[PK] To Restart No More

[Lirinya 4021]

 

To Restart No More

It had always been quite the struggle, after Lotharia, after the war. How was a person supposed to come back from the brink of nothing? How were they supposed to start again, and again?

 

How did people do it? People lost their lives, and for what? Their homes uprooted and destroyed, their identities stubbed out by a conqueror who cared for nothing more than his own claims. 

 

We can only restart so many times before we lose track of what we are. The pieces that form us shatter each time we tell ourselves it is alright. Each time we pretend that we can continue on, we lose a piece of who we really are.

 

No matter how hard we try, no matter the promise we make to the people closest to us. Something is just never quite right. Some see it in the way we talk. The way we navigate situations might just not be as expected. How could they be? Look at how we have changed.

 

The lies can only go on so long. With who we are lost, how can we truly forge anew?

 

Perhaps we cannot.

 

Perhaps we rest.

 

 

---

 

Spoiler

Delivered to the home of the Greye family, the keep of Edrica, were soon to be parcels of various contents. Carefully wrapped items of sentimental value accompanied with letters, all signed by Sybille Temesch. 

 

Should anyone visit the cottage home in Kazan, they would find her lifeless.

 

 

[HIGH_FIRE 5490]

The woman's mother sat in her house reading the missive that had come to her informing her of this passing.

 

Throughout her years as a fortune teller, the one person who's fortune she refused to read was her own, something she found a great deal of fear in. Such an idea was wrought with nothing but terror and foreboding.

 

The only time she had considered to do such was when her firstborn went missing, however after refusing to do so, it had be uncovered he had died at sea.

 

Decades later, she often wondered how her daughter was doing. There was no wedge between them, asides a healthy distaste for her disaster of a son in law, at least that's how she thought of him. Even then she wanted to make an effort to see her more, but distance and just a simple lack of time and at points matters out of her hand stopped her from doing so. 

 

Once a week she wondered about getting food or a drink and bring it to her daughter on a visit, but just simple lack of energy stopped her.

 

They had kept in contact via letters but words on paper can only convey so much.

 

Alas now no effort could be made. 

 

Today Adriana sat in her living room while her wife remained sleeping, crying her eyes out over the passing of her beloved daughter. The girl she had raised and always had the biggest soft spot for. Despite what she saw a terrible taste in men, a perhaps poor view of raising children and a bit of an attitude, Sybille was and always would be her favourite child. 

In this hour she mourned her daughter, who she was and who Adriana loved. 

 

A mere hour later, she mourned her own lack of effort. 

[PoliteEquation7 187]

Spoiler

 

He doesn’t remember when the days stopped separating themselves.

Morning, evening, night. They pass over him like the same gray cloth dragged again and again across the sky. Time used to mean something when she was alive. It had shape then. It had purpose. Now it only drips.

He sits beside her grave as if the earth might loosen out of pity and give her back.

“I finished it,” he tells her sometimes, voice hoarse from disuse. “Perduran…Edrica…all of it.”

The names hang there, useless.

He had built them for her. Not just places, but promises carved into stone and road and light, places where laughter would echo between walls, where mornings would smell like her books and rain, where she would walk beside him and say it was worth it.

He imagines her saying it still.

But the streets of Perduran lay under rubble. The walls of Edrica cast shadows she will never stand in. Every room, every garden, every carefully placed brick now feels like a cruel excess, like preparing a feast for someone who never arrives.

At night, he lies beside the grave, curling into the earth as if proximity could replace presence. When he still had her, and the nights grew silent, and there was nothing to do, he always thought of Sybille. But now, the ground is cold, he doesn’t resist it. He welcomes it, even. It feels closer to her than the air above ever could.

Those monuments he built were never for the world.

They were for her.

Without her, they are only a false promise to a future that died before it began.

“I thought we’d live there,” he whispers one evening, his forehead resting against the stone. “I thought we had time.”

The wind moves through the grass, soft and indifferent. It doesn’t answer. Nothing does.

He stays anyway.

Day after day. Night after night.

Because if somehow, she could come back, he knew this would be the first place she’d run to.

And he finds, in the quiet hollow of his chest, that this endless waiting, this slow erosion of himself beside her grave is the only way he still knows how to love her. 

