If y'all might like some music while reading, I recommend playing Claude Debussy's 'The Girl With Flaxen Hair' on loop as you read this.
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"Dogsh*t!"
I cursed out loud.
What a beautiful dream I was having. I'd become an Iron Blooded Knight, and then subsequently a Weather Warlock, and gone back to my old home with Eleanor.
With my parents' blessings, we'd married under the watch of the Evernight Church.
Eleanor had acquiesced to the fact that Badheil had perished at the hands of Evernight Goddess, and she was now the deity the Church of Combat actually prayed to. And so, accepting the outcome of us marrying under the Evernight Goddess wasn't too harsh.
And then, once married, we'd bought farmland in the countryside of East Chester County, quite close to Earl Hall's fief.
There, we started a self-sustaining farm. We bred our own livestock, cultivated our own crops, and from the salt to the glass in our house's windows, we made everything ourselves.
Of course, being a Weather Warlock made these things much easier to do.
We even had a special pack of beyonder pets. An Arbiter orange cat, a fire-breathing Conspirator snake, a Nightmare rooster, and a Magician blade of grass that gained sentience. And on top of all these beyonder powers, our pets also cultivated the qi of heaven and earth.
It was a weird mix of 'Lord of the Mysteries' and Xianxia. Esoteric as it was, though, it was a beautiful dream. I almost didn't want to wake up.
Maybe you could make it a reality.
I couldn't help but say to myself.
It isn't too much work. I just need to become an angel. Ez enough, amiright?
I mocked myself. There had to be a limit to wishful thinking.
It is still something I can yearn for, though. A beautiful wife, a happy family, a good life.
Amazingly, in my dream, we were even about to become parents. Eleanor was almost due.
At this thought, although I didn't realise it, a stupid smile had stretched across my mouth, and with glazed eyes, it gaped slightly in wishful wonder.
Surely, yearning for such a future is a noble goal. Only when you yearn for the stars, will you reach the moon.
That day, I'd instigated myself to seek a certain path. A future I so selfishly wanted to have.
My thoughts couldn't help but wander, relaying from one point to the other like my often whimsical decisions.
Back then, I had lived a somewhat Taoist life.
'Wu wei'—to not force action. To go with the flow. Inaction as virtue.
But at some point, I'd taken inaction for sloth.
My heart had stilled, my growth had stagnated, and my emotions were rotting. I'd ended up not only sinking deep into misery myself, but I'd also pulled her down along with me.
If I'd realised everything sooner, if I hadn't let it all rot so much, maybe my girl with flaxen hair would not have left me.
That day, her flaxen hair may not have been natural, but my love for all her colours was always true. My ardent effort to dedicate Debussy to her that night was all true.
If only. If only I'd done it earlier. A month, a week, a day, or even an hour. If I'd done it before—before I'd completely broken the crumbling vase of glass that our relationship had been—then maybe, maybe she would have stayed. And maybe, with just that little action, I'd have pulled myself up enough, that she could have saved me.
But I was a failure; I woke up too late.
Too long, I'd been in a limbo.
Too long, I'd stood unmoving.
And so, when I did finally walk towards her, on that day, the tearing thread of our love had already snapped. I guess, all my movements of dedicating that song to her came as nothing more than a cacophony.
I was too late after all. I only realised everything I'd lost, and given up, when what I'd taken for granted was finally snatched away from my grasp.
I never saw her again.
At least I thought I'd be able to get over it. Surely, just a girl, right? How hard could it be.
A few weeks? Months, at worst?
For the first two months, the hollowness tormented me to tears and sobs, and the occasional inspiration to write. Yet, wallowing in such misery, nothing I wrote actually came out complete.
When I still heard nothing for two months from her, and the hollowness did not vanish, I gave up.
Next, I only did what my stupid self thought could save me. Nightly visits to bars, and returns with any woman I found most like her on that night. Every night, every night.
Hours of work, many minutes of bodily motions, yet, the bliss I could find lasted not even a minute.
How many people had I whored myself too, all for less than a minute of fleeting bliss that felt like an illusion more than anything?
