A soothing reveal

My muscles and expression alike had frozen up. I sat across from Kitsch, who had remained in the room that seemed to grieve with silence.

Leaving him behind, I burst out of the doors of his manor in an instant.

Step, step, step.

My footsteps echoed through the streets of the bronze city I burst forth through, quiet and silent, no sound of machinery lacing my ears.

I could feel my aching heartbeat, which pounded out a quickened rhythm as I ran.

Thump, was its first.

The second thump beat against my ribcage, threatening to shatter my bones which were gilded by sharp anxiety.

Thump, sounded out a third, like a cacophony of feeling, in chorus with its roaring bite.

My heart skipped its fourth beat.

I wondered then if I had messed up once more, which in thought left a searing imprint upon my brain that left tears collecting against the edge of my eyelids.

In the middle of the street illuminated by lamplight, I wiped the fallen tears away from my cheeks, and allowed a heavy sigh to settle the aching of my chest.

And as the Baron would, I continued moving forward.

I quickly came to a building nestled within the collection of towering sculptures against the main street of Aethine. As I journeyed through the alcove in the steelwork, the pipework gave way to concrete, and concrete to plastered flooring.

Opening the door at the end of the metal hallway, I came to a darkened, quiet silence not filled with the feelings of a home. With softened steps, I entered the room of the playwright, who’s door lacked oil, and creaked against its hinges as I swung it open.

Her room had been filled with shadow, which in turn danced against the faint lamplight that sat in the corner on her desk. On her bed of safe-feeling which I knew well, I saw that the dark-haired woman I had come to love had been wrapped up in her blankets, sitting as if she had been a bird in a nest.

“Why not tell me sooner?” She asked of me from within the darkness suddenly, turning towards me.

My eyes widened, but just as quickly settled as I smiled regretfully.

“You seemed so enthralled by the ‘Baron of Lilacs’... I didn’t want to disappoint you by revealing he was simply me. I didn’t want to disturb the grandiose image of your mental portraiture.”

“You’re wrong to think that it would disappoint me.” She shook her head. “For the one whose words I have fallen in love with... to also be the man who I have fallen in love with... my heart is happy.”

I sat beside her on the edge of the bed, and as she placed her gentle hand on my cheek, everything seemed to still.

My heart felt fine against her touch.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t feel like you could tell me.” Theresia spoke softly.

She leaned close towards me, meeting my gaze with her bright blue eyes that I had grown accustomed to getting lost within.

“I want you to always feel like you can be the whole of yourself with me.” She smiled.

—

To escape the drowning quiet, we had chosen to walk through the settling heat of the bronze city.

“I used to be a poet. Rather, I still am. But in that sense, it was a different life, and a different person who used the title…” I spoke softly as I walked. “I don’t think I’m that person any longer…”

Gripping at my cloak which sat fettered at my sides, I looked down towards the ground. My boots were wrapped tight in a film of mud that I had not been so careful as to shake off before stepping out into the world. I wondered then if my carelessness was the apt description of my character.

“I don’t really know who I am anymore…

She simply embraced me, pulling me in close to her form which stood small below mine.

“Am I Agreste, or am I the Baron…?”

“I think you are both, and I think that makes you beautiful.” She replied with a smile.

I wondered then, what ‘Agreste’ truly meant to me.

“The Baron of Lilacs was not always a name that I enjoyed using…” I mumbled. “At times, it seems like it was only forced upon me, and I wondered if it was some cruel slight to remove my family’s name from me, which was the only thing I had left of them…”

“Were you always the Baron?” She asked of me.

“No.” I shook my head in response.

“Who were you within the world?”

“In this gorgeous world? I was no one.” I shook my head in response."

Her expression, which looked with exclamation up at me, was enthralling to my still-beating heart.

“You speak as if this world Is one you do not know?”

“That’s because it is not.” I whispered plainly. “I was not born of this world. I do not know the vastness of its history, nor of politics. I know naught of its people, or of its skies. I have never seen its oceans, and I’ve not slept in its grasses.”

“Then how can you call it gorgeous so simply?”

“Because it has you in it.”

On a bench we sat, watching as a moth settled upon the glass of a lamp as bright as the sun, trying desperately to claim its beauty for itself.

“If you’re not from Crelle, then where are you from? Do you come from the big blue planet that sits in the plain skies?” Theresia asked of me.

“What planet? I’ve seen no such thing.”

“If you make your way to Esprium, the Land of Thorns, you’ll find yourself in a misty plainscape without a semblance of shadows. The sun does not shine as bright there as it does in Uepris, so the oceans do not boil, and the sky is clear, without any sight of steam. There are no machines to fill the air with sound, and flora flourishes wonderfully. There is not a place set in its stone path that does not feature grass growing from between the tiles, or vines that cascade upon walls, or trees that create roof-like canopies that block out the bright-blue sky.”

Her explanation was so long-winded that the breath in her lungs quickly ran dry, and she had to take a moment so that she could sigh heavy once again.

“And if you gaze upon that bright-blue sky that seems endless in its expanse, you’ll gaze upon a planet with sprawling sapphire oceans, and a continent frostbitten with permanent white.”

“Earth sits within the sky?”

“Is that what it’s called? Earth…?” Theresia smiled, falling back against the bed as she stared up at her unmarked-parchment ceiling. “What a beautiful name, to stand as the origin of a beautiful man.”

My cheeks lit up bright-red, matching well the lamplight we sat underneath.

“So then, you’re not from Crelle. It makes perfect sense to me.” Theresia smiled gently. “I have spoken many times on the matter, telling of how you look neither undine nor spriggan. Then, it serves well to say that you are too special to belong to this world alone.”

“Sometimes I feel a stranger to it.”

“Only sometimes?”

“You make me feel belonging to this world.” I smiled in response.

And too did her expression grow vermilion. Sometimes I wondered, if the flustered awkwardness that sat between us was normal. Even despite the fear of embarrassment around her, it made my heart feel that much happier.

“Did you leave any family behind… on Earth?”

“I had a mother and father, but they had already left me behind long before.” I whispered. “For the longest time, I did not think I would grieve anyone…”

Those who had stuck at my side in the times where I had grown extremely ill came to my mind. They had not been snakes in my garden at the ready to swallow whole the wealth of my name. The young boy, and the servant Shirakawa…

I thought they had been good friends to me.

“But…”

I bit at my lower lip, feeling well the shade that had washed over my expression. My hand shook as I grasped tightly at my shirt which had been buttoned shoddily, oblique in its nature. The warm air felt cold around me, and sound ceased as I sat within my thoughts, my gaze steady upon the wall behind Theresia.

I closed my eyes and took a breath inwards.

At the edge of the corridor that was exhalation, I emerged a version of me that ignored well my own mood.

But as I stared back up at Theresia, she had caught the lie I had told myself by exhaling my inhibition away. With a face full of worry, she simply leaned forward upon the bench, and wrapped me in an embrace of warmth that paralleled the chill of my atmosphere.

“Around me, you don’t have to be any version of you that isn’t yourself.” She whispered softly.

So in her arms, I used well the time she had gifted me, and I filled her sleeve with tearfall.

And then, I felt better.