[ Tied up in a red ribbon, a long scroll mysteriously appears in Pyra’s home. The handwriting consists of wild, messy characters; but thanks, perhaps, the town’s translating ability, it’s perfectly legible. The writer doesn’t identify himself. The text is full of disjointed observations about Chroma, little drawings, snatches of poetry, ideas for magical tools, jokes—and then all of that breaks off, and there’s a long blank space. Scrolling down, that wild script settles into endless paragraphs about Pyra: how she captivated him from the first day they’d met, how he dreams of the curves of her body, how their time trapped in that coffin shook him to the core, how her kisses kindled fire in his body and soul, how she rejected or ignored his first two confessions, how devastated he was when he learned that she didn’t want to exist anymore, and how he’d hoped that someone could make her happy and want to live in this world, even if it isn’t him.
He writes about his regrets for not telling her sooner about himself and Xie Lian. But she’d seemed so happy about planning their wedding, and at the time he himself was confused about the other man’s feelings for him. He realized he had been teasing and inadvertently leading Xie Lian on, calling him “dearest wife,” and was willing to take responsibility for that. By the time the two of them finally did clear up the nature of their feelings, the wedding “invitations” had gone out, and he was forced to do the very thing he’d wanted to avoid: upset Pyra.
He also regrets how he’d unwittingly toyed with Pyra’s feelings, how foolish he’d been not to realize how his flirting had affected her. Part of it was that he couldn’t believe that someone as lovely as Pyra could truly have feelings for him—wasn’t she named Queen of Chroma, and a host of other titles as well, crowned with petals fluttering down all around her? But in putting her on a pedestal, he realizes now, he wasn’t seeing her as a person. This… it was his fault entirely. So too was it his fault for responding to her confession so awkwardly, and making her weep. By the time he was able to pull himself together and actually respond to her, it was too late. She was gone. He’d hurt her that badly.
But intertwined with all this regret and self-recrimination is something else. His characters are nearly illegible here, hastily scrawled, as if these are feelings he’s ashamed of and doesn’t want to admit: disappointment that Pyra had been so quick to accept that he was in love with Xie Lian, so happy to plan his wedding to another, so quick to assume he didn’t love her and—yet again—assign his feelings to someone else. But it’s not as though he can blame her; everything she did was reasonable, anyone else would have done the same. Still, to have yearned for her, for so long, and then to have the words he so desperately, selfishly wanted to hear be spoken so sadly: it broke his heart. The feeling of being judged without being able to defend himself reminded him of old hurts. In his last life, he was called the “Yiling Patriarch, Lord of Evil,” just because he wanted to protect a group of old people and children from the irrational hatred of the world. He’d done a lot of things to earn that title, he’d been ridiculously, willfully naive about the complexities of the world, he knows this now, but even so…
He has gone back and forth between wanting to approach Pyra and talk to her about all of this, but has hesitated for two reasons: first, he worries he’ll make the situation worse instead of better, and somehow manage to hurt her even more. Would she even talk to him now, or would she use the other person, Mythra, to send him off? Second, even if they clear up this misunderstanding, what about the next one? And the next? Won’t he just end up hurting her again?
Underneath, there’s a picture of a butterfly circling a flower, never able to alight on it.
When it comes to Pyra, he feels he always either says the wrong things, or can’t say the right things. So, they can’t ever be close.
All of the above being true, he misses her every day. He writes about a brief moment every morning when he wakes up, when his thoughts are still fuzzy, before he’s remembered what happened: that’s the happiest time of his day. But when his thoughts clear and he remembers, sadness settles over his heart like a dark mantle. He is desperately sorry, more than anything he wants to make amends for the damage he’s done, he wants to make Pyra smile again… but he has no idea how.
There’s another large space in the scroll.
