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The last time they met, their dear colleague died like a human being.
The second time, they shared a common mission, a common cause.
At their first meeting, everything dims and thickens, while Cristoforo meets Death.
Death dissolves into flowers. For the first and last time.
They first met in Fractsidus, where she comes, frail, with a lycoris staff and a weak body, gravely wounded by the Lament, but with dreams and aspirations greater than those of the nearly dead.
Why did you come here? Why did you decide to do this? If we had known then the true reason, you would have trusted us, just as we trust you.
No one will ask her why her other eye is weeping blood.
No one will know how quickly the thought became obsessive before she decided to go all the way.
Was it really so bad that she wanted to keep what she had?
Was it so terrible that she wanted to return what was taken from her?
Of all that is happening: Discords are everywhere, and they are all created and molded from them, never having seen each other before, and Fractsidus will not be able to soothe the pain of the mind of this new one, just as it could not soothe the pain of any of those who came before. Of all that is known: she no longer belongs to people, just as she does not belong to monsters, she has not left the past in the past, she has lived too long and she hears differently, and she is capable of grinding anyone into dust without rehearsal, and notes fall from the staff - to be heard by her, and her power - to play an accompaniment with life.
Cristoforo writes two words for her: cold frost. And he tries to unsee, to understand, to recognize her features, his gaze lingers on her - so distant, as if beyond the limits of perception, his gaze lingers on one of those present, when Scar, leaning closer, smiles with a manifestation of bloodlust and does not miss the obvious similarity between their appearances ("Do I know you, sis?" "How much do we have in common, sis?").
They learn later that she truly is freezing cold when they get to know each other better, when they share revelations, not heartfelt, dryly, between the lines, between impeccably clean handwriting, because codependency hasn't made them friends. Phrolova is a blank slate, a false bandage, a false mood, and her ambition is to do whatever she wants, and her poison is to make sure no one sees her with her own eyes, and her talent is to control frequencies.
Her grief cannot be overcome, cannot be understood, cannot be hidden.
Phrolova is a blank slate with a porcelain-white face, silver in her long braids, and darkened lips, a tortured burgundy, like dried blood. Blood on the snow is a grotesque sight; blood on the snow is the peak of its beauty.
"Allow me to welcome you here, lady Phrolova," he bows his head to her, as to an equal, as to a comrade, as to everyone he meets along the way, dispensing with titles—those he had long ago assumed.
"Do you think I'm in pain?" she begins, leaving no explanation; her voice sounds hollow and hoarse, and he can't get the hoarseness out of her head, just like her—not rhetorically, not theoretically, not metaphorically.
He thinks: Phrolova is an emotional waste. Translucent, snow-white, washed from the palette by rain, until red dilutes it all—too much of it. The plants, greedy, brittle—weeping away like the first sign of Overclock—pass through numerous veins and arteries, twining around her hands, glistening with dew, bitterness filling the air.
More and more flowers sprout from her body, then wither right there, crumble, fall to dust at her feet, unhidden by the white fabric of her dress, before disappearing. The aftermath of the heat. The peculiarity of the gift. Her new essence.
Cristoforo watches—and watches with delight—as the flower opens on her shoulder: the crimson trace on the skin, the spider lily that blooms, beautiful and yet breaking with the absence of life. It blooms against common sense—Phrolova smiles faintly, without wincing, takes a step, and the click of her heel echoes off the walls; she plucks the flower from her shoulder, placing it in his hand without asking, and Cristoforo feels the cold of her skin, feels it especially vividly—and the lycoris melts, disappearing in his palm.
He saw neither surprise nor fear in her, only a trembling touch of red and the silver in the iris of an unhidden eye—coldness and acceptance of her own fate; It scares people. Inevitability.
And that's the only thing that wins him over, and it's such a shame that he elevates everything to the absolute.
There's no point in fighting, and nothing to fight against.
The city drowns in its own perfection, the drizzle and rot of the streets settle on shoulders, and travelers are lost in the haze of the Darl Tide.
He amuses himself in his favorite manner; he remained himself, remained a playwright, passionate, awkward, not a hopeless romantic, whose pragmatism perished the moment the last spark of rationality faded. There is no black and white, no good and evil, no virtues or villains. Fingers chill with anticipation, the idea germinating so eerily and enticingly, and within it lies helpless daze, the agony of primal terror, the cliché of sacrifice.
Will Primus, chosen by the deity, believe the carefully painted mask? Will the inhabitants of the aristocratic capital trust him, polite, kindhearted, and smooth-talking? Cristoforo wouldn't trust himself, so why does he bow to the dark-haired traveler with a familiar face and the crumbling of her new personality? Why does he inspire confidence—she must be the one they've all been searching for, and she will witness the best of climaxes.
