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I reach out to the heavens to hold a star.
I grasp it in my shaking hand, breathing slowly. My heart pounds, after all, this is my fate, isn’t it?
To be trapped inside the soul of the universe, cursed to live forever until the star faded and shattered and did my heart so. Indeed, the star was warm, so bright, so lovely. I curl up, my face twisting into a sweetly poisoned pleasant smile.
I am here to escape the confines of the universe, of this stupidly upside down world. And for the first time, I think, I shall dream.
And dream I will, of your crimson hair and ruby eyes. Dream I will, of our memories. And dream I will, of the way we fell apart.
**
I must admit, when i first saw you, i thought you were a dream.
A little part of me had fallen then, because I had realised that no matter how much I do or sacrifice or try to achieve, it’ll always be a dream.
But then then you held my hand tight and whispered tiny promises to me and I smiled at you with the innocence of a small, free child (I had always been a liar).
But my lies faded, and my heart found a furnace to warm itself in. Safe and sound, my home, that’s what you always were. I remember, I remember everything.
I remember how I hugged you and you hugged me back and everything was happy and fine and nothing hurt.
On that night, when i saw you, blazing vermilion eyes and flying bright hair, I thought you were a dream.
I had accepted it, even though my eyes widen and surprise shone on my face.
This was the outcome I had wanted, subconsciously or consciously. I expected this (yet I still didn’t know why my heart beat so fast). I was a coward yes, and I laughed internally.
I suppose I didn’t care now. I was dead. You hate me, and you would kill me thinking me a dirty sinner.
“Draw your weapon, Kae- spy! Traitor!”
My lip trembled. I told myself it didn’t matter. It doesn’t. And perhaps I was selfish for wishing to die as such an important piece on the chessboard.
Blood.
Fire.
Rain.
Forever the moment will be ingrained in my brain, slow dramatic flashing of a snow blue light.
The clink of metal against strong unbreakable ice.
The pounding of a frightened heart.
The anger, seething in your eyes fading to tiredness. To slow understanding. You scoffed and left me out in the mud like a dirty animal too wounded for slaughter.
I drew in a breath. Clutched the cold cold vision to my chest. Held back forming tears.
It doesn’t matter.
Perhaps it did, the days after, when a letter and a burning vision was left on the doorstep of the manor.
The note read: “I will be leaving for an indefinite amount of time. Become something more than you are before I return. Goodbye."
I had sat in my newly acquired bed and laughed. Laughed until I could no longer breath and lungs hurt from the effort. Then I snuck into the cellar, poured himself two (or maybe eleven) glasses of wine, and drunk myself to sleep.
The letter, although condescending and scathing, meant two things.
1. Diluc doesn’t hate him.
2. Diluc will return.
That was all the reassurance I needed.
When I saw you again, I thought you were a dream.
The only “glimpse” of you I had seen was the constant watching of your blood red vision, sitting in a glass box that cost several thousand mora.
Four years.
Four years of watching anxiously in the middle of the night because that familiar red glow in the side of the room was flickering, casting shadows onto the wall that slid and slinkered and fell up and down.
Those were the times I threw away my pride and morals and prayed.
Down on my knees, prayed to Celestia to let you live.
Let my brother live.
When Diluc Ragnvindr returned to Mondstadt a completely different person, I had sighed in relief. I could at least monitor you now, make sure you weren’t putting yourself in reckless situations you couldn’t get out from.
Peeking out behind a house, I spotted you in the plaza, surrounded by people. I grinned with underlying bitterness- you had always be the centre of attention, even in our youth. Looking closer, I observed with sharp eyes.
I hadn’t seen your hair in ages, that silky red now tied into a messy ponytail. Your big red eyes were sharp and slanted and full of hate and solemness now.
I hated it, but it was my fault you were like that, no?
Ah, you were leaving.
I didn’t chase after you.
I’d always been a coward, unlike you.
When I finally “confronted” you, I thought you were surely a dream.
Rosaria had been pestering me for ages to go back to our original drinking spot. Although just a nun, she had a keen sense of observation, just like Diluc.
She could clearly tell I had underlying issues with a certain bartender there, and for all her “I don’t care” and “You do whatever, it doesn’t matter” attitude, she was worried about me.
I couldn’t remember the last time someone was.
I had heeded her wishes, although I had zero intention of reconciling with you. After all, you hate me, no? And you should. But perhaps a sliver of my human heart had affected me. I still wanted you back.
I still wanted my brother back.
Now that I thought of it, it was a stupid idea. Everything I’ve done, only for you to take me back as a brother? A miracle, that would be. And an undeserving one. Who laughs when their father dies? Who reveals a traitorous secret on the night the son mercy kills his father?
I was undeserving of your love.
And when I walked into the tavern, your eyes flicked to me, a flash of surprise through those ruby orbs, and a turning of the head.
My smile shattered further than it already had.
But it didn’t matter.
I was here to drink my worries away, this would just be another.
But one night turned into twenty, into thirty, into the hundreds.
A golden haired traveler has come and gone.
A thousand winters have passed, and I have counted every one without your warm hands comforting I. Winter had always been my least favourite season.
I didn’t know if you remembered that anymore.
I faced a distinct sense of loneliness over the years. It is a loneliness that seeps through my veins and it is an unexplainable loneliness.
It is one where you do not care anymore.
It is one where you do not care about me anymore.
I’m fine with that.
I’m fine.
You didn’t need to care. I was fine without you.
And even if you act as if you never knew me, I was fine with that.
It’s alright.
When i saw you, like a red-headed angel or saviour, I thought you were a dream.
Perhaps the blood had made me delirious and the pain coursing through my brain was messing with me, but you were there, your red hair shining like a fucking beacon of light.
You’re beautiful.
You’re beautiful and I am not.
It’s alright. It won’t matter when I’m dead.
You held my wrists with the gentleness of handling a baby, caressing the open wounds. Your face was contorted in worry, a cry ripping out of your lips.
You wanted to save me, I realised.
But no, that was impossible, there was no way. You couldn’t care. You aren’t meant to, you’re supposed to hate me with every fiber of your being, you’re supposed to let me die.
I fought back, kicking and punching and screaming and you were gentle. Gentle.
I hated it.
I want you to hate me, hate me so i can leave without you coming into my life like you owned it.
But my wishes would never be granted, hm?
Eventually i stopped fighting and went lax.
It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing will ever be the same after this. Whether I die or not, you’ll never look at me the same again.
but maybe, just a part of me wanted you to care for me, finally.
And maybe, some part of me wanted you to never be a dream again.
**
This star was the place of my hibernation.
This was where I would sleep for some eternities, and wake up in another.
I sigh.
I wish I could go. I wish I could break out of this star.
But I am selfish and weak, and I hurt.
Up in this high place, my only friends are the comets and the debris. Up here, I can dream.
But when I wake up, maybe, just maybe, I don’t have to dream again.
**
I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the
attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust
love—it led the rest;
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of
that city,
And in all their looks and words.