The next part has to do with Lan Wangji, and it’s all a disjointed mess of memories and feelings, old and new, blending together without any organization. Friendship thwarted, closeness thwarted. Like thunder from a clear sky, a love confession. Old memories of constantly being judged, new memories of being supported without question. Kisses that burn. Intense guilt for the pain he unwittingly inflicted.
Even now, even though it’s been weeks since he first learned about all of this, it still seems surreal.
If he returns to his world, it will have been over ten years since they’ve seen one another. Won’t Lan Wangji have moved on, by then? Isn’t that the best possible outcome for him? To find someone else, marry, raise children, and forget all about him. How could he be so selfish as to want to reappear in the man’s life, after so much time? Even worse, if somehow he were even able to return the man’s feelings, and Lan Wangji then returned home with memories of such an affair, how will he get through the next decade? Isn’t that even more cruel?
He’ll inflict pain if he ignores the man, pain if he pursues friendship only, pain if he accepts him. It’s a matter of balancing between different hurts, and it is breaking him.
He loves Pyra. For Lan Wangji, he scratches out various characters, and finally settles on the one that refers to a kind of feeling that makes one’s heart itch.
At the bottom of all of this is a picture of an ancient tree, its stout trunk gnarled and its leafy branches reaching towards the sky. A solitary figure leans against it, sitting in its shade. ]
[ A book appears in his house, unassuming and plain as if it had been a part of the room the entire time. Within is an organized log, the words within neat, strict, and precise upon the pages, more seemingly printed by a machine rather than etched by a person. The entries are all marked with dates, times, and places, everything a sterile description of the town. Names appear, his does, the description small, a note about his smile, but it ends with a comment, a reminder: she must return to her Father, she must. Other dates, other hours, other minutes have no words written after them, but the emptiness seems somehow melancholy. When the entries do have some sort of event, it all ends with that same reminder: she must return to her father. She must return to him, to beg him to let them die. She's sorry. Any happiness, any significant entry is tinged with this guilt that always, without fail, comes into remind her that she should not be. She's sorry.
The further into the diary there are empty pages, days, where she would not have seen him. But it seems that reminder is no longer there at the end of all the logs anymore. But she's sorry in the next entry-- for forgetting to have that reminder in the last.
His name appears again, and then more often, the more times she see him.
He's wonderful, he's brilliant, dazzling, kind, generous, funny, clever, and with such a precious heart. A heart that feels so deeply for everyone, a heart that she's grateful and sorry thinking she might take any space within it. She writes about the time in the castle, about how she wonders what would have happened if they had stay trapped. She writes about the time he lost his color, how devastated it was to see his smile gone, how she was unable to protect him, and that, it seems, that she had chosen wrong in sacrificing herself. She's sorry, she regrets it, she should have awakened Mythra in that moment to save him instead-- but she hadn't been ready then. She writes of their first kiss, impulsive as it was, how it had seemed that nothing else existed in that moment, dizzying, of how it was then that she wondered if he could ever feel something more. Of how perhaps he might, because he kissed her.
She's sorry, again, this time for daring to let that feeling cross her mind. She's sorry she begins to feel this way for a man who is engaged to another, how dare she, this is not meant for her. She's sorry she took her curiosity as far as to pose for him, flirt with him anyway, to see if he was interested at all, and how when he had tugged at the sheet her breath had nearly left her. She had wondered what would have happened, if it had completely fallen away. Yet he had painted her so beautifully, he had called her beautiful; she had thought to herself, then, how nice it was to be called such things, how hearing them from him in particular caused her to feel as if she were lighter than air. She had wondered if he was only saying such things to be nice; she had let herself imagine if it meant more. How dare she.
But how beautiful his smile is, how relieving it is to see him laugh, to play, to trick, how wonderful it is when his eyes light up when he finds something new to spark the curiosity and ingenuity of his mind. How she wishes to protect it, how she wishes to help him, to only be a source of good in his life. She loves him. Then Xie Lian and him finally tell her that there is no wedding, it's all but a prank instead. She is hurt not so much for it being a prank, but for how long it took for him to come to her, as if he was scared to speaking with her. A new word appears: why? There's a break in the lines, then an answer: fear.
