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The trailblazers had departed from Amphoreus just two days ago, and now, Cyrene doesn't know what she's going to do for herself.
Last she'd seen, the baths of Okhema had been abandoned, monsters pouring into its halls, rubble where once proud marble stood. It's a little bit jarring now, to look down on the pools from the upper floors, and see the public milling about below, as if everything that had happened had been nothing more than a horrible dream.
Thirty-three million cycles.
Perhaps it'd been a dream for the others, but if there was anyone who could truly understand the agony of waiting, it'd only be herself and Phainon. Even the other Chrysos heirs- she doubts that their memories of previous cycles feel like anything more than vague impressions. The human mind, even when it exists in a digital simulation, can only hold so much, after all.
There's an grand auditorium-like space, situated towards the back of the upper floors. It'd been Cerydra's war council room, then Aglaea's, during the Black Tide. Once, the space had thrummed with the clamor of hundreds- Chrysos Heirs strategizing over maps and charts. Then, it'd been a space for only twelve and dwindling. Now, Cyrene’s footsteps echoed against marble that has been left behind to gather dust.
All of the Chrysos heirs, without the call to war, have returned to their own paths. They still keep in contact; meet up whenever they're in the same city, send letters to one another, but its nothing like the close-knit unit they once were. Mydei's returned to Castrum Kremnos. Aglaea's set up a tailor shop in the heart of Okhema. Even Phainon's headed back to Aedes Elysiae.
Cyrene's never been a part of their group. She doesn't know why she stays. Perhaps Aedes Elysiae feels closer to Phainon than it does for her; after all, over the course of those thirty-three million cycles, at least he'd had the chance to properly experience home.
She traces a finger along the windowsill, collecting a thin film of dust. Outside, the sky of Amphoreus is splattered with shades of pinks and blues and purples. It's nothing like the pitch dark night of the black tide, but nor is it the gentle blue of the Okhema of old. Perhaps it, too, is still healing, purple bruises in the sky, red scabs of torn open wounds.
There's not a soul in the auditorium. It's a sort of emptiness uncharacteristic for the heart of Okhema.
“You spend too much time in empty rooms.”
The memory surfaces unbidden- Hyacine's voice, flat and uninflected, delivered during the first week after the war. Cyrene had ducked away into one of the many abandoned shops- for a breather, to escape, or something else along those lines. Hyacine had appeared behind her, startling Cyrene to the point that she'd dug her fingers so hard into the window sill that the wooden frame had cracked.
Cyrene had laughed then, slowing extricating her fingers from the ruin beneath her hands.
"I like empty rooms." She'd replied, folding her hands behind her back. "They're the best place for daydreams. It's like falling into a really soft cloud, for a little bit."
"Daydreams won't help save Okhema."
"No. But they give me something to work towards." Cyrene had smiled then, and she smiles again now at the ghost of the conversation. At the time, Hyacine only stared at her for a long moment, uncharacteristically quiet, before turning away, her pigtails swaying with the movement. Both of them had been utterly exhausted; perhaps there'd been something unsaid in that silence, but Cyrene hadn't been able to read it at the time.
Cyrene pulls away from the window, the afternoon light pooling behind her feet. This has become her ritual: wandering through the abandoned war rooms, glancing down at Okhema, rubble and scaffolding alike. Cataloguing what remains, what has been lost and let go, and what is being built anew.
The war is over. Cyrene was never a soldier- not like Phainon. She'd never been directly in the sea of violence that was the war, unless you counted repeatedly dying by Phainon's blade those 33 million times- but she's finding that she's not quite used to peace anymore either. There's a different sort of exhaustion that comes with recovery, and Cyrene finds herself enthralled by it. The mental and physical tiredness are nothing new, but for once, she has tangible results almost immediately after her efforts, unlike before.
Cyrene hears the footsteps before she sees their owner. Light thuds, leather soles against stone.
Hyacine emerges from the eastern stairwell, a satchel hitched under one arm, and Little Ica drifting behind her shoulder. The memosprite lets out a doot in greeting at Cyrene, and Cyrene offers them a small smile and a wiggle of her fingers in return.
"You're supposed to be resting," Hyacine says.
Cyrene turns her smile to Hyacine, pressing a hand over her heart. "So are you, but you're clearly on your feet right now." She blinks, faux innocent. "Shall we report each other to the healer's guild?"
There's a brief pause. Then, almost imperceptibly, the corner of Hyacine's mouth twitches upward.
"Tribbie's already scolded me." Hyacine shifts to hike up the package against her hip. "I promised to head home after one last errand, which seems to now include checking up on other patients who won't stay in their beds."