Red upon red.
Phrolova is familiar.
Familiar. Known. Cried-over.
The same as she always remains—the same as he recognized her—having survived pain and pulled herself together again, and it has changed her in ways impossible to imagine.
She,Cristoforo thinks distantly, won't like how the very air will soon break, just as the meek, poor soul without memory won't like it, just as no one in Rinascita will like it too.
She won't like the hallucination, the obsession, the side effect of Leviophan's appearance, the instrument for testing other lives, the cataclysm and catalyst that is also familiar to her.
Shoulder to shoulder, the scent of something spicy, like her perfume. Phrolova is nearby, turning her face to the wind, and the stars above Ragunna are reflected in her eyes. Still close through their encounters, but life beats steadily in her heart, without a hitch, when the road becomes a fire beneath her feet, her skill fails, and there is no time left for hope; the last stone has been laid in the tower of errors, there is no one to trust and no one to love, but neither fire nor death frightens her—behind them lies a common plan, a common cause. Duties have been imposed upon them from above—and they fulfill them scrupulously, skillfully crossing the Rubicon in hope of a better outcome.
Cristoforo watches—and watches with delight—the maiden, crowned by grief, dancing to the cry of the violin.
Phrolova is nearby, twirling in the arms of her puppet, blossoming in someone else's attention, in someone else's disdain, no longer a botanical nightmare, but she dresses entirely differently—symbolically, like flowers, red and white. She allows herself to move by inertia, led by Hecate, manipulating Echo like a puppeteer, listening to the measured melody of the musician's instrument—the twilight of the masquerade mercifully conceals all flaws, and if one doesn't pay attention to the false ideals, hypocritical faces, and befuddled idols, one could end up on the brink of the abyss.
Phrolova is beautiful when she devotes herself entirely to her performance.
Phrolova is beautiful when she lays herself entirely on the altar of the most poisonous flowers in the name of the best crescendo.
Will she, frozen in time, notice the rules and prohibitions that clash with her infallible faith?
There's nothing shameful in contemplation. If you become a spectator—so what? Contemplation is like the meaning of life in the essence of battle.
That's why Cristoforo watches and (doesn't) understand. (Doesn't) understand why his dear colleague is attached to a mistake the poor girl made as thoughtlessly and frivolously as so many others in her past.
For the first time, he steps out of the shadows, approaches, peering into the familiar—and unfamiliar—place. In his imagination, houses rise out of nothing, people appear, cracks so deep they're visible to the naked eye—not real at all, like the sky, like the peaceful day, like this village. Cristoforo stares at the horizon, furtively and attentively; he blinks, and there's no village there, no people, no red sky. But suspicion creeps into his heart as he clearly sees Phrolova waving her baton before him, not to delay the moment, but conducting again and again, playing along with something he can't hear.
Are you playing, lady Phrolova? Why is your imaginary violin louder than the real one?
Her madness is not classic, without insanity and destructiveness, and there is no need to recall someone else's mania and burns on her face, no need to recall the fixation by which he himself extols the new favorite of fortune as the main hero.
His voice behind her echoes from the thick blackness, and the usual unhappy and sad one answers him again. Their conversations are quite philosophical - but beautiful words end where reality sets in.
("It doesn't matter".
"Your arrogance is useful only to the Architect".
"Boring".
"Doesn't matter".
"I prefer not to participate".
"I do not share your craving for sabotage, Cristoforo.)
"Your old home is a trap, lined from the inside with illusion".
Why did you decide to stay in your own dream? What do you want to achieve? Your mirror, Phrolova, is a lie - broken and unstable, built like a wall - the stitches of an old wound; Falseness flickers in kind faces, every moment resembles a vicious circle within which silence yawns.
Your anger cannot be cured, cannot be understood, cannot be hidden.
For your catastrophe, for one promise, for an unkept word.
For something that Lady Arbiter forgot long ago.
And Phrolova doesn't feel the art within herself, doesn't feel anything—she pushes away a scenario she has no intention of supporting with the humility of a victim—playing the role as she's destined to, masquerading as an act of salvation. The staff glows in her hand, then fades abruptly, and she glances over her shoulder, her closed eye not looking, somehow smiling with a condescending resignation.
"I know," a languid, mournful expression blooms with anathemas within her. "Illusions—what else do I have left?"