She's sorry once more that she had given reasons for him to be scared of speaking with her. Is it because he only doesn't want to hurt her? Or is it because he knows that she had lost control before, that she can cause so much damage, that he would be wary of upsetting her? It must be, and that's the last thing she wanted. She wants to make herself seem weaker to him, she must smile for him, she shouldn't bring up the kiss they had shared before, if it might upset him or push him away. If she said anything, it might hurt him. If she said anything... she's sorry. Love isn't for a being like her, it wasn't an emotion she originally had to begin with.
But she is weak, and she asks for another kiss at the party regardless. She's sorry. She doesn't know how she could be so selfish for asking for another one, or how she wishes to have another, how the words of "you" had been at the tip of her tongue the moment he had asked if she favored anyone at the party. He could have easily laughed and giggled and teased his way out of the kiss if he had wanted, but he didn't, and that he didn't had tugged upon the terrible hope that had already set root within her heart that he might feel the same.
She writes of his hands upon her back, of how brief the contact was, how nice it felt that it had been him to touch her there over the ether lines, that in that moment, if perhaps a true affinity link had been formed, she could have told him everything then. She wouldn't have been able to hide it, not if he felt it through their connection.
She's sorry. She should have talked to him sooner, and indeed she had conversed with others about saying what is on her mind, to say words that need to be said to another, because no one knows when someone might disappear from this world. So she had said them, and she's only sorry for it. She's hurt, confused, disappointed in herself for letting herself feel these selfish things, angry at herself even. She's sorry she dared say anything at all, and then-- Lan Wangji.
She's sorry for not noticing sooner, how sad he had looked when she had told him about the prank-wedding the first day she had met him. She's sorry that she didn't comprehend the complexity of the relationship between them until that night, that this entire time for the last few months while Pyra was wondering and pining about kisses that were given and then forgotten by Wei Ying, too worried to talk to him about them, there was another who was in love with him all along, suffering for him. Another from his world, someone who knows him better, someone who has a history with him, someone who Wei Ying can behave naturally around. She can never be that person to him, she's sorry, she's weak, weak to having had any hope that her feelings might be returned. But she loves him.
How ever did she forget herself, that this isn't something for her, that as strongly as she might feel for another, it's simply not meant to be. She's not human, she's not mortal, she's supposed to be but an observer. How dare she think that-- no, how dare she feel. How dare she wonder if she could come between Lan Wangji and the one he loves. How dare she even possibly hurt a human like that; she wants the both of them to be happy, she doesn't want to stand in either man's way... Ah, how dare she believe that she ever actually could, that she had a place at all within his heart to begin with.
A small break in the log appears, dates and hours and minutes of empty entries. And then in smaller text:
If this is what this love feels like, then she knows, she fears, she laments that... somehow, she feels similarly for another. That her heart is vulnerable like that. Is it really worth it, feeling this way all over again? Is it really worth the heartbreak, knowing she can’t, she shouldn’t? That something like this... isn’t for her?
....She loves Wei Ying, she loves knowing that she can love even if it is painful, but the emotions had never been a part of her originally. It hurts, she's sorry she forgot herself. The text repeats: this... isn't meant for her, even if she wishes for it, even as she feels that these emotions remain, even if she knows this can happen all over again even if she moves on, even if she argues that these feelings are worth something, if not to him then to her, please, they are, they are worth something, Mythra, they are, even if they hurt--
Mythra had once lost control after seeing so much of what she had grown to love be destroyed, of being part of that destruction, of a young boy die-- the same youth that she had convinced to stay behind in the capital out of concern for his safety. She remembers how cold he looked, how pale, how nothing about him moved; stardust, merely inert stardust once more. She remembers how love-- any kind of love-- had hurt, after losing it. She remembers creating Pyra then, retreating into her mind.