"I'm a memosprite." Cyrene sniffs. "Just let me float around in some memoria and I come out the other side like nothing even happened."
"Doesn't change the fact that you had a gaping hole in your chest barely even two weeks ago." Hyacine lets out a sigh. "Honestly, you and Phainon are far too similar. The only reason the two of you survived at all is because of the semi-emanator thing you guys have going on."
Cyrene lets out a slightly deranged giggle, then winces when the movement tugs at her skin wrong. Yeah, she'll admit, she's certainly better off than an average human would be if they'd had their heart literally torn from their chest, but she's still got an array of stitches and bandages hidden beneath her dress.
Hyacine's gaze travels from Cyrene's face to her shoulder, where the aforementioned bandages rise up over the hemline. Her expression remains carefully neutral, but Little Ica drifts closer to Cyrene, letting out a sad little doot as it boops its snout gently against her arm.
"Your color is better at least." Hyacine says. "Last week you looked like curdled milk."
"Such poetry. Did you learn that from your time at the Grove?"
"Close enough." Hyacine huffs out a small smile. "I learned it from dear professor Anaxagoras. I believe he was describing Aglaea's complexion at the time, not that your states differed much in severity." Hyacine winces at that reminder. For a commander, Aglaea had the unfortunate tendency to rush out onto the front-lines anyway. Save for Phainon and Cyrene, who'd directly faced off a Lord Ravager, the Goldweaver had been one of the most heavily wounded of the Chrysos Heirs. It's nice to see that she's recovered enough to trade banter with Anaxa, though.
A comfortable silence falls over them after the exchange. Hyacine moves to the window beside Cyrene. She drops her package on the sill of the window with a thump, and stares out into the distance, watching as the sun slowly sets over Okhema. Cyrene follows her gaze. After the black tide, it'd been hard to reconcile nightfall with anything but the monstrosities in the dark. She still can't sleep properly in the night, and she's sure most of the other Okhemans are the same. It's taken some getting used to- this cyclic night time.
"You were right," Hyacine says quietly. "About the daydreams."
Cyrene blinks slowly. She doesn't look towards Hyacine, blue eyes still fixed on some point in the distant horizon.
"I didn't really understand, before." Hyacine's gaze remains fixed on the horizon. "What good was getting lost in your imagination when we still had so many things to get done. Our city was dying and you were hiding away in your own head.
"But now the war's properly over. And I keep…" Hyacine pauses. "The healer's halls are still swamped, but we're not taking in more patients than we can treat anymore. No one's actively dying anymore. Everyone's recovering. There's still something for me to do but sometimes I sit in my office and just feel like I'm doing nothing at the same time. Nobody's crying or screaming and that's a good thing but I don't know how to exist in silence anymore. Like all of a sudden we've won but now what use does the world have for a Chrysos Heir? For a titan beyond worship? I know how to be a healer but I don't know how to be only a healer.
"Daydreaming," Hyacine lets out a breath, "is the only thing that make the quiet bearable. I have more time than I know what to do with now but at least the dreams give me a goal to move towards, however flimsy they may be." The healers finishes up her speech by reaching a hand up to thread her fingers through Little Ica's mane. "There's so much going on in my head that sometimes I don't even know what I can actually do anymore, but I don't know how to function without them anymore either."
Cyrene finally turns her gaze away from the horizon and towards the healer. She watches Hyacine for a few moments. The other girl looks oddly fragile; Cyrene suddenly has the urge to cup Hyacine's face in her hands. "That feels like something Phainon would say." Cyrene finally says. She tries for a joking tone, but the words fall flat. She tears her gaze away from Hyacine and back towards the horizon. Hyacine makes a light affronted noise, and Cyrene awkwardly shrugs. "I get it though. Maybe it's worse for you because you actually had a role in everyone's lives before all this. I'm just a stranger walking in."
She extends her hand toward the window, palm up. From this angle, it's as if the entirety of Okhema is fitting into the palm of her hand.
"Honestly, I'm probably the last person you should be copying when it comes to trauma-response techniques." Cyrene smiles wryly. "But I'd like to think that we've got the right idea of where to start, at the very least. I don't know how to exist without my excess of dreams. You don't know how to exist with them."
"There's something to be said here about finding a middle ground."
"We'll figure it out eventually." Cyrene hums. She slowly turns her hand over, tracing a finger over the outline of the rooftops of Okhema. The sun has well and truly set by now; the moon bathes the city in a silvery light. Cyrene, even if she'd been born normal, would have never had the chance to enjoy this view before.
