Prayer: Ballads of a Darker Blue

And as I am afraid to look to the future, the past also becomes unwilling to say goodbye.

* * * * * * * *

The young man with navy and brown hair stepped aside as this middle-aged woman with bobbed blonde and ivory hair came forward with a quick pace and wet eyes.

There, in the center of the room, sat five Ashenborn along a low round table, cushions and pillows everywhere. They watched her enter the room and waited for her to join them at the table.

Like friends.

Immediately, as if the pain and the grace were all too much to bear, she collapsed to her knees before them. Maybe she didn’t want to reach the table. Maybe she believed she couldn’t.

“Speak, my dear Yukina.” Anya’s voice was gentle in her command, a motherly dissonance ringing across the room. There was confidence in her timbre, an immortal beauty from her breath. Her voice was soothing and light, high notes lingering on after she finished speaking, emitting an aura of impregnable power into the air even as she sat low upon the floor. To her right sat Aiana and Austyr; to her left, Adrion and Ayren.

“Your Grace,” her voice trembled. “Oh, you… you already know why I am here. You can read my mind, delve into my future, and dig through my past. You already know what is in my heart. There is nothing left for me to say.”

“We know what burdens your heart,” Anya agreed. “But speak it, regardless, for we want to listen to you as you give to us your troubles. There is a song for you to sing.”

Yukina said nothing. Inside her, the pain wrestled against the peace that wanted to overcome.

“It does not matter where you begin so long as your words are earnest.”

“Earnest? Your Grace…” she paused. Gathered her thoughts.

Those words struck a cacophonous chord. Yukina brushed her hair back with her fingers, pushing strands of yellow away from her face.

“Your Grace wants my earnest troubles?” She turned to toward her left. “Austyr. You, of all Graces, should know of the pain I feel.”

Austyr gave a nod in acknowledgement.

“You must not have forgotten these feelings, irrepressible and undeniable. Feelings that, even when we regress, all we do is fall harder. Why… how can such emotions exist, Your Grace?” Tears fell into the palms of her hands. “I held in my hands—in these hands—a happiness that was to die for.” Her voice cracked. Soft sobs and sniffles echoed in this vaulted room. “… a happiness that died a most gruesome death.”

Silence. They waited for more.

“Austyr,” Yukina started again, inching closer to the table, onto a red cushion that was before her. She looked up at him, sitting to the right of Aiana. He looked back at her, but his face held no emotion. She swallowed before continuing, voice laced with the lingering hymns of ballads. “You are the Lord of Psychosis. You alone, can mold this world in love and peace, or hatred and despair. Your Grace, you alone, are perfect to alter every mind—you create any and every feeling, thought, and memory. The effort required on your end is but a breath and your will to do so. There is everything that you can do for me.” She brought her head down, eyes upon the red cushion. “Help me, I beg of Your Grace.”

“There is nothing to do in this moment.” Austyr put emphasis upon the last words.

Nothing to do… Yukina repeated those words over and over again in her head. She stood, heart skipping a beat at what she thought his words meant.

“You are the reason he left me!” Her cries shook with cacophonous strength, that of feet trampling upon a piano. “Did he not leave me because he is afraid of me? He saw my talents—your supposed ‘gift’ to the sirens—and he ran away in fear. It is your fault! I do not want these powers. No, look at me!” Screeches reached up and shook the highest windows as she pulled her hair up, vibrant in hues of yellow and ivory.

All five kept silver eyes on her.

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“Your Grace has made us sirens beautiful, and Austyr, I am beautiful!” Her eyes widened with hazel hues of an insane ferocity. “I have a voice to seduce all that come before me, and powers others envy! … Look at me!” Murky hazel fell and gazed down at her trembling hands. “Look at all that I have…”

They kept looking at her.

“… look at all that I have,” Yukina repeated in a soft whisper. “I would trade it all away if it meant he would have stayed.”

When she finally looked up again, she saw Austyr’s gaze upon her, with a shade so cold, she felt the fire within her diminish immediately. There was a moment of peace in her heart, but it was ever so fleeting, because how dare there be peace in this circumstance.

“You misunderstand my brother,” Ayren said, interrupting that thought. “He is quite vague, himself.”

“… Your Grace?”

“But I will answer, as I do,” Ayren offered. “Let us consider a situation in which my brothers and sisters agree to make that trade with you. We take away your powers: your beauty, your charm, your voice.”

