LIKE A HOOK INTO AN EYE. (first draft; scrapped)
first draft of the prologue and the first scene of the first chapter for LIKE A HOOK INTO AN EYE. I'm thinking of scrapping these because the fic isn't really working for me; hence why I'm posting them here, and not on AO3.
one day I'll return to this story and figure out how to write it better. I will most likely still use the same premise (and will probably keep the title and summary), but the story itself probably won't be written the way it was here, for reasons I'll explain in another post.
anyway, here's my initial attempt at gothic horror, actor au vnlmi. cw for: character death, witch curses, ghost haunting (?), grafting someone else's body part into yours
LIKE A HOOK INTO AN EYE.
people think that grief
slowly gets smaller
with
time.
in reality, grief stays
the same size—
To honor Aether’s dreams, Lumine endeavors to bring to the stage the last unpublished play he wrote before his death. The only copy of the manuscript lies in the hands of a musician who wants to free Lumine from her haunting.
But how can she let him, when this haunting is all she has left?
PROLOGUE: DEATH (first draft)
Lumine didn’t kill him, but she might as well have.
Logically, it’s nobody’s fault. She’s cognizant of the blamelessness that comes with accidents. “Shit happens,” as Aether would say, with a cheeky smile and a shrug and that annoyingly endearing go-getter attitude that would have him “conveniently” forget any trauma or obstacle standing in the way between him and his unyielding, awful, all-consuming dreams.
Aether was brave and stupid like that. It killed him to pursue his dreams, but he’d die if he didn’t take those steps forward. Aether had an envious appetite for life. And he was, always, a hungry man.
Sometimes, Albedo doesn’t understand why Aether acted the way he did, not the way Lumine did. Aether had a way with words, a way of saying the most incomprehensible things that made you understand.
“I dream the way you love,” he once said, an off-hand comment from when they bought apples from the Sunday Market near Dornman Port. It didn’t even occur to him how easily he distilled both of their identities into six words. “Some say it’s maddening, but I like that about us. My dreams are your dreams. Your love is my love. We fit together the way only twins like us can.”
Aether often linked his left pinky with hers, warm flesh against synthetic skin. And for a second, they return to being one entity.
When they were still in their mother’s womb, their little fingers were fused together, bridging their two bodies. The doctor had to surgically remove it from one of them during birth. Like a wishbone, one split into two. Aether retained all of his appendages, while Lumine lived with a prosthesis fortified with condensed resin. It was state-of-the-art, made with expensive Khemia technology.
Aether often linked their fingers together to declare, like a promise, “We’ll always share everything, Lumine. What’s mine is yours. My wishes are your wishes.”
Aether and Lumine were born as extensions of one another. She is — was? — the moon to his sun. Aether understood everything about Lumine, and Lumine understood everything about Aether.
Aether, who is now six feet deep in the ground. He doesn’t even have all his bones with him.
Their former guardian, M, once told them that they inherited a witch’s curse from when their birth mother angered a sullen witch. She was cursed to gaze into the abyss, and that one of her children will inherit the same gaze. And when they do, they will pull the other with them, until all three of them have fallen.
The Gaze is a pull towards the abyss — towards death. M said that you cannot break a curse that you are born with. It is written into your being. You would have to rewrite the way you see — the way your soul is wired to perceive. But by then you wouldn’t be the same person anymore, and what would you even sacrifice to get to that point? The cost is never worth it. You would be trading one curse for another.
And so, you can only resist. Many people, according to M, have resisted such curses and lived long lives. M said the best way to resist is to gaze outward. There is a horizon beyond the abyss; there is something worth yearning for.
“I won’t kill you,” Aether had promised. “And you won’t kill me. We’ll live and we’ll grow old and when we die, we’ll be happy. We’ll find something that can save us from this curse. Gaze outward, Lumine.”
She did. On that day, they held hands and watched the sunset together, eyes fixed beyond.
Lumine didn’t kill Aether. Aether was the one who wanted to hike in Dragonspine, just the two of them, because he was struggling with writer’s block and he needed a change of scenery.
