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Post by Akari on Jan 30, 2023 13:50:48 GMT -5
The faintest wisp of a smile plays at Akari’s lips, like a half-dreamt memory. Fingers play with the edge of his sleeve, the grooves of his fingerprints pressing into the smooth lines of every silken thread. He shakes his head and almost wants to laugh.
‘You are indeed a very good doctor.’ Akari concedes, the ghost of something like wry amusement flashing in his dark eyes before dissolving into the black of night.
‘As long as you do not remove these flowers from this place, I do not mind what notes you take of them. Study them to your heart’s content if you wish.’ There is a moment of hesitation, like a moment of mourning, before he continues. ‘I ask that you do not tell others how to find this place. The dead here deserve to be left in peace. And I ask that…’
Sorrow rises up from his flesh and lungs, its reedy fingers curling around his throat, more painful and choking than anything he has ever experienced before. There is very little keeping his hands steady as he speaks, just the last threads of his composure hanging off his skin, fraying at every end and so rapidly unraveling. But not yet. There would be time later, after his anger is laid to rest, to allow himself to fall apart, seam by seam.
‘I ask that if you speak of these flowers to anyone else. If you write down your observations, if you share them with the world… I ask that you remember the name Hizuki.’
He draws in a shuddering breath.
‘She deserves to be remembered far more than what she left behind.’
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Post by Kvasir Sigurrós on Feb 12, 2023 19:08:54 GMT -5
For a moment, in the wake of Akari's solemn request, Kvasir says nothing at all-- he lets silence drape itself over them both like a worn blanket, a shared sorrow sewn into it, heavy and ever-so-slightly stifling in the way it hangs between them. He bites his lower lip, worrying flesh between his gently-sharpened teeth in a slow circle, over and over and over again until he gives a simple nod, his voice hushed as he deigns to speak.
"Hizuki," he whispers, the syllables slow as they fall from his tongue. "Hizuki. It's a lovely name."
He remains pensively quiet as he moves back toward the lakeside, moving to sit down a few paces away from those wiry little flowers, his fingers moving to unlatch the clasp of his herb-satchel as he settles in place, tail curling over his hip. He pulls a worn journal from a pocket along the side, the blue-dyed leather adorned in dustings of pollen, in patches of color from other plants from other places, and he flips the cover back so he can sift through the pages, searching for a blank one to work with.
As soon as he finds one, he's quick to grab for a piece of charcoal tucked in one of those pockets, one palm pressing the page flat against his leg as he drags it over the page in slow strokes, each one sharp and angular, a quiet endeavor to replicate the appearance of that strange flower in art. He remains still and silent for some time, only pausing to lift his gaze to one of the flowers at the lakeside for reference every few seconds before he goes right back to drawing.
"...Hizuki was your sister, I'm assuming," he says after a long while, his gaze lifting from parchment and pen. "...if you don't mind, Akari, could you tell me about her? Anything you'd be comfortable sharing?"
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Post by Akari on Feb 15, 2023 17:58:18 GMT -5
‘My twin sister.’ He answers, his fingers stumbling over the words. ‘My better half.’ He adds after a quiet moment.
When was the last time he had spoken of her in depth? Akari no longer knew. Perhaps he hadn’t at all, there was never a need to speak of Hizuki before everything, when he could simply speak to her instead. But after… After, who was there to speak of her to? No one was left from their village to remember her with. Their mother was no longer here to sigh fondly over Hizuki’s latest escapades with him. Hizuki’s friends were scattered to the winds with the ashes of all her burned letters.
Did he even dare to speak of her now? Or would that make it real, the fact that she was gone, and he was left here without her. But… No. He couldn’t. Hizuki deserved to be remembered by more than just him. As did their mother. And if there was no one else, then at least Akari might pass along her memory to someone else to carry after he was gone. Her light would not be as bright, but she could continue to burn in the memories of others, even if they did not know her in life.
‘Hizuki was… kind.’ He starts slowly, his fingers pausing and starting and pausing again before he finally signs the word was. ‘So endlessly kind. She loved to meet people, to help others. Whenever someone in the village needed help tilling the land, or with a harvest, or illness, she was there in the mud planting seeds, bringing food to them. She exchanged letters and stories with every traveller who ever came to our village, just so she could glimpse the world through their words. She never said it, but I know that she wanted to travel one day. Yet, she never did. She never left my mother and I, never left our village, and never went a day without smiling about some-... something.’
There is a moment where he falters, where his eyes burn and his hands pause so that he can uselessly wipe at them before returning to finish his sentence.
‘She was… light. She was a light for everyone around her. She was my sister.’
And Akari loved her. He hated her.
He missed her more than words could ever express.
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Post by Kvasir Sigurrós on Mar 1, 2023 1:26:10 GMT -5
There's something indiscernible that flickers lowly like a dying ember in Kvasir's eye as he watches Akari's hands move, each twitch of his fingers slow and solemn, a heart full of grief spilling out with every motion. He catches the way the other man hesitates as he's forced to sign 'was,' as he's forced to acknowledge aloud what he has lost and will never have again, the word itself the match to a pyre, the nail to a coffin. His expression remains solemn and composed, but Kvasir swears he can catch sorrow cast a long and lonely shadow over Akari's face.
Kvasir cannot say he knows what it is like to lose a sister. He has no siblings; it has always been him and his father and the distant, phantasmal shadow of his mother, a faceless silhouette that lurks in the crevices of his memories, unknowable and unreachable and yet present all the same. He does not think he was old enough to know her well-- either she was gone before he could shape a memory around her, or she has become one more thing the God of Remains has ripped from his mind, leaving a messy, jagged opening behind. He never knew her, he thinks, never had the chance, but he has felt the shadow of her absence even through what he has lost.
And he knows, distantly, a different form of grief-- the grief of losing a home, of losing hold of things that were once solid and tangible, of losing himself. Even the Archivist King's memories stir up that same feeling, a sense of yearning for a woman he does not and cannot have known, a dead god's adoration still lingering in his heart.
"...She sounds like she was a wonderful woman," he says after a moment of extensive silence, sure to give Akari his chance to elaborate all he needs to before he returns to writing. "...I will make sure she is known. That she is remembered for far more than just this."
It is only right, after all, to do what he can to immortalize others.
"...memory is... one of the most important things we have. It's the one way to really live forever."
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