It's almost like a deception—picturesque and dark: the Lost Beyond frozen in shades of violet, a place quiet and empty, borderline, in which, for some reason, the end repeats itself over and over again. Hers—a repeating cycle, the second, the third, the hundredth, the thousandth. This fairy tale is full of looping events, duplicated dialogues, impossible to discern the differences in the illustrations, only red, like a fire, impossible to discern the ghosts of the past, crumbling into petals and stems at the movement of her hands.
A second, two... Her last breath. They are from the other side. Around them lies deception; the integrity of the world and the integrity of memory, enclosing her like a fortress. She no longer conducts; a kaleidoscope of colors spins, distorts the Beyond in the sunlight, becoming unfamiliar buildings, familiar townspeople, family, loved ones. Cristoforo hears the voices of visitors, the melody from an old radio, because her home, no matter how much she wants it, will forever remain the same.
He is too decent to say that in the present "as before" will never be. She is too stingy with emotions to respond to his terms... in a play about her there would be age-old dust.
The sun through the windows floods the bar with gold. The glass isn't caught well, it falls wide, shatters, and no apology is heard—that shouldn't happen, not because there's anything wrong with the mirror, of course, but because her script is broken, her script interrupted, and he appears before her once, for a brief moment, to talk, talk, talk about life, about death, about the Guardians, about tacet, to listen to the violin that no one but her outside of the Beyond can hear.
in his book—a sea of paper. His voice is sweet, not so obvious as to betray all his disappointment when Cristoforo flips a blank page with an unnecessary gesture, devoid of any tenderness.
"How easy—a whole life into emptiness, and you have something to miss," he says, tilting his head to the side.
Phrolova rolls her eyes only for a second—she's straight, motionless, looking straight at him, sitting so close he could touch her. In the silver-gray, there's no reproach, no disappointment, no deserved hatred—there's indifference, a freezing coldness deep in the iris, penetrating Cristoforo's bones with indifference, as if he didn't exist at all. As if she were staring at nothing.
"If possible, don't interfere in my story." when she speaks, her secluded world freezes, motionless, like images in a photograph. "And don't come here again."
The Overseer might adopt this as a rule: "never play with colleagues.". He can live with it: their organization was the last place where one could trust colleagues without morals... and yet here they are, having learned to understand each other by chance and without trying. He breaks the silence with a peal of laughter: perhaps she would answer the same way if he decided to rewrite her fate and be honest for once. He understands: all that remains of her humanity is memory. He thinks that their conversations are still just as ugly—like cutting a path through someone’s unempathetic heart.
“Of course, I won't ” Cristoforo chuckles grayly, absentmindedly examining the same crimson, only because this shade still flows, still blooms, colors, runs past the black-and-white streets outside the nearest window. “It seems, lady Phrolova, that you have run out of options.”
“It seems wrong to trust those who use you for their own purposes, doesn’t it?”
“I'm afraid this trust is fragile.”
"You wanted my help? Offer me yours? No," she snaps, folding her arms across her chest, brazenly cutting short the string of politeness, wistful sighs, and believable feigned admiration. "Our tastes are too different, dear."
"You're not one of my characters, Phrolova; I wouldn't dare drag you out of your hell."
She loses expression, intonation, and calm, and her home grays to the point of tasteless, monotonous, empty oblivion. Rage seems to course through her veins—one step away from indifferent eternity, he's all prim and neat, with his straight posture, his respectful expression, while the green in his eyes flares with bright, mischievous flashes, betraying everything about him, destroying the integrity of her existence.
"...characters you create as thoughtlessly and cruelly as you create so many other things," Phrolova returns the term, less hesitantly than before, but just as coolly, firm in her refusal to accept a favor when he extends his hand, palm up, as if expecting her to accept it.
But she does not.
Phrolova frowns slightly, catching the waiter's statue-like silhouette behind him. She rebuilds everything, shakes her head in disapproval, but carelessly leaves her seat, her heel catching the glass on the floor, and for some reason doesn't accept his help, just as she doesn't take his hand, just as she doesn't enter into a duet for the sake of common interests.
Do you want me to repeat your meeting with her? I'll do it all over again, this time in the future. Do you want her to say "I'm sorry"?
The cycle turns back, erasing their knowledge, their thoughts, their meeting, but this is more than a mere collection of memories, it is beyond hatred, more painful than any betrayal. The beauty of tragedy is that when you rewrite your own life, events don't begin to change in response. When Phrolova lovingly curses everyone, destroying the universe, nothing will remain of her. It doesn't feel like a furor, a triumph, a final bow—her world, in fact, resists, driving the named guests away. Cristoforo doesn't flinch, doesn't seek a retreat, doesn't drop his props from the insistence with which she pushes him into the abyss; he remains himself again and again, forgetting her, forgetting once again.