Lumine didn’t cause the blizzard in Dragonspine, didn’t cause Aether to slide horrifically across the cliffside during the terribly planned hiking trip. Aether knew this. He would tell her not to blame herself. She tried to hold his hand. She reached out when he fell.
Lumine didn’t kill Aether, didn’t intend to and didn’t want to. But she also couldn’t catch him in time.
It took the knights three days to find the body. Albedo, usually so well-composed and self-possessed, broke down when he saw the still corpse. Lumine was inconsolable.
And just like that, Aether has gone to the abyss. Not by a witch’s curse, but by bad weather and an unlucky hiking trip.
For the first time, Lumine is truly alone in the world.
—
Aether does not return to earth whole. A small, sterilized jar of bones and flesh sits cold at the back of a freezer, wrapped in moist gauze and damp with saline solution. Lumine hesitates everyday at breakfast and pushes the thought at the back of her mind.
Later. She’ll deal with it later.
After his death is announced to the public, Lumine encounters a man with brilliant teal eyes who gives her a little black notebook that once belonged to Aether.
“He left it in my studio,” he says. “I think he’d want you to have it.”
Lumine flips through the pages. It’s a poetry book.
“He left a lot of things in my studio, you know, CDs, notebooks, some of his drafts are even on my computer. But—” the man sighs, slipping a card into one of the pages,“—this is the only one I have with me today. When you want the rest of them back, come find me. I think I still have a draft of his last manuscript. I’ll keep them safe until you’re ready to get them.”
Lumine hides the notebook in her pocket. She thinks about reading through it, but whenever she looks at Aether, lying peacefully in the casket, a terrible thought tugs at her more urgently than the rest.
She would die with him. A part of her would be buried with him.
She couldn’t let him return to the earth whole. Aether can’t leave her alone.
Aether’s little finger sits in cold ice at home while they lower his body to the ground. This flesh were theirs. For everything that separated Lumine from Aether and vice versa, these bones belonged to them both.
The next day, Dainsleif informs her that she inherited all of Aether’s fortune, his responsibilities in the Abyss Foundation, and, of course, his plants. Lumine is two times richer than she was yesterday, and only half whole.
The little black notebook sits by Lumine’s windowsill, conveniently forgotten.
—
Lumine doesn’t open the notebook again until she’s forced to confront it.
The inheritance overwhelms her. The moneys sits untouched, the Abyss Foundation is ran by Dainsleif these days, and the plants are withering.
The knights ask Lumine to take some time off indefinitely, because a paramedic who can’t be present in the field is a liability. They don’t say that this is the real reason, of course. Neither do they mention the new responsibilities and wealth they assume (correctly) that she acquired, how that should be taking up her time instead, and anyway — dead sibling aside — she is much better off now, materially, than she was before. She doesn’t need to slave herself off of the meager salary of a first responder.
They don’t say any of that. Instead, they say that they’re concerned for her mental health, that it’s okay for her to grieve, that Noelle can handle things while she’s away.
Both things can be true at the same time. But one reason being true doesn’t negate the other.
They don’t force Albedo to do the same thing, because Albedo is responsible enough to actually use his time off when he needs it. He hasn’t worn the uniform in four months. There are rumors that he’ll quit the knights soon. Lumine wants to do the same.
She’s dead on her feet, unmoored and without purpose. How is she supposed to live without Aether? She’s scared to know, until one day she’s scared she’ll never know. Suddenly, the sight of the little black notebook no longer haunts her, but gives her hope.
Bolting from her bed in the middle of the night, Lumine grabs the notebook in a feverish daze. She wipes the dust off. A page falls off on her bed, just a small scrap of writing. It reads,
I borrow moonlight
for this journey of a
million miles
Lumine throws the notebook away, as if it burned her. A sharp paper cut slices through her skin, a centimeter off where the palm meets her synthetic finger. The pain registers only second to the loud beating of her own chest.
“No, don’t do this to me, Aether,” she whispers. Her prosthetic finger suddenly feels foreign to her, too cold and artificial.
