For the first time, I feel like I can stop and take a break from jettisoning other people's memories to paper and put down my own thoughts in turn. It is still, still, overwhelming, but as filling the pages of my sketchbook as helped, perhaps this shall, as well.
(Note for future: Speak to androids about obtaining another sketchbook.)
...It is strange to just be "Izunia" again. Not even "Izunia Lucis Caelum" - at least not to most people. I think Prompto can't forget, and I'm sure that Noctis cannot, but to everyone else, it's a meaningless name, one world out of infinitely many. I cannot even recall who knows of my position, save my tactfully unspoken agreement with Jetshard to not speak of the matter of politics.
So it's just "Izunia," for the first time since... Twenty? Were we even yet twenty, when you gained those damnable healing powers? I look at Noctis and see you in his face and think, surely we couldn't have been that young. And yet at the same time, when I think of those times, I cannot help but see lines already in your face, exhaustion from a task that was the first thing in our lives we did not share.
Call it twenty, then. It seems appropriately poetic, anyway, to have our lives go completely to shit at the same age as Noctis.
And so it has been over a month. I think it safe to say that I'm mostly adjusted to the reality of flesh again - the exhaustion creeps over me at unexpected times, still, but that has ever been the curse of our line since I took up the Ring. Aside from that, I feel quite well. Taking up the blade again has posed some difficulty, but I don't believe that anyone has noticed. I'm fortunate that there's almost always someone about to resharpen my skills with, even with the strange hours I find myself keeping (see previous notes re: exhaustion).
It is the mental and emotional aspects of all of this that are difficult. I find myself unstable in a way that I thought I had conquered after your 'death.' The scattered pieces that I thought I had held together have flown apart and scattered through the gaps between the crystal dream and this sudden harsh physicality -
That is to say, I blame the sudden experience of having proper neurotransmitters for the first time in two thousand years. Especially since Insomnia, and Altissia, and all that you did after that I cannot bear to think of. That can wait, a little longer, before I commit it to the paper.
It has been a month. I circle around to the thought again and again, because it is so foreign. It is a mere month, and yet it feels... Well, not longer than the last two thousand years, but surely at least a century or two. A month since the Dawn and all ended, and yet every morning I can go to see the sun rise (if I so desire), and feel the wind upon my face. And then I go to the kitchens and ensure that none of the children filling the station has yet set fire to the kitchens, and make myself a coffee before I go to study the magic of this world, or any number of other things.
It has been a month without you. And yet, it has been one of the liveliest months of my entire life, because even discounting the new rediscoveries of skin and nerves and blood pushing through my veins, it is never truly quiet here. There is always someone doing something, always something that I can do with my hands, someone to talk to, some chore that needs doing because half the people here seem to have never lived on their own.
This month has been full, in a way that I cannot express.
It is not enough to make me stop missing you. But someday, perhaps it may be.
I do not know yet if I welcome that day or fear it.
6th Spring [Mar 28th]
For the first time, I feel like I can stop and take a break from jettisoning other people's memories to paper and put down my own thoughts in turn. It is still, still, overwhelming, but as filling the pages of my sketchbook as helped, perhaps this shall, as well.
(Note for future: Speak to androids about obtaining another sketchbook.)
...It is strange to just be "Izunia" again. Not even "Izunia Lucis Caelum" - at least not to most people. I think Prompto can't forget, and I'm sure that Noctis cannot, but to everyone else, it's a meaningless name, one world out of infinitely many. I cannot even recall who knows of my position, save my tactfully unspoken agreement with Jetshard to not speak of the matter of politics.
So it's just "Izunia," for the first time since... Twenty? Were we even yet twenty, when you gained those damnable healing powers? I look at Noctis and see you in his face and think, surely we couldn't have been that young. And yet at the same time, when I think of those times, I cannot help but see lines already in your face, exhaustion from a task that was the first thing in our lives we did not share.
Call it twenty, then. It seems appropriately poetic, anyway, to have our lives go completely to shit at the same age as Noctis.
And so it has been over a month. I think it safe to say that I'm mostly adjusted to the reality of flesh again - the exhaustion creeps over me at unexpected times, still, but that has ever been the curse of our line since I took up the Ring. Aside from that, I feel quite well. Taking up the blade again has posed some difficulty, but I don't believe that anyone has noticed. I'm fortunate that there's almost always someone about to resharpen my skills with, even with the strange hours I find myself keeping (see previous notes re: exhaustion).
It is the mental and emotional aspects of all of this that are difficult. I find myself unstable in a way that I thought I had conquered after your 'death.' The scattered pieces that I thought I had held together have flown apart and scattered through the gaps between the crystal dream and this sudden harsh physicality -
That is to say, I blame the sudden experience of having proper neurotransmitters for the first time in two thousand years. Especially since Insomnia, and Altissia, and all that you did after that I cannot bear to think of. That can wait, a little longer, before I commit it to the paper.
It has been a month. I circle around to the thought again and again, because it is so foreign. It is a mere month, and yet it feels... Well, not longer than the last two thousand years, but surely at least a century or two. A month since the Dawn and all ended, and yet every morning I can go to see the sun rise (if I so desire), and feel the wind upon my face. And then I go to the kitchens and ensure that none of the children filling the station has yet set fire to the kitchens, and make myself a coffee before I go to study the magic of this world, or any number of other things.
It has been a month without you. And yet, it has been one of the liveliest months of my entire life, because even discounting the new rediscoveries of skin and nerves and blood pushing through my veins, it is never truly quiet here. There is always someone doing something, always something that I can do with my hands, someone to talk to, some chore that needs doing because half the people here seem to have never lived on their own.
This month has been full, in a way that I cannot express.
It is not enough to make me stop missing you. But someday, perhaps it may be.
I do not know yet if I welcome that day or fear it.