She wants him to know that she's sorry for hurting him, for not being brave enough to talk with him, for letting her feelings get this far, for not seeing it sooner that he doesn't feel the same way in return, she's sorry that she was a coward and that it hurts, that he shouldn't be worried. She's sorry. Pyra wants Wei Ying to be happy. She wants him to smile, to laugh-- genuinely. She wants him to find that peace and comfort, she wants him to be safe and content. She wants him to find happiness, to know that he's adored and cherished and makes the entire town all that more wonderful and bright, to know that he's dazzling and beautiful, that his radiance is a gift to know, that his smile is infectious, that his kisses are enchanting, that she believes in him, that he can do whatever it is that he puts his mind to, that he could save this world and its color, that it is a blessing that he is alive, that she knows him at all. ]
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He writes about his regrets for not telling her sooner about himself and Xie Lian. But she’d seemed so happy about planning their wedding, and at the time he himself was confused about the other man’s feelings for him. He realized he had been teasing and inadvertently leading Xie Lian on, calling him “dearest wife,” and was willing to take responsibility for that. By the time the two of them finally did clear up the nature of their feelings, the wedding “invitations” had gone out, and he was forced to do the very thing he’d wanted to avoid: upset Pyra.
He also regrets how he’d unwittingly toyed with Pyra’s feelings, how foolish he’d been not to realize how his flirting had affected her. Part of it was that he couldn’t believe that someone as lovely as Pyra could truly have feelings for him—wasn’t she named Queen of Chroma, and a host of other titles as well, crowned with petals fluttering down all around her? But in putting her on a pedestal, he realizes now, he wasn’t seeing her as a person. This… it was his fault entirely. So too was it his fault for responding to her confession so awkwardly, and making her weep. By the time he was able to pull himself together and actually respond to her, it was too late. She was gone. He’d hurt her that badly.
But intertwined with all this regret and self-recrimination is something else. His characters are nearly illegible here, hastily scrawled, as if these are feelings he’s ashamed of and doesn’t want to admit: disappointment that Pyra had been so quick to accept that he was in love with Xie Lian, so happy to plan his wedding to another, so quick to assume he didn’t love her and—yet again—assign his feelings to someone else. But it’s not as though he can blame her; everything she did was reasonable, anyone else would have done the same. Still, to have yearned for her, for so long, and then to have the words he so desperately, selfishly wanted to hear be spoken so sadly: it broke his heart. The feeling of being judged without being able to defend himself reminded him of old hurts. In his last life, he was called the “Yiling Patriarch, Lord of Evil,” just because he wanted to protect a group of old people and children from the irrational hatred of the world. He’d done a lot of things to earn that title, he’d been ridiculously, willfully naive about the complexities of the world, he knows this now, but even so…
He has gone back and forth between wanting to approach Pyra and talk to her about all of this, but has hesitated for two reasons: first, he worries he’ll make the situation worse instead of better, and somehow manage to hurt her even more. Would she even talk to him now, or would she use the other person, Mythra, to send him off? Second, even if they clear up this misunderstanding, what about the next one? And the next? Won’t he just end up hurting her again?
Underneath, there’s a picture of a butterfly circling a flower, never able to alight on it.
When it comes to Pyra, he feels he always either says the wrong things, or can’t say the right things. So, they can’t ever be close.
All of the above being true, he misses her every day. He writes about a brief moment every morning when he wakes up, when his thoughts are still fuzzy, before he’s remembered what happened: that’s the happiest time of his day. But when his thoughts clear and he remembers, sadness settles over his heart like a dark mantle. He is desperately sorry, more than anything he wants to make amends for the damage he’s done, he wants to make Pyra smile again… but he has no idea how.
There’s another large space in the scroll.
The next part has to do with Lan Wangji, and it’s all a disjointed mess of memories and feelings, old and new, blending together without any organization. Friendship thwarted, closeness thwarted. Like thunder from a clear sky, a love confession. Old memories of constantly being judged, new memories of being supported without question. Kisses that burn. Intense guilt for the pain he unwittingly inflicted.