Her hair has gotten long after months of neglecting to have it cut. From her reflection by the window, she could almost pretend it’s Aether staring back at her wild eyes. He tilts his head at her, as if to say, Go on. Read.
She swallows thickly and opens the notebook again. Another page reads,
While I walk on
the moon keeps pace beside me;
friend in the water
Now that my storehouse
has burned down, nothing
conceals the moon
Aether smiles patiently from the window as Lumine cries herself hoarse for the rest of the night.
—
Lumine opens the notebook again one week later, after replacing the saline solution in the jar that housed Aether’s (her?) severed finger. She still hasn’t decided on what to do with it yet.
Aether’s notebook of poetry functioned as a diary. It’s difficult to be vulnerable with your own words, but Aether found a way to channel his own helpless thoughts through other people. He always did that — live, through and for others.
This is what made him an excellent scriptwriter. He admired, and sometimes encouraged, the desire to live someone else’s life. To escape into someone else’s story and make it your own. He got that from M, Lumine is sure. M wrote children’s books, and Aether lived many lives through her stories.
Lumine, at least, isn’t alone in her grief. Aether was the darling of Mondstadt’s entertainment industry. When news of his death broke out, a local channel aired reruns of his movies. Finchster trended a hashtag for him.
Albedo stayed for dinner that day and marathoned the movies with Lumine. Aether loved to write happy, feel-good stories. Stories about love, friendship, family. Some of them are punctuated with intense drama or high-stakes adventure, and some of them are your run-of-the-mill romance and slice-of-life. But all of them, always, end on a hopeful note, if not a happy ending.
Aether smiled on tv. They re-ran his interviews in-between the movies. “I do want to challenge myself creatively,” screen Aether said. “Actually, in my spare time, I’ve been trying to write a tragedy. A proper one — I imagine it will be performed in a stage play than in front of a kamera. I used to do community theater in college, so it will be good to go back to my roots. But I’m an optimist at heart. Most of the time, I write happy endings because I want people to see themselves in the stories I write.”
Albedo’s eyes shined with tears. “Even when he’s not around, he’s still trying to cheer us up.”
In his little black notebook, Aether copied words from poets and wrote down names of people he knew. He borrowed other people’s words to write unsent letters to his loved ones.
The last poem, written a month before the accident, and read four months after, is addressed to Lumine.
A basket of apples brown in our kitchen,
their warm scent is the scent of ripening,
and my sister, entering the room quietly,
takes a seat at the table, takes up the task
of peeling slowly away the blemished skins,
even half-rotten ones are salvaged carefully.
She makes sure to carve out the mealy flesh.
For this, I am grateful. I explain, this elegy
would love to save everything. She smiles at me,
and before long, the empty bowl she uses fills,
domed with thin slices she brushes into
the mouth of a steaming pot on the stove.
What can I do? I ask finally. Nothing,
she says, let me finish this one thing alone.
Lumine tears the page from his notebook and crumples it up, throws it in the bin. She reminds herself that this was written before the accident. He was probably writing about the way she showed her care for him.
But how dare he? How dare he write to her like he wants her to… to...
(She did peel those apples from the Sunday Market. Made apple pie, boiled the cores and peeled skin, made the most out of everything the fruits had to offer, bruised and near-rotting though they were. But—)
In that moment, Lumine spies the ghost of her brother overshadow her reflection in the glass window. “Even half-rotten ones are salvaged carefully,” she reads, but it’s Aether’s image that mouths the words in the reflection. “For this, I am grateful.”
Who does Aether think she is? Who does he think he is to ask this of her? He’s the golden child. Lumine is his shadow. That’s how they decided they would be. She was the moon to his sun. She could never just finish things the things he left behind, could she?
Oh, but this is very much how Aether would think. He’d do anything for his dreams, even go as far as to ask his sister to accomplish them in his stead. So long as they are fulfilled, even from beyond the grave. And he would be grateful, wouldn’t he? Because Lumine could do it. Lumine salvages everything that can be saved, even when they’re rotting and dying. Even if they’re six feet deep in the ground.
