the winter had passed and the spring has come
we have withered and our hearts are bruised from longing
(i'm singing my blues) used to the blue tears, blue sorrow
(i'm singing my blues) the love that i have sent away with the floating clouds
—
Sephia was beautiful, and nothing would ever really change that fact, he decided.
Every move of hers lacked nothing less than the fluid grace of water, always flowing and flowing ever after. She defied the laws of physics and escaped time restraints, she bowed before no one and nothing.
That is, until her existence began to suffer and wane, and with the disappearing prayers and offerings, her power began to sap away.
Takeru first saw her when she was revived, in all her glory as the Goddess of Castanet Island. The promise of meeting the Harvest Goddess did not impose any interest beforehand. Initially, his desires lay with trying his hand at farming. He had nothing to pin him down, truly a lost soul in search of anything to complete himself.
But her eyes were the first bit of light and warmth he had ever experienced in his small and lonely life. Before he had set eyes upon her resplendent, vibrant blue hues, Takeru knew nothing. He had not lived, he had not felt, loved, or breathed.
She was eternal in spirit and body, reigning supreme. There would always be a way to revive the Goddess and restore her glory every time her power seemed to ebb, but never flow. It just so happened that Takeru would become a pawn in the island's revival, ultimately bringing her to the forefront of all nature once again.
And no, he couldn't bear to call her selfish, because at first he thought it wasn't. It wasn't–isn't–selfish. The sprites had brought him to her, not she for herself. And he had willingly tagged along at the chance to go somewhere he had never gone and start over.
After the first, he couldn't stay away, and would constantly visit her despite the treacherous uphill hike. He brought her only the best things from his farm, even if he had meant to sell it to upkeep production as he had originally come to the island to do.
Takeru… loved Sephia, he needed to see her even at the most inconvenient times. It eventually became an obsession; Takeru could (did) not think of anyone except for her. He absolutely had to see her, and gift her only with the finest milk, the finest wool, the finest crop.
Sephia said nothing, only waited for him to come and bring her what her immortal body desired the most. She did not have any right to speak out against him, for she owed him a great deal. Sephia only saw Takeru's affection as nothing more than a child would have for an older sister, a mother, even. He was still just a boy.
Sephia would smile, speak her few lines, and watch the awe and admiration light up his features, those moonstruck eyes and shy smile. How could one refuse someone whose world was instantaneously made with even the one, coldest word you uttered to them? With only the slightest of attention he received, Takeru pined for more of her.
He never tired of her boring replies. Her harsh abruptness never seemed to deter the softness of his smallest smiles. Takeru would only do just that—smile.
One day, Sephia sat at the foot of her tree, awaiting the farm boy to arrive for the day and bring her another marvel of his own efforts.
And she took into account everything he had ever done for her, these few past years. She'd seen him grow in the blink of an eye into the successful man he was today.
It was then Sephia realized that she had fallen into a routine habit of waiting for him to come to her. She had come to adore that smile he carried, and wondered if she alone knew the gentle curve of his upturned lip.
She turned her gaze upward to find a worried Takeru, panting hard, looking only at her form sitting on the floor instead of floating in a display of ethereal power.
The smallest twitch, and a smile graced her lips, meant to calm his suspicions and assumptions. Sephia waited for him to cross the distance, allowed him to touch her hands and cheeks, to pull her close to him with a relieved sob.
In that mortal moment, Takeru found the greatest strength within himself to hand forth a single blue feather to his Goddess.
He had meant to marry her, but Sephia was unsure of the overall outcome, and she knew—that it would not end up how either of them expected it to.
It was not of her godly nature to feel happiness the same way a mortal should. Sephia's embraces and smiles were always tainted bittersweet, with one watchful eye on the lookout for the unsuspecting scythe.
Takeru's blissful unsuspecting made it easier to forget his numbered days, but Sephia could never truly leave alone.
i was born and i met you
and i have loved you to death
my cold heart that has been dyed blue
even with my eyes closed, i can't feel you
—
And although nothing had ever changed the fact that Sephia was beautiful, it seemed to remind him of his fading youth.
The same trail he took everyday became increasingly more difficult to take with each passing day. Whereas Takeru's joints began to hurt, and his daily farm work became harder to do, her movements were still as effortless as the first day he laid eyes on her.
He decided, because he got to hear her mellifluous laughter when he mentioned something funny, or her affectionate murmurs to their children when they visited, anything was worth it. Takeru would have done most anything to keep her in his life.
Sephia smiled for them, said the right things they wanted to hear. Showed them what they meant to her, showed them things no other mortal had been deemed worthy of knowing. All this and more, because despite those far–off worries in the back of her infinite mind, she truly did love them.
But everyday, it became harder to see him in that state.