"We used to have storytelling circles back in my village. An elder would volunteer to share an old myth or something that happened in their youth, and all of the children would gather around to listen." Cyrene raises a hand, pointing to an outcrop of trees in the distance, towards the center of the city. "We'd sit out in the grass, under the shade, and just laugh and laugh." She smiles to herself, eyes slipping down to slivers. It'd be lovely if Okhema could have something like that. Maybe I could be the storyteller." She laughs to herself. "If there's anyone in Amphoreus suited for that role, it'd be me."
She leans forward, propping her chin up on the heels of her palms. "It's not grand dreams," Cyrene acknowledges. "No one's going to write epics about the humble storyteller in a grove. But it's precisely because they're so small that I think they're easy dreams. The sorts of dreams that you could build up in a week, rather than over centuries." Cyrene smiles. "I think they're the kind of dreams that's best for peace time. Easy to get lost in, but also easy to put out in the real world."
A cloud passes by overhead, blocking out the moon. The light in the empty room shifts, dimming from bright silver to a dull grey. Hyacine is silent, but now her gaze is stuck on Cyrene. When Cyrene glances over, Hyacine doesn't look away either. The silence stretches, and for a moment, Cyrene wonders if Hyacine's going to cut the conversation short.
"I want to work in a proper hospital."
Cyrene turns. Hyacine's profile is sharp against the window, but her voice has softened into something far more tentative than her earlier tone.
"Not the tents that we've got set right now. Not even what we had before Okhema fell. We'd have a proper hospital building, not just an infirmary room shoved behind some archives. There'd be more space for supplies, and we'd have a whole system set up for both the patients and their medication." Hyacine continues. "Maybe one day I'll be able to train other healers, not just treating patients myself. That way other people can keep on healing even if I no longer can't."
"That's a beautiful dream." Cyrene says softly.
Hyacine's smiles a tight smile. "It's practical."
"It's both." Cyrene smiles. "That's the best kind." She closes her eyes, feeling the cool night wind brush over her face. For a moment, something fragile hovers between the two of them. Understanding, perhaps, though Cyrene can't quite put her finger on it. There's a warmth there that she doesn't think is from the mere connection between two people who are learning how to properly live. Perhaps someday in the future, she'll drag Hyacine out into the city and poke at whatever this tender emotion is. Love, perhaps? Though that word feels like it's both too much and not enough to describe this fledgling relationship.
"Let's head back." Cyrene lets out a breath, opening her eyes, and the tension between them snaps. "You've still got a package to heft somewhere, don't you?"
"And you should be getting to bed." Hyacine scolds, but there's a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
They move through the corridors together, their footsteps finding an unconscious rhythm. Little Ica drifts ahead, leaving behind a floating trail of bubbles. Cyrene will admit, she's starting to flag; she hadn't noticed the exhaustion until now. Perhaps Hyacine has a point.
They stop at the upper exit of the Marmoreal Palace. Hyacine has her back towards the grove- and the subsequent infirmary setup in that direction.
"Are you busy tomorrow?" Cyrene suddenly asks. She tilts her head in Hyacine's direction, but her eyes trace over the other girl's shoulder, towards the people milling about in the background.
"No more than usual." Hyacine offers. "I'll probably have a few hours to spare once one of the Tribbie's kicks me out of the healer's hall."
"I think I'd like to plant a garden." Cyrene continues. "It was a dream of mine, once. Planting a flower garden back in Aedes Elysiae." She focuses her gaze on Hyacine, folding her hands behind her back. "I can't be too hard to move this sort of a dream to the city. You know Okhema better than I do, and what sorts of plants would do well here."
Hyacine blinks, slightly startled, but easily answers. "There used to be these hills on the outskirts of the city. There used to be a bunch of wild flowers growing over there. We can see if they're still intact."
"We could meet tomorrow at noon?"
Hyacine nods, and Cyrene offers up a bright smile in return.
"Tomorrow at noon, then." Cyrene repeats. She tips forward into a slight bow, wincing slightly as the movement tugs on still-healing wounds.
"I'll be sure to do the heavy lifting, miss patient." Hyacine laughs. She raises a hand and offers Cyrene a small parting wave, then turns on her heels and prances towards the grove with a bounce in her step, Little Ica trailing at her heels. Cyrene watches until Hyacine's flash of pink hair disappears around the corner.
She presses her hand to her chest, feels the pulse of her own heartbeat against her palm. Steady and warm- proof that she's alive.
Cyrene laughs out loud. She folds her hands together in front of her, and turns back towards her own quarters.
She's got a garden to think on, tonight.