Lumine didn’t kill him, but if she doesn’t keep his dreams alive, she might as well have. Aether still has bountiful dreams he left behind for her to carry through.
And his dreams are beautiful indeed. Lumine loves her brother for them. Aether dreams, and Lumine saves. That’s how they always worked. Lumine brings people from the brink of death for another chance at life; an anti-psychopomp. But Aether, with his words and his stories, is the one who inspires. He makes you believe in a life worth living.
Life has a funny sense of humor, then, to cut him off from the same experience.
An hour later, Lumine takes the torn paper out from the bin and smooths it flat. The creases will never leave. She can’t undo them just as she can’t undo death. But the words are still here, and Aether’s dreams are still here. That has to be enough.
Lumine didn’t kill Aether, no, but she never kept him alive after his death. Four months after the funeral, Lumine still doesn’t have that last manuscript he wanted to show the world. She remembers him talking about it. He wanted to flex his creative muscles, wanted to do something different from his usual stories.
Everyday, the calling card and the memory of brilliant teal eyes loom over her. But she’s not ready to face it, not yet, not alone. Not until—
One step at a time. She knows what Aether wants her to do, but Lumine can only be so brave when she’s alone. She can’t do this alone.
With a trembling heart and a grief-driven bravery, Lumine spends the next two weeks in Snezhnaya and calls up an infamous underground doctor.
She returns to Mondstadt with stitches marring her left hand, one finger lighter than the rest of her tanned skin, sun-kissed from the days she spent outside as a first responder. The nail is decorated with bright yellow nail polish.
—
Albedo will be leaving soon. Lumine can do nothing about that. He’s heading for Sumeru, she thinks. He can’t move on if he stays here. Aether wouldn’t want to tie him down.
“You can come with me,” he tells her. Sometimes, on the days he stares too long at her mismatched fingers, he comes close to pleading. “If you want. You don’t have to stay there for long, but getting away from all this might help. It’s okay to leave your grief behind, even for just a little while.”
Lumine shakes her head, because now she has something to do. Aether said so, in his poem. This elegy would love to save everything. Let me finish this one thing alone. So how can she go? Who will publish Aether’s manuscript? Who will take care of Aether’s garden, and his charity work? Who will keep watch of the house? The dust will build, and the air will go stale, and Aether never liked the house to be lonely.
Albedo must think her crazy. Lumine can’t bear the pity in his eyes, ill-disguised as they are. Perhaps he never meant to hide them at all. Albedo is not that type of person — after all, how else did Aether fell in love with him? He loved straightforward people.
Still, Albedo is right. Grief doesn’t have to stay.
So at night, Lumine lays on her pillow and dreams of how she can keep Aether alive. His dreams, if not his body, because his body is decaying six feet deep underground. So it’s up to Lumine to finish things for him. She loves him so, so much, after all.
It is fortunate, then, that Lumine loves the way he dreams.
Unyielding, awful, and all-consuming.
She starts with his garden. A simple task. She just needs to take care of Aether’s plants, and they have been looking rather lonely without their gardener. Albedo has been keeping them healthy all this time, but he’s leaving soon. So she feeds them fertilizer and waters them everyday until the leaves turn yellow and crisp, for which Albedo gently scolds her for. One of the more delicate flowerpots wither from her care.
“You need to leave them alone,” he tells her. “They’ll be fine without water for a few days. They like to be left alone.”
With great reluctance, she leaves them alone for the day and spends the rest of her hours reading poems. She writes her first letter to Aether, a response, folded neatly in between the bouquet of cecilias that she leaves by his grave the next morning.
You died just hours ago.
Not suddenly, no. You'd been dying so long
nothing looked like itself: from your window,
fishermen swirled sequins;
fishnets entangled the moon.
If only I could go to you, revive you.
You must be a little alive still.
“What can you do?” she recites. She already has his poem memorized. “Nothing, I say. So let me finish this alone.”
