Music for today:
Rok Nardin - solace
https://youtu.be/KCfEwam6hhg
Chapter 487: Solace
N/A - N/A : Year N/A : Location Unknown
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- Zachari ~
"Os..to..?" The name reverberated in my skull, flashing my mind with a burst of visions, feelings, and sensations with every ripple.
'Osto Whyte.' My future husband.
Memories of him felt almost distant, as if I wasn't yet meant to know of him—of his secrets and habits—but with every blink, another memory played, and the fog continued to lift.
After being introduced to him, my perception of the world rapidly shifted. With every passing day, the calculative questions and theories that'd always burden my mind began fading, and I found myself actually living—experiencing what was around me rather than simply observing from a distance like a monarch.
While unable to truly free myself from my responsible side thanks to by growing responsibilities in Bahamut, I unknowingly found myself using him as an escape—an excuse to live like a child, explore wherever I wished, and make mistakes.
With him, I was a different person. I felt younger, and more youthful—I'd tease, play, and mess around like I was never allowed to at home, and in the process, I learned.
It took me forever to recognize, but that innocent boy named Osto was simply a beacon that illuminated everything I believed was hidden in shadow, whether a hidden nook of the world, the human race, or even myself.
However, just like turning on a light in a dark room.. shadows didn't always hide pleasant or fascinating realities.
*Blink* Finding myself before Osto, beside a crackling fireplace, memory of a conversation played...
It began innocently—with me questioning why he was slowly growing more stoic as time passed.. questioning if it was because of something I did or if it was something family related. After all, with him being from a large family as well, I was certain he had his own responsibilities behind the scenes.
We all did...
However...
"I wasn't raised the same way my siblings were..." He was different... "I wasn't taught to excel at any one thing, and was simply taught everything to an adequate level." He had no specialties, focuses, or major responsibilities. "I always assumed it was because I had a specific purpose..."
Even in memory, his family was notoriously politically motivated.
"Just as my parents were, my siblings were taught and raised to be impartial judges for the courts of Bahamut..." They were raised to be duty-bound—to grow the influence of the family by any means necessary. "But I didn't receive any of what they did... I was never granted a voice, or shared the responsibilities of the family..."
Unlike the rest of his family, Osto was made with a different mold... -Its almost like.. he was raised to be a servant...-
He was so detached from his family's norm, it was like he wasn't meant to be a part of it at all—like a tool whose purpose was to take whatever shape it needed to in order to mesh with something...
"I really didn't know it was anything out of the ordinary till I was sent out of the nest and saw how other dragons and humans lived."
It was both pitiful, and gut-wrenching... "So the reason you aren't super close with your siblings or parents, is..."
"They never really let themselves get close."
But that was when it clicked...
The possibility of a reality I wasn't ready for... "Have our parents ever met?"
He was quick to nod. "My closest brother was actually the one to bring it up when we bumped into each other recently... My Mother met Lady Asimi somewhat regularly when we were still very young."
...Decades before we were even introduced... -Then.. our meeting wasn't just some haphazard agreement between families to introduce each other..?- I didn't want to believe it...
I couldn't...
-He.. was raised to be with me.. from the beginning...-
'Confliction.' I didn't know what to believe...
At the time, even the suggestion of Mother doing that was beyond dumbfounding. She hated arranged marriages more than anything else in the world. She even explicitly taught me to search for as many lovers as I felt I needed... To search for anything that could fill that empty hole in my chest.
So perhaps that was why the suggestion of her orchestrating it from the start landed so bitter.. and why, the longer that possibility lingered.. the more it almost seemed to twist into desire.
...A desire to grip onto that childish hatred, and fight against the mold she made for me out of raw spite...
With more blinks, hours.. perhaps days of that conversation passed. Osto and I continued to talk, sharing countless stories and experiences we seemed to almost share, brewing a mutual disgust, not aimed at each other, but at our families.
Until eventually.. the dam broke...
"Why do we have to stick to what fate our parents forced on us?" It was the day we vowed to change ourselves—-not to simply be something other than our parent's wish.. but to find who we were meant to be.
Though, Osto was still a bit reluctant.
