... this affliction makes them an echo of themselves, doesn't it. We see them, on the surface, but that is all that it is.
[ he does finally look at him, then, reaching to set a hand on his blanketed shoulder with sympathy and understanding. a deep, bottomless well of something sad, and so, so old. ]
It makes a goodbye hollow, and every chapter of your story with them unfinished.
[ unfinished. even his own book - his hand falls to it after a moment, familiar, settling against the red spine. an unfinished magnum opus. a book full of miserable endings among the happier overarching plot. what's the overarching story, here? faced with such loss?
his hands curl around the teacup, tightly. zhongli's presence is familiar and welcome, and he doesn't flinch away from the hand - for the moment cognizant, just so, of that heavy weight on his friend's shoulder. today he does seem the thousands of years old he is. ]
...I should have known that she would not have confessed, towards the end. [ a tiny, soft huff of a laugh. ] She is so stubborn.
[ he gives him a wan smile, one that doesn't quite reach his eyes in all of it. the reality of every unfinished story - taair's, certainly, but those of everyone here. of every, single story in liyue that has come to such an abrupt end, leaving him the only one to remember each person at their happiest, their saddest, their angriest, their whole.
before death took them. before erosion made them into echoes of themselves, much like this affliction in heaven has done. ]
A wonderful trait, but also a traitorous one, I've found. It has kept people alive, but also ushered them to their downfall. [ a small squeeze to the shoulder beneath his hand, seeing taair's grip on the cup tighten. ] But tomorrow, there will be a moment where her stubbornness lets her be herself. It won't be a kindness - not to her, not to the one who stands with her, and not to any forced to bear witness - but it will be a final breath she can take as herself, before she joins those that we have already lost.
And we will remember it, the same as we remember her.
[ a little girl, looking for her sun-bright twin and ecstatic at the promise of thousands upon thousands of books in a library. ]
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... this affliction makes them an echo of themselves, doesn't it. We see them, on the surface, but that is all that it is.
[ he does finally look at him, then, reaching to set a hand on his blanketed shoulder with sympathy and understanding. a deep, bottomless well of something sad, and so, so old. ]
It makes a goodbye hollow, and every chapter of your story with them unfinished.
no subject
[ unfinished. even his own book - his hand falls to it after a moment, familiar, settling against the red spine. an unfinished magnum opus. a book full of miserable endings among the happier overarching plot. what's the overarching story, here? faced with such loss?
his hands curl around the teacup, tightly. zhongli's presence is familiar and welcome, and he doesn't flinch away from the hand - for the moment cognizant, just so, of that heavy weight on his friend's shoulder. today he does seem the thousands of years old he is. ]
...I should have known that she would not have confessed, towards the end. [ a tiny, soft huff of a laugh. ] She is so stubborn.
no subject
before death took them. before erosion made them into echoes of themselves, much like this affliction in heaven has done. ]
A wonderful trait, but also a traitorous one, I've found. It has kept people alive, but also ushered them to their downfall. [ a small squeeze to the shoulder beneath his hand, seeing taair's grip on the cup tighten. ] But tomorrow, there will be a moment where her stubbornness lets her be herself. It won't be a kindness - not to her, not to the one who stands with her, and not to any forced to bear witness - but it will be a final breath she can take as herself, before she joins those that we have already lost.
And we will remember it, the same as we remember her.
[ a little girl, looking for her sun-bright twin and ecstatic at the promise of thousands upon thousands of books in a library. ]