The grave doesn’t respond. Of course it couldn’t. There’s nothing Aether can do now. Six feet in the ground. Can Aether even hear her? The thought weighs heavily in Lumine’s mind.
“But I failed already. I killed one of your plants,” she confesses. “I’m sorry. Maybe it will keep you company, now that it’s gone. But I’ll try to be better, this time. I’ll save the rest of them.”
Lumine vows, from this day on, that she will live his legacy for both of them.
This elegy would love to save everything.
—
On the day Albedo leaves Mondstadt, Lumine resigns from the knights and signs up for acting classes. She’s no stranger to the world of theater, but… it’s been a while.
There are scribbles at the back of Aether’s little black notebook. Scratched lines, discarded paragraphs, the debris that remained from when he sketched out the outline of his final, unpublished script. Usually, Aether wrote for tv and film. But for this story, he intended it for the stage. A proper play.
It takes Lumine back to the days when they were still in college, participating in community theater. She likes to think that he wrote this play for her. He always wanted her to star in one of his stories.
“I always write them with you in mind. There’s no one I trust more,” he used to say. Then, he would joke, “One day, I’ll write a script that will compel you to act for me. Just you wait.”
Unorganized scraps of the final story fill up the back half of his notebook — character notes, themes, sources of inspiration, quotes from other books, snippets of dialogue. Cruelly, it is the most compelling script Aether wrote. Lumine regrets not indulging him when he was still alive.
Because finally, with this, Lumine can see herself in Aether’s story.
Lumine steels herself in front of the mirror. “I’ll act this out for you, Aether. Just you wait.”
Her (His? Their?) little finger tingles. A wave of calm settles on her, relaxing her body for the first time in months. This feels right.
Aether smiles back at her from her reflection, proud and encouraging.
ACT I: MADNESS (scene one; first draft)
Four years pass.
The bass is everywhere. It thrums in her skin, in her bones. In Aether’s bones, too.
Lumine is no longer a stranger to the world of celebrity shindigs — a necessary part of working in the entertainment industry, an event that masks as partying but functions as networking with your future coworkers. Half the time, it’s genuinely as fun as they make it out to be.
But Lumine has long avoided going to one of Venti’s infamous afterparties until now. They say that those are always fun. All play, no work.
Lumine isn’t here to have fun though. After four years of preparation, she is here to finally put Aether’s last dream into motion, and the first step is to hold Venti to the promise he made years ago at the funeral.
More importantly, parties are an opportunity to scope out the person Lumine is looking for. Someone who is her opposite on the stage: the comedy to her tragedy, a fighter to her lover, a character driven by agency instead of fate. Someone who is governed by—
Still, the bass thrums. Lumine finds her little finger tapping to the rhythm of the beat. Aether must have missed this. The music, the dancing, the socializing. It must be lonely, to only exist in reflections and shadows, as an extension of another body.
She permits herself one dance and lets the percussion of the music move her limbs. The dance floor pulls on her, like a magnet. Bodies move to and fro, to and fro, and by the time the song ends, Lumine feels lighter than when she stepped into the room. Loose, like she just shook off invisible weights dangling from her head.
Someone taps her on the shoulder and then she’s face to face with brilliant teal eyes. They are eye-catching under the strobe lights.
“I was wondering when we’d have the chance to meet again. You’ve been avoiding me, Lumine.” Venti smiles at her, sounding amused.
“Are you here to party, or to mourn?”
“Hello, Venti. We meet again. You said you’d keep Aether’s manuscript for me until I’m ready.”
“Are you?”
Lumine shrugs. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You could have texted me if you just wanted the manuscript. My number hasn’t changed. I could email it to you anytime.”
“Maybe I want to do both. Who says you can’t mourn while you’re partying?”
Venti hums; studies her. Whatever he finds must have intrigued him enough to stretch out a hand. “Very well. Since you came all the way out here, mind if I keep you company? It’s not good to party — or mourn — alone.”
Lumine doesn’t decline. Venti is a bit of a mystery to her, a puzzle she didn’t feel brave enough to figure out until she’s ready to face Aether’s final play. She knew of him — of the music he produces and the parties he throws. She knew that Aether was friends with him since the beginning of both of their careers.
