Work Text:
The sunset suffuses everything with a pale yellow haze and it’s beautiful and feels like coming home, yet Rafayel knows he will never arrive anywhere and will feel out of place on whichever ground he stands — and that no amount of love he is given will ever make up for that he failed to receive. He could take his life right now and would feel no different about it ending than he would in five or ten years. Alone, he watches time pass by day-by-day and the grief remains insurmountable, only grows heavier, as if there were always more of it than he can carry. It becomes an unbearable weight that he cannot be absolved of for he is the sole reason it exists to begin with.
Rafayel doesn’t think he will ever be loved in a way that would matter. Nothing has ever passed before — nothing he could hold — except for the traces of love he now is no longer privy to. Was the love still there, he would have something to hold onto, to hold out for — but with it long gone, all that awaits is the dull absence of everything that once was and never will be again.
He inhales the salty air slowly, forces it deeper than it wants to go, until his lungs sting with the stretch.
Basked in gold by a sun that touches everything on this planet, his body settles. He's grown softer towards his grief over the years, has let it soak in warmth to the point that darkness no longer scares him — but light does. And as every evening spent like this, the setting sun unravels him entirely, strips him of any defences and his insistence that he can continue standing on his two feet when really all he wants is to finally lay himself to rest. Twilight is when he feels raw enough to create. But where the sun still touches him now, his shadow extends; behind Rafayel, no light reaches.
Nowhere feels like home.
Not the city and its artificial brightness and noise and people amass walking around always having places to be, always having loved ones to return to; not the sea with its cradling warmth akin to a mother's embrace filled with the vivid colours of his childhood and the scent of a life lost; not the shore, of which he will forever remain the sole inhabitant.
No matter where he is, the light exposes all he lacks, puts his faults and the holes of his being into stark relief. Should Rafayel ever be allowed to watch the sun drown in the sea and not be overcome with a longing so deep he wishes for the darkness to crest and crash into him with solace, he is certain it could only be a dream.
But at least in his dreams, he can still see rainbow-coloured schools of fish swim past his home; he can still feel the excitement of slipping away to swim to the surface with all the might a little boy can muster and see the sun — warm, real, yet oh so far. In his dreams where he is not yet scared of the light, where he is still able to be assuaged by love, he reaches his small fingers towards this brilliance that makes him squint. He has never seen anything as bright in his short life and feels that, if only he could reach that light, he might be able to take it with him and bring it back home as a souvenir, to show everyone that the land isn't as scary as they try to make him believe. Only in his dreams, he can still look forward to the next and the next and the next day of possibilities of exploring the intertidal zones and the beach where critters are existing in more nooks and crannies than his eager eyes can take in.
Awake or asleep, Rafayel remembers the freedom of this time vividly — it was an utter ease of existence. He knew returning home would mean the promise of tomorrow, where he could still encounter a new kind of love, and would ensure he would hold onto it for as long as he possibly can.
By now, Rafayel is certain he no longer can.
Even love offered to him on a silver platter — by his kin, by admirers of his art, by strangers during mundane encounters that once were filled with the marvel of novelty — has lost its shine, has become something he can only feel guilty over. It is given to him so freely and yet it lacks all meaning to him. What is he supposed to do with any of it — all these feelings of other people weighing him down, leaving no room for his own. And even when he does have the space to truly feel — there is nothing left but pain.
And so he avoids love, as much as he avoids the small hours surrounding sunrise and sunset nowadays. He paints, he converses, he throws himself into what he deems productive and to be helping him towards some sort of grander goal (what goal?) — all in order to be able to quiet the inevitability of succumbing to his grief. Because Rafayel knows he will, eventually. There's only so much a single person can hold.
After all, for now, he's not just a single person. He has to push back against what tries to drown him. He is more than a single life, bears others as his, and needs to ensure his job is one well executed before finally returning to the sea. It's all he can do, which arguably isn't very much, and he hates himself for it. Although he has vague plans, there should be more, right? There should be certain things he can do to bring back that which has been lost; there should be certain words he can speak to revert everything to the past.
Perhaps a prayer.
Prayers to gods who would listen to a god, though would they care? When the sea dries out, leaves behind nothing but death and tidal ripples edged into the sands, who will fill its basins and take care of its very heart?
There should be a version of him that can become very small and very insignificant to allow for him to enter the rivers of time and live his life (and all the others) again. It's but another current he could surrender to, as he once did the sea. Perhaps this time, he wouldn't fall for the vague promise of attachment. Perhaps then, he could turn his back to his heart and rule with his head and avoid all the pain that inevitably follows.
It's stupid.
He would never truly wish for it yet it is in moments like this that he finds himself ruminating about a version of himself that, really, wouldn't be Rafayel at all anymore — which is impossible, considering how love so often changes a person for the worse.
Is it truly so horrible of him to wish for things to be easier? Whenever he catches the conceited perception of his self declaring that he has never once had an easy life (because had he not?), Rafayel cannot help but shut any further thoughts down.
He has had it easy. Like any child, he was scolded for not listening to his elders — yet he still possessed that freedom of seeing the world through pure wonder. The kind of wonder that only a free-spirited child could possess. He's long lost it now, but surely those days must have been easy. They were tranquil and bright, they were warm, and they were home. And they'll never return.
The only one he has to blame for it is himself. Because he refuses to let love in again, refuses to go home— wherever this might be now. Many of his kin have found it, so it is certain to exist, yet here he is.
Alone.
At dusk.
The sun has sunk below the horizon, but still soaks the sea in the remaining opulence of gold and purple. Just above the horizon: a single star, a glimmer in the darkening ink of the sky. Reminiscent of sea sparkle, at least this he can still pin his hopes too. Just like the sea once did, the darkness of the world will cradle him tonight. Rafayel turns, back warmed by the lights of diluted royalty, and heads inside.