Those fears and worries and insecurities came flooding back each time he arrived, a little later than the last, because his deteriorating strength could no longer carry him the same.
And his rosy view of their lives, could never quite cut it for her anymore.
Everyday, Takeru felt her heart move further from his.
He wondered if he had done something to deserve how it all felt—because he knew that they would never truly get past whatever it was that had Sephia so slowly and painfully retreating from their family.
It was slow at first, and he quickly began to realize that it had already been happening before he asked her to marry him.
Sephia had given him children so that he didn't spend his life alone. She was seldom with them, unable to forego her duties to the island.
Unable to or unwilling to?
The question felt as if he had rammed a red hot spear through her center. And—what was the right answer to such a shattering and numbing query?
Once a mother, always a mother. Sephia hadn't broken composure as she turned her back to him, obviously upset he dared to ask her. Even more so, that she had nothing to say about it. She wasn't sure if he could even tell how much he didn't want to hear the answer.
Even so, how could she tell him in a way that would make him understand her isolation? It was always left unspoken, neither willing to bring up the subject. Because we are so happy, and she shook her head sadly each time she recalls his pretty and optimistic words.
Takeru watched as she turned her head, those same blue eyes upon him, that seemed too frigid for him to remember how light and gentle they once were.
He realized he could tell her everything, and she still would not understand his mortal heart.
Sephia knew she could tell him everything, and he would never understand her mortal mind.
Her distance had never become as apparent to him as it did now. Takeru used to smile at everything she said, hung to each aloof word as if his life depended on her whims. The only difference now, they had the capacity to physically hurt him. He had never asked her for anything, except for her love.
Sephia refused to face him. She chose not to appear before him.
Instead of his gentle and sincere smile, Takeru wore a tired and thin face. Instead of his once bright and moonstruck eyes, she only saw those that had been opened and full of a realization that was never there before. Sephia did not know how to reach out any longer, neither could she say she deserved to.
Takeru stopped begging for her to come home, rather, he had stopped saying anything to her indefinitely.
He would place down a gift at the foot of her tree, laboriously stand back up and leave. But he never left without watching the tree for a few minutes, always seeming to know where to meet her eyes.
Sephia could not call after his fading silhouette, her stubborn refusal—she knew—would cost her dearly. Phases of devastating heart break would pass, but it never matched the guilt that had accumulated. Takeru was good, and he wasted his life on someone that would never grow old the same way he would. And for a while, she had come to terms with the notion that she had lost them.
The Goddess still did not reveal herself. Even with his waning presence.
Takeru did not come as often anymore.
His visits trickled down to every few days, to every few weeks, eventually ceasing to come to the spring any longer. It wasn't apparent to her how much time had passed since his last visit.
Her children had grown up without their mother, and they too would come to the spring to try and recall her gentleness, to feel her love again. Why did he allow them to make such a dangerous journey alone? Even for them, she refused to appear, that they had began to question her existence in the first place.
Sephia was but a part of their history that she painstakingly cut herself out of, and hoped someday they too, would be lost to time in her memory.
She forgot the faces of her children.
Eventually, she had come to forget the name of the mortal man she once loved.
And lastly—finally, their existences left her altogether, the feeling of something once great but now lost, heavy in her mind and heart.
—
the winter had passed and the spring has come
we have withered and our hearts are bruised from longing
(i'm singing my blues) used to the blue tears, blue sorrow
(i'm singing my blues) the love that i have sent away with the floating clouds
—
the song speaks about a breakup
but because this is not a melodrama, i intended to use the deeper meaning behind the lyrics and manipulate them to describe the would be troubles of a love between a mortal and immortal.
like… why bother to go through with something like this when you know it won't end the way you want it to? and because you couldn't resist, you just feel so guilty and you don't want anything to do with it, so you just make up excuse after excuse.
from text messages i sent to my sister while trying to figure out where this story was going^
i listened to big bang's blue a lot while typing this up, as well as "hallelujah" as sang by pentatonix. bless leonard cohen, and may he rest in peace.
my teacher used to tell me something about how the gods were the nature of man and man's nature or something like that. either way, what i'm trying to say is that gods are no different than any other human, okay? with that in mind, i intended to make sephia share more of a resemblance with humans than we're used to.
especially in that while she's immortal, takeru was not, and it only complicated the troubles between lovers even more so. there was a total lack of communication between the two and refusal to say anything, even after they had a huge fight about it.
the lesson here, is that communication is key, and refusal to swallow your pride and reach out will ultimately damage your relationship forever, whether it's with a friend or a lover or family.
in sephia's case, she wanted it to end. sometimes it's hard to do so, because there's still feelings. ending a friendship is extremely hard to do, and sometimes it's selfish. you can never do it without impacting everyone around you in some way. it's hard, it's heartbreaking.