Aether must have trusted him immensely if he left his little black notebook of poetry with him.
Venti leads her to one of the booths, where a young man with blond hair is already sitting, watching the room with clear eyes. Upon seeing Venti and Lumine, he procures two glasses and a bottle of expensive wine from under the seat for them. He takes out a familiar-looking pill from his jacket pocket and swallows it dry.
“Mika, don’t take more than you can handle,” Venti scolds gently. Almost motherly. “I know your limits.”
“I’m not overdoing it,” Mika says, though he does throw Venti an apologetic look.
“I know.” Venti slides into the booth and begins pouring wine into the glasses. “Have you confirmed who will be attending the next sparasso?”
“I’m working up to it.” Mika sighs, looking back at the dance floor as if he’s warring with himself over something. Then he stands up and takes a deep breath, bracing himself for his inevitable task. “I’m sure Tartaglia will confirm, at least. I’ll follow up on the rest of them now. It’s nice to finally meet you, Miss Lumine.”
He disappears into the party, leaving Lumine alone with Venti.
“That was my assistant, Mika. He’s a good kid, but he can be conscientious at times. It’s for the best though, since I’m pretty scatterbrained myself. I don’t know what I’d do without him.” Venti slides the glass of wine towards her. “Do you drink?”
Lumine raises an eyebrow. “Not even vodka? Wine isn’t exactly the choice of drink for ragers.”
“It’s a drink for celebration and death. I thought it would be fitting for our most unique occasion.” Venti waves his own glass with a flourish before taking a sip.
In his poetry notebook, Aether described Venti as the swoony type; long hair, bedroom eyes, cheeks like wine. A free, uncontrollable spirit. Mondstadt’s celebrity culture share the same impression.
Lumine thought she would find him dancing wildly, or playing party games, or getting high. But this booth is a quiet bubble, a sanctuary amidst the chaos around them. Venti watches the dance floor serenely, in no particular hurry to join or empty his glass. There’s something gentle about him. Nurturing.
Lumine blurts out, “You’re different from who I thought you’d be.”
“What did you think I was like?”
“From the stories I’ve heard? A party animal.”
“We’re all animals here. But I like to make sure everyone is having fun. It’s sort of my job, you see.” There is a delighted twinkle in his eyes as he says this. “But I suppose I do have a reputation to keep. Nobody leaves my parties dissatisfied.”
“So I’m your new pet project then? Can’t have me giving your party a bad review?”
“You could loosen up a bit,” Venti agrees. “Aether was never like this when he was still around.”
“Did Aether ‘loosen up’ often?”
“I’d say it’s more like he let himself become more honest. More true to himself.”
Venti smiles at the fond memories this brings up. It makes Lumine want to know. “Tell me about him. What was your relationship like?”
Venti met Aether at a hobby club. They were both just starting out then; Aether in the writer’s room for a tv show, and Venti busking on the streets to promote his upcoming debut. Venti frequented the club for fun, while Aether visited every now and then for stress relief.
Lumine vaguely recalls Aether mentioning this to her before in the early days, but it never seemed important enough to remember. He doesn’t talk about it often enough for Lumine to recall what exactly their shared “hobby” was.
“The entertainment industry can really drain you, you know? So we needed an outlet to let off some steam.”
“What did you do together? In that club? Aether never told me he had other hobbies.”
“Why don’t you visit me at my studio sometime? It’s easier to show you.”
Venti muses over his drink. The glass is already empty, so he fills it with more wine than it contained earlier. “He gave me a cactus once. Said that it’s the perfect plant for me, since I wouldn’t be able to kill it.”
Lumine frowns down at her own glass, still untouched. The wine beckons her; a dark, deep red that shimmers with the party lights.
“I killed his plants,” she shares. “All of them. I tried to keep them alive, but there was always something going wrong. Fertilizer burn. Watered them too much. I don’t know, I think I did too much. It’s funny, now that I think about it. You can love something to the point of ruin.”