So there Adrian waits,

as a man who can’t be moved.

 

 

 

 

[Spellblades 749]

Basil hadn't known that much about his siblings, he'd run away young and traveled the world. It cost him everything, and gave him everything.

 

The Half-Blind Temesch received the news late in the night, and quiet sobs echoed through Edrica's guard quarters before he plunged a dagger through his chest.

 

 

Vesryn Greye could swear that the Air changed when someone he knew passed. The Mali'ker hadn't known Sybille all that well, but he knew she mattered to several people in his life. 

"Luara, guide her, as you have guided all others."

The Scion got up, off to send a letter of comfort to one who would truly need it.

[TaraJess 2848]

With the help of that lovely new gardener in Edrica, Aurelian was able to get her hands on some fresh lilies to deliver to Sybille's grave. The bouquet was carefully placed, though Aurelian lingered a while.

 

"I did net like you at first. Liking you felt like a betrayal to Mama." She spoke aloud to the stone in the earth. 

"But you helped Pa get through that time in his life where he was at his lowest... you kept him going till we could all be reunited again..."

"When I found out about the boys, I thought I'd hate them. But just as they are your blood, they are mine, and I love them dearly. My Mama left this world when I was about their age as well... I will make sure they still have a woman to look up to since you cannet be here. I do net think this family realizes how lacking in mother figures we seem to be..."

"And do net worry about Pa, I will look after him too, though I think you knew that. Please do net abandon us though, in that realm of beyond. We will speak to you in the wind."

[EmiliainWonderland 2309]

A woman pondered the thought of Sybille gone. She'd been around Edrica enough to hear about it.

Alexandria once upon a time felt a sort of disdain for Sybille. The woman, after all, had been enough to turn her husband away from her. Yet she had learned quickly that there was so much more to the story than she'd thought. No, whether it was Sybille or another woman. That relationship had always been doomed from the very start. It took her years to realize it. 

 

"You did what I couldn't, you kept my family safe. You made him happy. I think in some way, you must be quite lucky. To have truly died. You don't have to live like a ghost, lingering in the halls, pretending to be someone you aren't. Even moreso, you have the chance to be a ghost. Wherever you went after you passed Sybille. Thank you, I never hated you. I was angry with the world, with the situation, but you? You didn't deserve my anger. We love who we love, after all." 

[Monty Cobra 921]

Ever so faintly, the lips of a young man downturned into an uncharacteristic frown. Amadeus cared for few and enjoyed the presence of even fewer... but he recalled a conversation held once with Sybille in his youth, on the sidelines of Perduran's jousting arena. What might have been a fleeting conversation to others had proved a monumental kindness to the boy who, at the time, was scared by everyone and everything.

 

The twinge of regret that he felt irritated him, and Amadeus stalked from Edrica to collect himself. 

[drtrollado 267]

A letter had arrived for Franz just a bit too late... Well, those type of letters tended to always be delivered too late-ly. Never quick enough for something to be made about its contents yet always quick enough to make the recipient wonder what if? 

What if I had fought harder for her? What if I made sure my words were sweeter for her? What if- Enough was enough, he thought. He could do nothing more, now, and neither could he have done, previously, to change anything. There was no need to wonder about a difference reality in which he and his dearest love would still be together, or one in which the two would be able to travel all over the world as two lonely vagrants, jumping from adventure and adventure, no worries in their mind but each other's wellbeing... 

Yet, That would be a life well-lived he'd chuckle to himself as he thought about it, but then the memories of the life the two had lived would come up in his mind. The words, the hugs, the kisses, the nicknames, the adventures as childs, the adventures as adults, the drawings... Everything till their breakup, and then even a little more after it. Even after being apart the two could also share lovely memories, and realizing this made his heart yearn for Sybille again.

I should have loved her more... His conclusion was on point. He should have had done as such, but he did not. And now, the closest he will ever be with her again is when he reads again the last letter she sent him, and read again it he will, for that will forever be something close to his heart and mind.

Perdonami for such, Bibimea... Ma non sum worthy de afterlife tu deserves He looked up to the skies above, to the starry night that overwelmed him before he closed his eyes. He allowed himself to think of her this night, one last time, as if she slept by his side on the bed... One last time.