken words, or the gentle brush of a hand against his.
Mehrak flitters in the hallway, towards him, past a crooked painting that never stood a chance to be straightened. She beeps, a well-known question visible in her emerald frown.
“Too soon.” Alhaitham sets his notes down on a coffee table cluttered with research papers on the disease. “Kaveh’s still recovering from your visit two months ago.”
Mehrak scuttles away, growing a little more dejected each time. The despair is routine for both of them: it stings to leave Kaveh to his solitary confinement; it's terrifying to be so helpless. "You deserve better, Kaveh," Alhaitham thinks at last.
Visits are a rarity and never much of anything: not too bright, not too loud and not too long. The subtle company stirs up lively memories and nurtures all their faith in a future that isn't restrained to numbing survival; until then, Kaveh's deprived of partaking in other people's lives, and vice versa. There's an empty seat at Lambad’s, a missing player at the tcg table and a wine glass that hasn't been refilled in years; Razan Garden blooms without him too, its lavender padisarahs radiating eternal beauty. Will Kaveh ever get to admire them again?
As Alhaitham reaches for a book, his gaze lingers on the golden key dangling from the little lion keychain — always mingling with his own, the silver one. Kaveh never used it anyway; but Alhaitham wishes he could go back to the days he’d grab the golden key by mistake, instead of it being abandoned. Will Kaveh ever get the chance to use — or rather not use — it again?
No art can depict a suffering as intense and unique as losing your ability to live; no art can capture an experience as devastating and as torturous as longing to live. Nothing truly portrays the eternal mourning, the eternal hope, inherent to severe ME/CFS — a living death in grave-like isolation.