“He liked to keep low-maintenance plants. I think they just didn’t fit with the way you care. There is nothing wrong with it. You were simply incompatible.” Venti clinks his glass with hers. “Boundless love is something to treasure. Too many people show restraint these days, you know? I find it admirable.”
“Sure, it sounds amazing, but it’s hard to handle that kind of love. It’s suffocating. It killed the plants. I don’t know who fits this kind of love.”
“I wouldn’t find it suffocating.” Venti’s lips quirk up, like he remembered an inside joke he’s not interested in sharing. “We could fit together.”
“Could we?” Lumine tilts her head. How would he know? The first and last time Lumine saw Venti was four years ago, during Aether’s funeral. “You don’t know me.”
“I know a little bit about you, now that we've met properly. That should be enough.”
Lumine doesn’t realize when it happened, but she somehow scooted closer to Venti inside the booth. To hear him better, probably. She can smell the faint cologne on him — something sweet and bitter, like dried fruits.
“What have you heard, then?” she asks.
“I know that you like to star in tragic films, in contrast to your late brother’s penchant for happy endings,” Venti says, counting facts with his fingers. “I know that you were once a paramedic before you were an actress. And I know that you haven’t had a drink since you entered this room. Do you drink?”
“A little.”
Venti slides the glass of wine again. “It’s a special blend. You won’t get a hangover from this one, I promise.” He waves jazz hands in the air, grinning. “This bottle is like magic.”
Lumine’s left pinky twitches. Perhaps Aether missed this as well. The drinking, the companionship. There is no judgement in Venti’s presence, just a soothing invitation that holds no expectations. He would not be offended if Lumine decides not to drink.
But Aether would have, so Lumine does. The wine flows smoothly down her throat. Sweet and bitter and a hint of metallic. Venti regales her with more stories of his friendship with Aether; of the times they’d commiserate over the writing process; of the many, many concerts and afterparties they’ve gone to. They, too, bonded over poetry.
There is a warm feeling in Lumine’s chest that grows with each story. Aether is missed. And yet, she doesn’t want to mourn that. Aether was loved. She wants to be happy about it. Her head starts to feel like cotton, but her heart feels so, so light.
She sips; her glass is full again and oh — when did Venti refill it?
“Have you read his notebook?” Lumine asks. Venti shakes his head.
“Aether dedicated a poem for you. I remember how it goes. Come to me now: loose me from hard care and all my heart longs to accomplish, accomplish. You be my ally.”
Lumine is floating. She should be looking for… something. Someone? She can’t remember that now. She’s supposed to find someone, but now she’s just reciting poetry. One of the short ones from Aether’s little notebook. It’s nice.
Venti is saying something, reciting a poem back in response. Lumine has never heard it before. She wants to memorize it. “How does that go? Say it again.”
“She who did not come, wasn’t she determined nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart? If we had to exist to become the one we love, what would the heart have to create? Hm, I’ll text you how the rest of that goes, but I think that poem suits you.”
“How so?”
“You have a lonely gaze. You look like you want to be someone else right now.”
The words sink like an anchor, and Lumine knows she will be thinking about this for hours later. Her hands itch to do something in response. To hold his hand, or to strangle him, Lumine’s not sure. All she knows is her body growing restless. Her mind wants to wander to somewhere else less painful.
Venti pulls her out of the booth. “Come on. We’ve mourned long enough. It’s time to party.”
“Maybe I still want to mourn,” Lumine says, petulantly, but she finds that she doesn’t mean it. Shouldn’t she mean it? She never stopped mourning.
“We can reminisce again later. I will let you mourn as much as you want. But for now, dance with me.”
Venti leads her to the center, where the bodies sway to and fro, to and fro. It’s hot and sweaty and dark and easy to get lost in. Easy to lose one’s mind.
It’s perfect.
Lumine smiles and lets herself get caught in Venti’s orbit, dancing, laughing, and she can’t even remember what she’d been sad about earlier. She was… grieving, wasn’t she? It feels so foreign now when the beat of the music is dictating her heartbeat.