Even now, even though it’s been weeks since he first learned about all of this, it still seems surreal.
If he returns to his world, it will have been over ten years since they’ve seen one another. Won’t Lan Wangji have moved on, by then? Isn’t that the best possible outcome for him? To find someone else, marry, raise children, and forget all about him. How could he be so selfish as to want to reappear in the man’s life, after so much time? Even worse, if somehow he were even able to return the man’s feelings, and Lan Wangji then returned home with memories of such an affair, how will he get through the next decade? Isn’t that even more cruel?
He’ll inflict pain if he ignores the man, pain if he pursues friendship only, pain if he accepts him. It’s a matter of balancing between different hurts, and it is breaking him.
He loves Pyra. For Lan Wangji, he scratches out various characters, and finally settles on the one that refers to a kind of feeling that makes one’s heart itch.
At the bottom of all of this is a picture of an ancient tree, its stout trunk gnarled and its leafy branches reaching towards the sky. A solitary figure leans against it, sitting in its shade. ]
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The further into the diary there are empty pages, days, where she would not have seen him. But it seems that reminder is no longer there at the end of all the logs anymore. But she's sorry in the next entry-- for forgetting to have that reminder in the last.
His name appears again, and then more often, the more times she see him.
He's wonderful, he's brilliant, dazzling, kind, generous, funny, clever, and with such a precious heart. A heart that feels so deeply for everyone, a heart that she's grateful and sorry thinking she might take any space within it. She writes about the time in the castle, about how she wonders what would have happened if they had stay trapped. She writes about the time he lost his color, how devastated it was to see his smile gone, how she was unable to protect him, and that, it seems, that she had chosen wrong in sacrificing herself. She's sorry, she regrets it, she should have awakened Mythra in that moment to save him instead-- but she hadn't been ready then. She writes of their first kiss, impulsive as it was, how it had seemed that nothing else existed in that moment, dizzying, of how it was then that she wondered if he could ever feel something more. Of how perhaps he might, because he kissed her.
She's sorry, again, this time for daring to let that feeling cross her mind. She's sorry she begins to feel this way for a man who is engaged to another, how dare she, this is not meant for her. She's sorry she took her curiosity as far as to pose for him, flirt with him anyway, to see if he was interested at all, and how when he had tugged at the sheet her breath had nearly left her. She had wondered what would have happened, if it had completely fallen away. Yet he had painted her so beautifully, he had called her beautiful; she had thought to herself, then, how nice it was to be called such things, how hearing them from him in particular caused her to feel as if she were lighter than air. She had wondered if he was only saying such things to be nice; she had let herself imagine if it meant more. How dare she.
But how beautiful his smile is, how relieving it is to see him laugh, to play, to trick, how wonderful it is when his eyes light up when he finds something new to spark the curiosity and ingenuity of his mind. How she wishes to protect it, how she wishes to help him, to only be a source of good in his life. She loves him. Then Xie Lian and him finally tell her that there is no wedding, it's all but a prank instead. She is hurt not so much for it being a prank, but for how long it took for him to come to her, as if he was scared to speaking with her. A new word appears: why? There's a break in the lines, then an answer: fear.
She's sorry once more that she had given reasons for him to be scared of speaking with her. Is it because he only doesn't want to hurt her? Or is it because he knows that she had lost control before, that she can cause so much damage, that he would be wary of upsetting her? It must be, and that's the last thing she wanted. She wants to make herself seem weaker to him, she must smile for him, she shouldn't bring up the kiss they had shared before, if it might upset him or push him away. If she said anything, it might hurt him. If she said anything... she's sorry. Love isn't for a being like her, it wasn't an emotion she originally had to begin with.