With memories beginning to flow like a waterfall, I found him continually struggling to move on, to change, but perhaps that was part of his charm.
With every blink, and every memory of taking his paw and moving it forward, feeling the resistance ease more and more with each step, the warmth I felt toward him grew...
He too was becoming his own person, and in the process, we grew close.
Getting more serious about our exploration efforts, we dug through the world together. We followed our whims, did whatever we wanted, whether smart or stupid, and learned from the consequences.
It was a trial by fire that held our lives in the balance, but with every subsequent year, it helped us break from the cages our parents had built around us, and changed into beings of our own.
Overtime, Osto began losing that servant-like rigidity he had been taught, and similarly, I began learning just how different I was from who I was raised to be.
According to Mother, I was meant to be a queen—to rule with an iron paw, and push statistics between my observations and logic—yet the more I truly lived, the more I found that my aggressive side was more playful than serious.
Just as I'd fight monsters like a berserker and hold my head like a monarch in the streets, I'd lay in Osto's embrace and whisper sweet nothings like an oversized teddy bear when we were alone.
It was.. incredible...
With every year—every memory—we became more and more of our own people, not formed by the restrictive guidance of our parents, but by ourselves.
Until eventually, I had completely escaped Mother's shadow.. and Osto made me turn around to see her through a new lens...
Not a lens of my own.. but the lens of the man she told me to despise the most...
My Father...
Having gone out of his way to find him, Osto had met with him not long before we were set to return to Bahamut.. and despite knowing of the countless stories Mother had fed me, chose to introduce him to me...
I.. didn't know what to think or how to feel. -He.. knows what kind of man my Father is...-
But eventually, we sat before each other, and the turbulent chaos in my mind settled...
Unlike the the aggressive, war-torn mess Mother had told me he was, he seemed more like.. me... He was a man who loved to fight and rule a battlefield, yet similarly wished to simply snuggle up with a loved one after it was all over.
It made our conversation blend hours and days together, sharing stories of our lives and experiences we never had a chance to before.
Until eventually.. we came to the subject of Mom, and things derailed...
Just.. not how I expected them to...
Unlike how Mother painted his image, Father was never the abusive one. Having followed the lead of my grandmother, a woman known as the gentlest of saints—akin to an incarnation of Bahamut—he was an old war veteran who merely wished to set his past behind him and find a place to rest, but Mother had no plans of giving him that.
From physical to verbal abuse, she despised him as if he were the incarnation of death, but pressured by the public, neither of them could break off the relationship.
Wishing to try and show Mother he wasn't the horrific creature she believed him to be, Father continued to try and help disconnect her from that deep hatred, eventually getting her to agree to sharing a clutch which appeared to be a remarkable step of progress...
But just as she appeared to be letting go of her past and improving, the day she was to lay her eggs, she disappeared without a word.
She wanted young, but not with him.. and had merely maintained the act to get her way...
But the courts never would have allowed it. With Mother still so young, she was largely shunned from most positions of power or influence, holding them more for the title than anything, while Father was one with the greater grip on family resources.
She had blood, and he had power.. so in the end, they had to come to a crossroad.
While Father wanted all of us, yearning for Mother to understand he wasn't some demon forced on her, and prayed endlessly to raise me and my brothers together as a family.. Mother encouraged the informal split, and after an overwhelming amount of conflict, he was forced to give me to her.
It was.. not the first time I had caught wind of her true self... From the chatter of maids, to her clear lack of friends or acquaintances, it was clear she was quite troubled outside of when she was around me, but I had never known just how deep it all ran.
And once I did.. I wanted it to change...
Even after seeing her darker side, I knew deep down there was something else there.. something beneath that layer of hatred cultivated over years of understanding she would never be given a choice.
So, I continued to change.. to define myself with my new experiences and shed the final pieces of the cage Mother had built...
Until eventually, after deciding to marry Osto on my own accord, and taking hold of several large family assets with the help of Father, I decided to sit down and confront her—nervous it would snap the final string holding our relationship together...
But.. she never spoke...
Sitting there in silence, she simply listened. Watching me rant, raise my voice, and plea for an explanation.. a reason why she made me live a life of lies.. she just locked her voice in her head and left only the gleam in her eyes to shift.