Lumine vaguely recognizes the song. It’s a club remix of Venti’s music — not the one he personally sings in his concerts, but one of those he composed and produced and sold for other singers to perform.
“Life is one big party!” Venti shouts, and then the crowd is shouting with him, chanting the lyrics in unison. Lumine shouts with them.
“Pa-pa-pa-pa-par-taaaay!”
It’s building up, going higher and faster, higher and faster, and the drop is going to be so sick that the dancers around them are collectively waiting with bated breath, anticipating, working themselves into a frenzy. The lights are there and then not and then there, and then there’s just shadows and heat and neon lights flashing, flashing, and then the beat drops and everyone is jumping and thrashing more than dancing and fuck. Fuck. Lumine is swept into it. She lets herself be swept into it. They all move as one organism.
Venti is closer now, so much closer, body against body that Lumine wants to breathe him in. His smile is charming, wine-stained. Easy.
Lumine feels easy, calm and ready to take the whole world all at once. She feels like floating. Like, like— “I can do anything right now,” she says, feeling the need to tell Venti. There’s no way Venti could have heard her with the raucous around them.
“Ah, you’re that kind of drunk, huh,” Venti answers back, grinning, and oh, so that’s what she’s feeling. Drunk. She shouldn’t be able to hear him either, but his voice is as clear as the waters from Springvale. He spins her around, but in the tight space between bodies, all he ends up doing is pull her against him. “Alright. What do you want to do then?”
It strikes her, suddenly, that she found the person she’s looking for. The one who will bring Aether’s play to life, with her. The hero to her tragedy.
It has to be Venti.
Lumine grins and hooks an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s go up to the roof. I want to ask you something.”
She leans close to whisper her own invitation, confident that he will understand his role. He will say yes. For, surely, Venti is a man governed by “Eros.”
—
Lumine blanks out after that. She might have had a couple more glasses, they might have sneaked onto the roof even though the building definitely wouldn’t have allowed it. There was a cool breeze, and Venti joked about something, but she doesn’t remember what they talked about, or how she came home. Vaguely, all she remembers is complaining about how there’s too many lights in the city to see the stars. You can’t see the Northern Crown constellation from here.
But true to Venti’s word, his wine is made of magic because Lumine wakes up in her bedroom with a clear head. No nausea, no headaches, completely sober. There’s two new messages on her phone. The first contains a familiar poem from last night. The other is an email with a PDF attachment.
There it is. Aether’s final manuscript.
Lumine spends the whole morning reading. By the time she reaches the last page, she despairs.
Just as how Lumine has no memory of what else she talked about with Venti on the roof — except for a vague recollection of him saying yes to her offering a role to play — the script provides a similar non-conclusion.
The script has no ending. Aether never finished the story.
END DRAFT.
fic inspiration:
the myths of dionysus as god of wine, theater, and madness; as well as his connection to orphism, death and rebirth, and so on. I have a whole spreadsheet of research materials, but the OSP video is the best primer
cult of dionysus (song) by the orion experience
description of dionysus from the bakkhai (translated by anne carson): "swoony type, long hair, bedroom eyes, cheeks like wine"
the temptation of thanatos (タナトスの誘惑) by hoshino mayo, translated by latteandcookies. this is the inspiration for the play aether wrote. it's a short story, but cw for suicide. fun fact: it's also the inspiration for yoasobi's song racing into the night
240520 UPDATE: I decided to make public the spotify playlist related to this fic.
poetry references:
[you fit into me] by margaret atwood
growing around grief by lois tonkin
I borrow moonlight... by saikaku ihara (his death poem; from the book, japanese death poems compiled by yoel hoffmann. page 268)
mizuta masahide's death poem (also found in japanese death poems, page 234)
my sister, who died young, takes up the task by jon pineda
on wanting to tell about a girl eating fish eyes by mary szybist
come to me now: loose me from hard care... fragment by sappho, translated by anne carson (page 5 of if not, winter)
blank joy by rainer maria rilke
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