Love; The Eyes of the Beholder

[Peepers]

"You were supposed to be our God of Death, why must you show any compassion?"

                                                    "Dispose of the heart you bare to the world. Death has no feelings."

"If you should so wish to cry your heart out, then perhaps it is best that be cut out entirely..."                               

"Please... No. I just wanted to-...!"         

Have you ever felt particularly hungry, yet never seem to find something you would crave? An empty feeling in your gut, and yet it's impossible to quell? That space in your chest that wishes for something to fill it, and thus you search for something, anything to replace the emptiness?

I searched. I think, anyway. I don't recall, not much. The world before me has been nothing, all colored in greys, blacks, and whites. Though I've tried to smile, and I have tried to be friendly, I am met with pleasantries and nothing more. I did not stand out. In fact, I appeared to have blended in so much that I was just another nameless face among the plethora of a sea of faces.

I was told that my expression was dead. Perhaps that was apt, even. I've remained so exhausted and tired despite the lack of anxiety truly running through me. It was so strange, being unable to rest. Night terrors plagued me, and yet I could never recall what they were. I would wake up with a start, unable to move, and yet I felt that it was wrong to be afraid. Why would I be afraid if I was like the dead?

...

Ah, but it changed, didn't it? I found something to actually be alive for, and it was in the most unlikely thing in the world. I found something to worship, and I found someone to adore. If for them I would need to carve this newly revived heart out, I would do so without hesitation. I've no fear for death, I've no fear for anything.

Nothing, except losing what gave me life.

For You I will dance, for You I will pray. For You, I will do whatever is needed.

Just please... Don't leave me. Don't abandon me once I've not lived up to a standard you don't have. Don't drop me down into a pit to be forgotten.

I beg you.

[Peepers]

"Do you regret having fallen in love with him? Don't you wish you could have loved someone else, someone healthy...? Someone who would love you just the same?"

"Of course not. I can't imagine a world where I would fail to have loved him."

"Ah... Perhaps love really is blind."

My body burns with passion. My body hurts from the flames which engulf my body. Starflame and holy light scorched my flesh, but I didn't care then, I don't care now. The only thing I care about now, is Him.

He, engulfed by his own sin, by his own revelry, reached a point of no return. I watched as his very being was devoured by that which he tried to take control of. So I take a step forward. I take another step. More and more, I hear voices and shouts, concerns and panic, and yet all I can see is him.

It'll be fine. I've endured worse. I want to apologize to Her, to the one that will have to continue on in my stead. I'm a selfish being at heart. I hope she will one day recall and realize what love is as well, because I could not show her, myself.

Ah. I'm no longer scared. The fear I felt when he first devoured himself is now gone. All that's left is the adoration. The endeared smile. The acceptance that we will be together no matter where it will be.

...

It's fine. I've gone through worse pain before. Being eaten and consumed entirely, that isn't something that I'm against. So long as I end up in the same place as my beloved, it doesn't matter.

The creature that is my beloved barely turns towards me, only seeing me as a meal. That's fine, too. Because that isn't actually Him. It's a monster that took him away.



I smile and brush some hair from in front of my face. My tired eyes stare, with the sweetest words, I say to him-

"I love you, Lyseroth."

...

I'm devoured, and I'm taken away. My very soul is rended into fragments, and yet I willingly allow it. I allow the me that is so in love with him to be fully taken and eaten.

I hear a voice. Gentle, sad, but encouraging.

"Good Night, Sanctum."

[Peepers]

"What was it that you wanted in the end, Iliane?"

"Mm... I'm not sure. I want to affirm that I lived. That I was alive... That I existed to be more than a replacement."

"What if you couldn't achieve that, then?"

"... I suppose that at least affirming I existed at all, would do."

The last few moments of my life were filled with pain. Just how I asked it to be. I wasn't abandoned, I don't believe. I just wasn't good enough.

I never would have been, not when I was never whole while I lived.

Is it selfish, that I wanted to die like that? To be one with myself once again and be whole, even at the cost of being unable to see Him unsealed?

...

I'm sorry, dear Cinderella. I've failed you. I pray that the man that fulfilled my wish of an agonizing end fulfills the last wish I gave to him.

This is goodbye, and perhaps... It was too foolish of us to believe I was ever a princess in the first place.