I wasn't even aware, maybe in my drunken stupors, some of them were even more than one woman. Sometimes not even just women. Did I actually drag along a couple with me on one such night? I had no idea, no memory.
For ten months, I'd let loose and indulged in carnality, all with hope that maybe those accumulated minutes of bliss would hopefully fill the hollowness that encapsulated my heart.
After a whole year since I last saw her, on 14th of July, I finally gave up. There was no way for me to fill the hole that I'd dug for myself.
Surely, there were different kinds of holes. Some shallow, some deep. Some people dug for others, some for themselves. From most, one could climb out. On one's own, with a rope, or taking someone's hand.
But the hole I dug myself into was special. At least that was what I finally concluded, at the end of that year.
It was my grave.
Well, what could I even do at this point? Weeping did nothing, whoring did nothing, and so, with little hope, I just started driving up the mountain.
Maybe—I'd thought back then—if I did something I'd always done alone, I'd finally find some peace. Surely, stargazing by myself would give my soul some solace? Surely, the gentle twinkles of the distant stars will brighten up my hollow heart's darkness by a lumen? Surely?
All I was doing in the end was making my own coffin. Piece by piece, nail by nail; with every drive up, I was hammering it together.
It was fourteen months later, since I'd last seen her, that I caught a glimpse again.
No longer did she have flaxen hair. It was back to her natural ginger. And it was cut short to her shoulders.
It was a new sight, a sight my eyes drank with no pause. For a whole minute, I'd stood there dumbstruck, staring inside the café's window like a creep. Yet, in that whole minute, it felt as if all of my hollowness was filled, all my darkness brightened, all my peace returned, all my misery erased, and all of my heart healed.
Alas! That sight only lasted a minute. The peace her smiling face bought me was temporary. The love that had filled my heart leaked like there was no bottom. The light disappeared like a flash of lightening. My heart, newly healed, was crushed anew.
Despair, was truly what waited for me at the end of this tunnel. The tunnel I'd walked for a year, and more. There was no light to my end; it was naught, but the blink of a firefly.
'Of course, she is there with some other man.' I'd said to myself.
In all of my despair, I ran away from her. I never wanted to see her again.
I ran, and ran, and ran. I drove up the mountain in middle of the night.
That night, I talked to the stars.
With a bottle of Johnny Walker's red, my consonants slurred, and my tongue slipped, but I remember I'd spoken the more then, than I'd had altogether in the past year.
I had no one to speak to. I had no friends, no family. I was alone without her in this world.
When the bottle was drained, I threw it against the tripod. My telescope fell down the cliff I sat by, along with the bottle, but I had little care.
With gusto, I drove back. Downhill, in a clear night, with a head clear of all sorrows. All I could feel at that moment was the strong desire to speed down the hill like I was the king of drift.
A greater euphoria filled my lungs with every corner I passed, until, I didn't.
I don't remember what it was. Did I not brake deliberately? Or was it my drunker stupor? I truly don't remember. I ran off the hairpin, into the open skies. The stars filled my vision, and I decided, this was an end I was willing to accept.
In that instant, the words I'd read long ago welled up through my heart.
"My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?"[1]
In the end, maybe that one last sight of hers was all that I really needed. My life was fulfilled, I had no more to want. In that minute, I'd relived all of past's joys, rekindled and fulfilled all hopes, and felt enough love for both of us, that I no longer needed anything else. That was catharsis enough.
I'd happily embraced that lid to my coffin.
Sigh.
With an audible sigh, I recollected myself from the daydreaming. My cheeks were sticky, wet, and warm. Many drops had traversed through them, and a small wet patch formed on the blanket I was covered in.
Action through inaction. To aim for the stars, so you could reach the moon.
My whole life I've lived with this philosophy, and ended up burying only further into the ground. Surely in this new world, I'd finally be able to reach the moon, right?
I had no real answer to my own questions.
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Lorenzo lore drop. I guess this was too much unneeded emotional drama with not enough progression? Well, I couldn't help it. I had to let it out somewhere.
Don't have to drop power stones for this one. I'm just grateful to anyone who indulged me, and read it. Thanks.
[1] The climactic quote from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella 'White Nights'. You all should read it, it's short yet incredible.