At those words, Yukina’s eyes brought back a bit of shine. A bit of hope.

Ayren continued. “Certainly, I only need to agree to such a thought and it will be true. But, you assume, silly girl, that Kol would be in your life when you lack such gifts.”

And the shine was lost.

“It was your talent—your energy and your strength—that let him learn of love when the two of you first crossed paths.”

“You agree, then!” Yukina kneeled back onto the cushion, meeting the eyes of the five before her. “He did love me once, Your Graces! He did!”

“Try answering this question for me,” Ayren tried again, in patience. “What may we do so that you may continue with your life in peace? What would give you, my sweet Yukina, your own person—you—joy?”

“Kol returning to my arms would give me more happiness than I could find in all the treasures and all the knowledge Your Graces offer in Aideyll. Truly, he loved me once. Bring him back. Remind him of a time before I showed him all of me. I will not make the same mistake again. I will not. I understand, now. I cannot show him my imperfections. I will not.”

“Oh, this is not my expertise, indeed,” Ayron sighed. “Austyr. Aiana. Help a brother out.”

“Yukina, look at where you are in this moment,” Aiana commanded.

Yukina glanced around the room and back at the five. “… I do not understand.”

“And that is exactly where you are supposed to be,” Aiana nodded. “Know that I can see into your future, and we know what you know not. Our eyes see the world you cannot. Our minds create realities you cannot fathom. Understand it is because our knowledge surpasses yours, that our answers may disagree with your desires, yet we disagree with love. All that you need to know is that any suffering in Aideyll is not allowed with ill will, as we only love our children.”

Yukina shook her head. “No… no, no, no.”

“Dear Yukina, do not be afraid of loneliness,” Aiana continued. “Your true desires have not yet crossed paths with you, for you are not ready to experience its happiness in full. It is in perfect timing.”

“Anya,” Yukina wailed. Her hands reached across the round table for her. “Please! You are the most giving and the most loving! I know of all that you do for us in Aideyll. Anya… Lady Anya, Your Grace...”

“What is it, my dear?” Anya responded, voice soft. “Know that I would do anything in my power to give you true happiness, for you are my daughter.”

Yukina sniffled as tears fell upon the thin, onyx tabletop.

“Be comforted, knowing that I know of all that is in your past. I have watched you grow since you were brought to this world. I have seen every moment and heard every heartbeat of yours.”

Yukina listened to Anya, and her mind, for a moment, wandered toward her childhood. To moments of fleeting happiness. To her own heartbeat, every beat a vulnerable rhythm of life, of a desire for one more beat to follow after the next.

“Look to the world, child,” Anya continued. “You have talents many can only dream of, and gifts some cannot imagine or comprehend. Love the person that you are, for that is the person that I so adore and wish to keep in Aideyll.”

“Your Grace… if Austyr will not change Kol’s mind, then please convince him to erase my memories instead. I would rather him cease to exist in my heart than to be reminded ever again of a love I could have done nothing to save, simply because of what I am—what I was made to be.”

“You will remember and you will grow,” Austyr commanded. “I do not need to remind you of Valyia.”

Yukina froze at the name. There was not a siren in the world who did not know of that story.

“Holding onto a man with nothing to offer will eat you alive. It will kill you from the inside and your mind will erode away like sand pulled into the darkness of the sea. You will come to fear true loneliness, then, for not only will you not have him beside you, but you will have also lost yourself in the process. Return home. You are blessed with safe journeys in Aideyll.”

Deep breaths. Her fingernails dug into the palm of her hands beside her. She wanted so dearly to keep pushing, but she saw it. Anything she said would be futile. She glared at Austyr.

“I may be only one insignificant person in this vast world, but with all the power you hold, my favor was but a fleck of sand in that dark sea you speak of with such high wisdom; and yet, you would deny me of a single happiness in my fleeting life. I am so close to nothing in your powerful eyes that see all.”

She stood up, turned away from those silver eyes, and stepped past Ilisandir with bitter whispers. “My true worth is the only thing I do understand.”

Ilisandir watched Yukina leave the hall. Her prayer tore at his heart, but he had seen many prayers before hers and knew when a heart had been hardened against the world. Perhaps, in time, it would soften, but that would be in due time, and not a moment before. His place was here, beside another who had been waiting on the other side of these sound-proof walls.

He stepped forward, soles of his shoes echoing against the tall, tall walls of the hall, and bowed. “The next prayer will enter now, Your Graces.”