But she is weak, and she asks for another kiss at the party regardless. She's sorry. She doesn't know how she could be so selfish for asking for another one, or how she wishes to have another, how the words of "you" had been at the tip of her tongue the moment he had asked if she favored anyone at the party. He could have easily laughed and giggled and teased his way out of the kiss if he had wanted, but he didn't, and that he didn't had tugged upon the terrible hope that had already set root within her heart that he might feel the same.
She writes of his hands upon her back, of how brief the contact was, how nice it felt that it had been him to touch her there over the ether lines, that in that moment, if perhaps a true affinity link had been formed, she could have told him everything then. She wouldn't have been able to hide it, not if he felt it through their connection.
She's sorry. She should have talked to him sooner, and indeed she had conversed with others about saying what is on her mind, to say words that need to be said to another, because no one knows when someone might disappear from this world. So she had said them, and she's only sorry for it. She's hurt, confused, disappointed in herself for letting herself feel these selfish things, angry at herself even. She's sorry she dared say anything at all, and then-- Lan Wangji.
She's sorry for not noticing sooner, how sad he had looked when she had told him about the prank-wedding the first day she had met him. She's sorry that she didn't comprehend the complexity of the relationship between them until that night, that this entire time for the last few months while Pyra was wondering and pining about kisses that were given and then forgotten by Wei Ying, too worried to talk to him about them, there was another who was in love with him all along, suffering for him. Another from his world, someone who knows him better, someone who has a history with him, someone who Wei Ying can behave naturally around. She can never be that person to him, she's sorry, she's weak, weak to having had any hope that her feelings might be returned. But she loves him.
How ever did she forget herself, that this isn't something for her, that as strongly as she might feel for another, it's simply not meant to be. She's not human, she's not mortal, she's supposed to be but an observer. How dare she think that-- no, how dare she feel. How dare she wonder if she could come between Lan Wangji and the one he loves. How dare she even possibly hurt a human like that; she wants the both of them to be happy, she doesn't want to stand in either man's way... Ah, how dare she believe that she ever actually could, that she had a place at all within his heart to begin with.
A small break in the log appears, dates and hours and minutes of empty entries. And then in smaller text:
If this is what this love feels like, then she knows, she fears, she laments that... somehow, she feels similarly for another. That her heart is vulnerable like that. Is it really worth it, feeling this way all over again? Is it really worth the heartbreak, knowing she can’t, she shouldn’t? That something like this... isn’t for her?
....She loves Wei Ying, she loves knowing that she can love even if it is painful, but the emotions had never been a part of her originally. It hurts, she's sorry she forgot herself. The text repeats: this... isn't meant for her, even if she wishes for it, even as she feels that these emotions remain, even if she knows this can happen all over again even if she moves on, even if she argues that these feelings are worth something, if not to him then to her, please, they are, they are worth something, Mythra, they are, even if they hurt--
Mythra had once lost control after seeing so much of what she had grown to love be destroyed, of being part of that destruction, of a young boy die-- the same youth that she had convinced to stay behind in the capital out of concern for his safety. She remembers how cold he looked, how pale, how nothing about him moved; stardust, merely inert stardust once more. She remembers how love-- any kind of love-- had hurt, after losing it. She remembers creating Pyra then, retreating into her mind.
She wants him to know that she's sorry for hurting him, for not being brave enough to talk with him, for letting her feelings get this far, for not seeing it sooner that he doesn't feel the same way in return, she's sorry that she was a coward and that it hurts, that he shouldn't be worried. She's sorry. Pyra wants Wei Ying to be happy. She wants him to smile, to laugh-- genuinely. She wants him to find that peace and comfort, she wants him to be safe and content. She wants him to find happiness, to know that he's adored and cherished and makes the entire town all that more wonderful and bright, to know that he's dazzling and beautiful, that his radiance is a gift to know, that his smile is infectious, that his kisses are enchanting, that she believes in him, that he can do whatever it is that he puts his mind to, that he could save this world and its color, that it is a blessing that he is alive, that she knows him at all. ]