Photophilia

DISCLAIMER: Yggdra Union © Sting. This is inspired by one of Hachi's songs.

The heavy cement steps were already damp, so there wasn't much point, but Aegina didn't fold up her umbrella when she sat down. If someone had asked her about it, she would have made excuses like the fact that her hair would get too heavy if she sat and let it get wet, but there wasn't really any practical reason. The shuttered sky was dark, and beneath her own umbrella it was dark, and there was the patter of the leaks they called "rain" everywhere no matter what.

She didn't turn to look at the headstone next to her, nor did she open the thick book in her lap. It was quiet, and it wasn't quite lonely, but it wasn't peaceful either.

Aegina herself wasn't all that sure why she came here every day at this time. Perhaps it was just a morbid kind of habit—for all her life, they'd always spent this time of day together.

It had been almost two years since the mold choking Luciana's lungs had cut off her air altogether, and now lichens and moss were crawling up across the crooked stone that jutted up from the earth over her bones. It always made Aegina feel sick at heart—the ground below had been so hungry for her twin that it hadn't been able to wait until she was dead, and now it's ravenous again and moving to consume all that's left of her.

(it keeps her up at night sometimes—wondering when her turn will come—)

Aegina tightened her grip on the book in her lap. Habit kept the three of them coming here even after Luciana's death—like an unspoken agreement not to leave her out. And beyond habit—there was nowhere else she could think to go—it seemed as if they'd keep coming here now that there were only two of them left.

She wasn't even angry this time. She could curse the people who governed the town if she wanted to, but it was so soon (all her life it would be too soon) after the first loss for her to dredge up that kind of spirit. She just felt bewildered by it all, really. Aimless, lost.

…Two months ago, Nessiah had vanished—disappeared completely and without a trace, all his belongings untouched. They'd known something had to have happened, but the way everyone just accepted it without any explanation—made the whole situation feel even more hopeless to Aegina. No one would have cared, really—most people were probably glad to be rid of him and his constant questioning of the way things were—but it was another stone weighing down the hollow in her chest.

So she sat alone and stared ahead, trying to feel her twin's presence beside her, struggling to etch into her mind the way that Nessiah had always looked straight up past the roof of the world, searching for the fabled blue behind it.

She was considering opening Nessiah's book to flip through his sketches and the fairy tales he'd recorded in it when footsteps swept the wet grass behind her.

Aegina looked up; Gulcasa was staring straight ahead, at the mechanical tower in the center of the town. It stretched like a twisted tree trunk from the earth up to the underside of the umbrella, as natural as anything even though it looked and felt diseased to her.

The look on his face was one of intense hatred. Aegina folded her umbrella and rested it on the ground next to her, lifting Nessiah's book to hold it against her chest.

"Hey."

Slowly, Aegina stood up. He wasn't looking at her, and droplets of the dusty rain were beading in his hair, spreading wet patches across his shirt and leaving marks like tear tracks over his skin. She wondered what she would ever do without him here.

"You remember that promise?"

Aegina didn't speak, but she nodded slightly. It was a far-off day, hazy at the edges, but there was nothing else he could mean—that day back when Luciana had only just gotten pneumonia for the first time and was weak but still had some vive, some vitriol. Aegina remembered the weight of the umbrella in her hands—it had been so huge back then, dwarfing her as she tried to support one large enough to cover all of them all by herself.

She remembered Nessiah staring up at the great umbrella's roof, as ever—remembered the incongruent link of his little finger through Gulcasa's as Gulcasa had said it (hey, one day—let's go see that sky), remembered Luciana uncharacteristically holding back her scorn, remembered her own sense of apathy and thinking that she was the most grown-up of the four of them—children always wondered about the sky, but eventually, as adults, everyone accepted things as they were.

And she remembered thinking—despite her doubts—thinking that if there was somewhere warm and dry the way the books said, then maybe Luciana…

Her throat constricted, and she looked down for a moment to hide the tears until she could bite them back, then looked up and nodded again.

Gulcasa reached up, closing his hand on the rain.

"You know—a few days before Nessiah went missing… he told me that there's one door on the tower that's in such bad disrepair, all the locks have rusted right off. He couldn't get through himself—it was too heavy for him—but if there were two people…"

Aegina didn't speak. There were so many things running through her head—confirmation of her unspoken fears, disbelief, incredulity, maybe the faintest sprouting of hope—she couldn't push them all aside to consider just one.

Gulcasa took her empty hand and held it, squeezing hard.

"Let's go."

And he leaned forward into a run, pulling her along behind him.