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When the teacup falls from Yoshihide’s little hands—
She flinches away from Rien as he tries to catch it.
Maybe it’s that small gesture. The most miniscule of rejections from his one and only daughter. An action that says: My father does not love me. Not in the way he loves his things. Maybe it’s that age has made him slow, past his prime. Maybe it’s simply that it was always meant to fall, to shatter into a myriad of pieces, the intricately painted flowers on his bone china cup scattering into razor sharp petals upon the floor.
He always thought that those eternal blossoms would never wilt. That they would remain, pretty and perfect, for all time.
The scattered shards remind him of stories of how Prescripts were delivered in stories of eld, not on radio waves, not by pager, not delivered on paper slips— but by the devout taking the bones of oxen, engraving esoteric patterns onto the shoulder blades, and seeing how they cracked when heated. He wonders if they ever grew too hot they shattered, just like his teacup. Wonders what it would mean to have the deliverance of a Prescript break right open; wonders if the voice of God could still reach his ears.
Rien thinks that in breaking this teacup, a god has died, their voice tearing with bliss in that one final shattering— then silence.
He tries to find meaning in the broken pieces.
Thinks of the way his glass was always broken. Thinks of the way knowing that doesn’t change anything. A path laid out for him from beginning to end, and it’s always the same. It always results in him, alone, his daughter taken from him, too soon, too soon. He will live his life, bouncing his darling girl on his lap until she finds she is too old for her father’s affections — and perhaps that should be new, novel, his daughter grown out of her squirming larval form and into the hard cocoon of adolescence — and he will find there is a day that he set her on the ground, and she never again yearned to be held among the stars. It will always end as it must end because everything is as Hermes wills.
He tries to find meaning in the shattering, in the death of God.
Tries to think of the life that might’ve been his. Tries to think of a happy ending. But it is so very difficult to envision something that is not painted for his eyes to see. What would he do, unbound? Perhaps he could finally read the picture books he’s been saving to the end. Maybe he can glean what makes a happy ending from those. Maybe— Just maybe— Instead of the voice of his God, he could follow his daughter’s voice instead. He tries to listen. He tries to listen, and all he hears is the ticking of the clock in his room, the silence between them a chasm too large to cross, every affection, every “sweetheart” or “darling” or even the “honey” that slips from between his lips whenever she’s acting particularly grown-up, particularly ineffable, particularly like—
In any case. His affections only grow the vast emptiness between them, and he is ashamed to know that he cannot find a way to paint in that void.
He tries to find meaning— and finds he cannot.
He does not think of what will come to pass. Does not know of how his daughter will run away from him, from her home, how the scar she leaves him with will always feel like the burning kiss of a lover, nor how he will hide the scar — not out of its ugliness — but for the fact it is a secret between them too intimate to be shared with the world. He doesn’t know that this all will start with Yoshihide bearing a child — a child that is not his, theirs — home. That this child will fill the hole he has diligently bored into the core of her being. How the hole will not, cannot, be filled completely, but that it’s that imperfection that makes it so perfect.
He doesn’t know that it’s the same for him.
He does not know how the Backdoor will open for him, how he will find himself making a nest of her one of her company’s home bases, how that nest is not and will never be home but home isn’t where he lives, now is it? What he has learned from his picture books is that home is where he and his daughter are, and they will be together there, at long last.
He knows that his daughter will be completed. Made like him, empty, formless. But he doesn’t know how she will be brought back and he will be brought to tears, never thinking there could be anything different in her future, never thinking that his darling daughter could be her once again.
He doesn’t know that he will disobey his God for her. Doesn’t know his fate is to die alone in a sewer, his burning wounds his only comfort.
Doesn’t know that beyond his death, his daughter will search for him forever.
He doesn’t know.
“Here, sweetheart,” Rien says, bending down to curve his arm around the back of her legs, in an effort to scoop her up just like he used to.
“I’m not a kid anymore,” she rolls her eyes, side-stepping his waiting arms and the pile of broken glass with ease. Even if she hadn’t, the thick-soled sneakers Matthias bought her would protect her from harm. And, even if she was hurt—
A cut or two from some wayward shard would be nothing.
“Of course you aren’t, darling,” Rien says, smiling just the way he always has. The visage before his gaze wavers, the little girl in her red jumper, matching bows affixed to her hair, cut short, wavers like the way the air shimmers above asphalt on a hot day, and falls away like a mirage to reveal his daughter grown, hair long, legs long, everything about her long and sharp and perfect. He closes his eyes, then continues— “But you’ll never be too old for your dad to hold.”
“I will,” she says flatly. “Some day you’ll try to carry me and you’ll pull something. Time doesn’t stand still. Not even for you.”
“No, sweetheart, I suppose it doesn’t.” She’s wrong, of course. There will never come a day where he can no longer summon the strength to hold what is precious to him. All too soon his daughter will be his daughter no longer, something formless, stripped of everything that makes her, her.
He thinks: For me, this glass is already broken.
Instead of standing, he kneels, glass biting into his slacks, crunching into even more pieces beneath the pressure, as he begins to pick up the broken shards of his teacup. With each crunch the voice of a god long dead beckons, beckons and quiets. He can feel Yoshihide’s lingering gaze on him and smiles deeper, unwilling to look up.
“...I’ll get another cup.” She finally says, her tone colored by an odd hesitation.
He almost stops her—
Almost admits he doesn’t want another cup.
But as long as she still wants tea time— as long as there exist bone china cups, as long as there is water to draw from, tea to steep. As long as Yoshihide remains his daughter.
As long as she remains.