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She opens her eyes to meet darkness. In the void that her eyes search through, she sees blossoms of colour. Vibrant and swirling. If she focuses too hard on them, they wisp away from view into the abyss. How she longs to see those colours, the vibrancy, the life they breathed into her world. Reaching out, she grasps aimlessly and tries to hold onto the cloud of cyan that passes through her vision.
She meets nothing but air, stagnant and heavy with the smell of moulding leaves and damp soil. It feels as empty and dull as she does. Internally, she scoffs at herself. How pitiful of her to lie here and wallow in her own depression. She was alive and that was what mattered. So many others were no longer with them. Sacrificed to the cause.
Minfilia. Papalymo. Moenbryda. To name a few, those she knew closely. She wondered if Krile was fine in the Source, given the state she was left in after her Echo had been manipulated.
Just as suddenly as a flash of crimson flickers through the void of her vision, her chest tightens and thoughts of her fill her mind. Peeks of brilliant sunshine beneath a turban, glimmers of brilliant blue beneath a mask. The skin so delicately kissed by the sun. She wonders how she is doing. After all this time, there was not a single day passing that her thoughts did not linger on her.
She pulls herself from her wallowing. For what use is it to suffer the pain of remembering when there was so much to do? She could not let herself linger any longer. She blinks away the colours and feels a tiny part of herself fade with them as white blossomed outward into view, engulfing the darkness. White, sharp and painful and twisting painfully inside of her skull, rattling with a headache that escaped with a hiss. It hurt her so deeply to use Aether to see and she knew it would sap her reserves, but she would take it easy. She knew her limitations. The burning faded until all she felt was a numb ache and a tightness in her ears.
Wisps of colour intercept her vision. It is so normal at this point, she doesn’t regard it much. After all, Rak’tika only brings her licks of grey, green and black. It’s hardly anything of note. The exact reasoning to why she saw colour was unknown even to her--why was it that she saw these colours in her vision? She saw only ghostly figures upon a white spread, how was it that she was able to see these slivers of colour?
A trick of the mind. She saw colours where none existed. She lives in between the balance of black and white. She only sees the pulsating aether of those living entities around her. A hulking mass standing tall over her but with a gentle warmth, soft emanations of comfort. A small bubble with those vibrations of dependency, of love and adoration, looking up at her. There were no colours yet she sees the blue, she sees the grey, she sees the green.
She lets her eyes rest and her body recover. Yet she wanders the forest, relying upon her other senses. Fluffy ears twitch with each sound, nose scrunching with each smell, fur feeling the slightest change in wind direction. She navigates her way around and lets herself drift: there were no pressing matters demanding her attention, and so she lets her mind wander and her being drift.
She finds herself slumping over her desk. She has no idea how long she had let herself drift again. Let herself run on auto-pilot. Answering to the needs of the Blessed with a mind sharpened for leadership over time; she allows her instincts to lead. But now she comes through, she’s looking around the darkness. Colours she never knew existed dance in her vision: brilliant hues and a sparkling spectrum. Could it be that she imagines these colours to exist, or they were simply forgotten with time?
Familiar colours trickle into view--the sight of the Rhotano sea. Blue. Blue, blue, blue, shimmering and sparkling. The Limsa deck in which she found herself, hand in hand, crimson in her peripherals…
And a flourish of pink, of love, of emotion, of tenderness. Affection burning bright within her chest. Gods, how she made the world so bright and beautiful. It wasn’t black and white with her but a rainbow of colour that filled her senses. She could feel the colours bursting to life because she was here and she filled her with colour and filled her life with emotions she never knew existed.
She could smell the citrus brought by crimson. She could feel the ridges of the peel in her hand, feel the sticky juices trickle down her hand and wrist. She could visualise the orange, bursting through the blooms of red and pink and love. Bright and stunning, tangy and sweet. White piercing orange, the pit of the orange that falls between their feet.
That blue… it impales the orange like a spear and she’s sent hurtling. This sea of emotion she cannot drag herself from. Why was it so difficult to move on and focus on other things? She was so sucked into these memories. The blue swallows the orange whole and soon she’s gasping aloud as her eyes meet the blue of crimson… through tiny holes. Through the mask yet so burning in the glow it possesses. Lips, pressing to lips, a body against hers, orange forgotten, lying fallen between feet, scent of her filling her nostrils, she clings. Clings to her, clings to crimson.
She grasps and meets the table. Did she let herself drift once more, too far, too painful, too long? White swallows all, she sees the lamp upon her desk still on. Had she forgone sleep to reminisce on long past memories? She’d need focus herself upon her task.
Her heart aches.
She’s called to attention. Sineater: she can feel it, sense it. An abundance of aether. It’s so concentrated, there’s nothing else it could be but a sineater of grand proportions. She needs to protect her people for they’re all she has anymore. She grows more isolated from the life she once knew the longer time passes. She doesn’t remember the last time she heard from Urianger, or Thancred, or the Exarch. She had not spoken to the Twins in years. She needs to protect them. She needs to keep them safe. She can’t lose them too.
White. She sees the wisps of colours her brain imagines to fill gaps. Green here. Brown there. A flicker of grey. A twinkling of cyan from another. Her people have been sent off to surround the sineater.
White. White. White.
The sineater is… so formed. She can’t see. She can’t see the colours. She can’t feel anything. Her people are handling it.
White. White. White.
Urianger is here, and so is Thancred. And the little girl. The Oracle. And the sineater, so blinding. Their aether is strong and powerful and dangerous and devouring.
White. White. White.
Urianger insists upon the identity of the sineater. But no… no…
“It… It cannot be!”
White. White. White.
“It’s been too long… clearly.”
That voice. That sound. That flicker. She sees through the white, she sees it and she knows she’s not imagining it. She can’t have imagined the voice, either. She’s sure of it she sees it. Through that haze… It was no sineater. No, no sineater. She’s melting in the radiance. The colour she craved. It fills her.
Crimson.
“Lyse…”