Until.. at the end of it all, when I stood to leave.. her gaze fell, and mouth opened. "I'm sorry..."
It was the only thing she muttered before sending me out with a wave of her wing... She sounded guilty.. and hurt...
Yet she refused to meet my eyes again...
After walking out of that estate, it was like she simply vanished... For years, the letters I regularly received vanished.. the activity and responsibilities of the house eased, and like she had passed on, I found many of her titles and responsibilities shifting onto me.
The maids told me she was alive, but.. I couldn't believe them...
Until one day, I received another letter with her writing...
A summons...
Returning to the estate, not sure what to expect, I walked in expecting the same, lavish hall full of servants I always knew, only to find a single maid bowing to me beneath candle-light. "Welcome back, Young Miss."
It was a very different greeting from the cheery 'welcome home' I was used to.
"Lady Asimi is waiting in her room for you..." The maid grimaced as she shallowed her bow, "She has.. been waiting for you..."
Her words made my stomach twist.. made doubt cloud my mind...
I.. didn't trust it...
But, I continued forward anyway...
Walking down the dark hallway, devoid of light and activity, I kept my head high, body firm, and senses sharp.
Until I opened that door...
*Creaaak* Swinging open with a neglected creak, my eyes fell on a room that hadn't been cleaned in years... Books, papers, and ink were strewn across the floor, and sat atop the central bed, Mother was sat staring at a huge painting.
A painting of my grandmother...
"Zachari..." Her voice was damaged and frail... "I know you won't ever be able to forgive me, so, I just wanted to say.. thank you..."
The words lingered...
Not stepping forward another meter, the silence hung.. and her head followed. "Thank you for not letting the hatred that infests me reach you.. and thank you for telling me just how infectious it was... Just how miserable I had become..."
She paused.
And she spoke. "I'm.. sorry..."
The words struck deeper than any other I knew, for a reason I'd never understand... Like I was hearing her final words...
But perhaps that was why, instead of backing out to let the lone remaining maid close that door.. I walked in...
For that time.. that memory.. blinks didn't move the clock forward...
Every second that passed, an eternity of thought and contemplation flooded my mind.. until the moment I set my paw on her back, and it all went silent with the sound of her weeping.
That day would have been her last... One single step would have sealed her conviction.. and resolve...
And yet I stepped forward.
That day, we spoke endlessly.. reminiscing about my younger years before digging into what really happened with Father, my grandmother, and her past...
But in the end, rather than ending it all, she found a glimmer just bright enough to try.. not to forget or bury her past.. but to break out of the cage she had put around herself.
It took years.. decades.. but after reconciling our relationship, we began speaking more regularly and openly, not as mother and daughter, but as peers helping each other move forward.. and she began listening to those around her.. and shedding the misery that haunted her.
Over the coming years, she softened just as I had—disconnecting herself from that deep, unbridled bitterness that defined her—and did everything she could to become a better, truer version of herself with the help of those who once dreaded her presence.
It wasn't easy.. even with her progress, there were some things she simply couldn't let go of.. but over time, she progressed, just as Osto and I had, and began finding herself...
Over the course of decades, the warm image I had known her to have when I was young began becoming something more genuine and open, something others could see as I once had...
And with every blink.. every burst of memory.. what separated me from those visions thinned.
With every blink, my memories grew more vivid. With the laying of my own clutch, the warmth in the deepest reaches of myself spread...
With every mishap—every tragedy—the image of who I was sharpened. Every memory brought familiarity, and every blink brought me closer to that deep, muffled voice that always felt just out of reach...
Until eventually, it all blended together.
Retaining memory of the edge of eternity, a fear dug into me.. a terror of knowing I had nearly forgotten everything.. my life.. my purpose.. my warmth...
And I gripped.
As if my consciousness stepped back through time, I gripped that thread.. that touch I had felt eternities ago through the defiance of my 'shell', and pulled.. simply praying to draw close enough to caress his cheek one last time...
The being even I, as a shell devoid of everything that defined me, found familiar...
That endless.. infinitely encompassing warmth and love...
That presence of...
'My son.'
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