The Wheel of Samsara repeats itself from the beginning – the glass stops mid-fall, caught effortlessly by the stem. I'm sorry...
This story is cyclical – petals fall from an artificial sky, glassed with blood, disfigured faces stare out with hollow eye sockets and pull, pull, pull with clawed paws, to take her with them into the black water.
The price for lives – it has long been paid .
Cristoforo hears the violin spilling into the background. Cristoforo is sedately calm, his fingers on the spine of his own weapon, no need to hide his face behind the gold of his mask. He tries to leave so that the sound of his footsteps mingles with the voices and roars of the unfortunate Conductor's monsters. Something pours from his heart, beating deafeningly – a reverent awe; but what she created, what she did not leave behind, is foolish in its golden morality and, nevertheless, does not conquer him. So, it's decided.
Phrolova won't notice how the paper crane lands on her table, how it instantly bursts into flames, burning without a trace, as if created from pyro-paper, leaving behind a dead, sweetly astringent flower in the monotony of her Sonoro.
There's nothing shameful in contemplation, but he laughs drunkenly, accustomed to working with his inherent artistry when he's not introducing secrets into a full-fledged play, when Rinascita trembles mirage-like, the sky melts, and the narrative unfolds before Rover—the only one, blind to everything, who too late recognized him as an enemy.
"You're next," she declares, recognizing no one in her new self, looking at him with empty eyes.
Cristoforo can't believe he's still breathing. He feels Rover breaking his bones—she's not shards of shattered glass, because his senses are almost as heightened as they were when they met.
The pain of being pierced through and through is unbearable, too strong for a person with nerve endings, perhaps.
Phrolova leaves her village in the middle of ashes, in the middle of an endless dungeon in which she hides her mirror. She seeps into the present, falling where there's no bottom, no horizon, no chance of salvation.
The only pity is that between them lies pretense, a simulation of life, and crippled destinies.
The only pity is that death comes in battles to the death. The name of the mistake is Rover, Rover-Rover, the beautiful Rover, who didn't turn out to be the soft-hearted heroine in this fairy tale.
Disappointment in him borders on resentment— I knew it would be like this —at unfulfilled hopes, actions that can never be refuted or reversed.
Cristoforo finds the strength to disappear, to prevent anyone from reaching the most valuable artifact. To do as agreed. To play out as chosen, perfectly calibrated, like his entire image.
Phrolova is not a hero created by a madman; she is free to choose for herself, with persistence and stubbornness, but life beats steadily in her heart, blood does not flow, does not pour down the blade of a sword, as if the body rejects everything mundane and living, like every character on its parchment.
In this tale, there is only cold calculation. He is not her its playwright, not her its creator, not her its inspiration.
The only pity is that the sad Ophelia perishes in the crests of the waves, falls into the water, plunges into the abyss, into the depths.
The endless sea was calm—only tiny waves, barely rising above the surface, indicated that this wasn't simply the smooth surface of some cloudy mirror that unwaveringly reflected the sky. Cool water lapped against the pier, gently lapping the sandy shore, bringing shells and fine, marsh-green seaweed.
Water. From up here, the waves couldn't be heard. Surely, there was his crooked, broken reflection. Perhaps the truest thing now—for he was no longer a spectator, and the darkness no longer embraced him softly, almost tenderly, and the refined Echo disobeyed the commands of its puppet master, her head no longer wearily resting on his shoulder.
His raven is meticulously rummaging around in the grass.
Cristoforo delves into the letters, embodies the forte—and watches with delight, poisoned by his own essence with pedantry, with disbelief,—as the lines come to life, a magnum opus of a script, and she is not here... Not and will not be, because he promised himself, promised her, and can remember this as a rule...
"Don't interfere in my story."
She is in the filler chapters, her thread there where the melody, performed in the upper register, abruptly ends with an unfinished bar. Dear Phrolova—a curse that tears out the heart for the sake of a dream. Dear Phrolova—a grotesque with a logical conclusion. A broken mirror, millions of successive letters, merging with the darkness. Dear Phrolova, I want to apologize for the rudeness, for the inattention, for the bruises, for the respect never expressed, for your goal, the depth of which I overestimated, and now underestimated, as it turns out.
Something whispers: she did not agree to be saved.
It is impossible to bring alive someone who does not need it.
Phrolova is gone.
Shesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgoneshesgonephrolovaisgone.
The streaks of sun do not bless one to meet Death with dignity, and under this light she certainly does not rise from the madness they has seen, so hopeless, incredible, and absurdly naive.
"For my taste you have written too little sentimentality and too much practical meaning, Cristoforo."