you, who was my first encounter;

hydaelyn, can you hear me?

i am praying to you in a cathedral worn down by the art of a child.
not meteion. she is not here. not someone that you would know, either.
nor someone that even i.

hydaelyn, i know, it’s blasphemy to pray here,
where they’ve got a worm for one god and a king of secrets for another—
(this isn’t me trying to be crude or cruel; i should work for them once this is done. they’re very kind and they haven’t been cruel to us, though we have all trespassed on their grounds and robbed them for the scourge that tears the earth.)
but there was no place better to pray.

it’s been too long since i knew myself a miracle-worker.
too long since i was a hero.
too long since—

i know that i dropped the mantle after you and yours were gone
but i feel that i’ve been useless.
i feel my prayers have been useless.
i feel my faith has been useless.
but won’t i betray you not to try?

i’m praying because i need to believe, still.
i’m praying because i need this to mean something.
i miss you, hydaelyn, and the etheirys we bequeathed to your name.
i think i am ready to go home. but not while this star is suffering.
can’t you stretch out your hand from the source,
and lend me your strength once more?

elementals, can you hear me?

i am praying to you in the closest thing that the cosmiae have to nature.
i’m surrounded by the corpses of the dead.
cnidaria and arthropoda on a beach that’s bleached red,
and the last of the water is going to dry.
this is a cruel face of nature, but i don’t have anything else.
i can’t give you the space and the ships even neath flora’s thrall,
i can’t give you a world where the crystal’s magic vanished from vanity,
and i can’t give you the work of a child whose dreams and tales shall never know you.
so please, accept this. this is all i have.

and i’m not going to kneel down and offer my life to you instead,
and i won’t hope that from your earth you can do all my work for me.
unlike some people, i know that this isn’t the nature of praying.

but i am praying to you because i need your aid.
i need the strength
to keep on going.
to help those who deserve it.
to help those in greater pain than i.
i need the strength to do my old job once again. the one i never left.

i miss you. i miss the twelveswood.
i miss the days beside my guildspeople beneath your shield and shroud.
but please understand, it isn’t my time. no matter how much i want to go home.

when i am home i will heal the roots and water the flowers,
and life will spring in my return.
but while i am still here, won’t you hear me from far away,
and lend me your strength once more?

meteion, can you hear me?

before i call for you, i have to start with this: i’m sorry
i left you back on etheirys after i’d just found you.
poor friend i am. i know. i know it wasn’t my doing. still,
i have to be kind. i have to reach out to you.
all that you deserve and more.

i’ve spent the whole night praying,
i’ve been on a sojourn; that means i’m traveling.
perhaps hermes mentioned azem to you once.
i’ve been a bit like her today.

oh—did you know she’s here, actually?
i kind of think you would like it, here, when things start going better.
it’s very strange, i think, and you would be easily overwhelmed.
after all, this is the kind of place that causes that loud, horrid, shaky sensation
of being alone, and afraid, and without hope.
but the people here, in cata cosmia—hope is all they have.
this is a world that keeps on living.

i’m getting off-topic.

i’m calling for you,
despite the lonely,
despite the sorrow,
despite the ceaseless suffering,
because i miss having someone who understands.
it gets so hard some days to keep on going. to fly forward, no matter what.
but like i did for you, i have to keep going for them. i think… you’d understand most.
so, will you hear my thoughts and feelings a hundred lightyears away
and lend me your strength to tell all and more?
i promise, i’ll return to you eventually.

menphina, can you hear me?

apparently there was a ritual for love.
i’m staring at the garden of corpses now.
can you see the blood and glass through me?

i’ve been following you for so long that
i’ve forgotten that this is how love is twisted.
or perhaps i’ve been trying to forget.
i can’t imagine how it’d feel like if you were still here, remembering
this isn’t even the first time your art has been warped in your name.

i heard this was—
for love.
for mercy.
for life.
for safety.
for health.
for protection.
for the world to be as it was.
for love. for love. for love. for love.
what do other people think love is like?
this just feels like senseless cruelty.

menphina, my faith in you is being challenged,
and i wasn’t even the one whose face it decried.
but i need your aid and i need your guidance.
there’s no reason for me not to believe.

and if i can’t, my work was pointless.
if i can’t, i’m only a shepherd leading more lambs into slaughter.
so hear me, even in the aetherial sea, and this is more than just a plea—
and give me the strength and faith and hope to see love through once more.

themis, can you hear me?

i heard you died in the gravwell, you foolish hag.
(hythlodaeus, too; i’m not praying to him)
can you stop dying? this is the fourth time now at least.
really, i just want to know you’re alright. i haven’t seen you since

(which yes i realize this sounds hypocritical because i am just as loathe as you seem to be of these forums but i do try and i’ve never seen you “on-line” and whoever works next to prima hasn’t said anything of you. even if they have too much else to worry about besides it. there is nuance in this poetry i hope you, being of etheirys, can understand)

so i hope if you’re still dead (again) that you can hear me now.

you used to be a god at least twice in your lifetimes,
so i stumbled across your stardust in my journey.
there’s no one left to tell me cata cosmia is inhabitable,
but i’ve accepted it in a voice like your own, or mister selch, or lahabrea:
warbly, half-present, chiding, hollow, half-long-gone. too hollow.
you carried as many hopes as i have, or maybe less but just as heavy.
so i’ve taken the stardust that outer space has left me and held it in my palms
and now i’m here calling for the gods you chose to make.

the gravwell made me nauseous yesterday.
if i step on it i think
i’d hurl.
i’d touch the radiant.
i’d shatter and invert inside out.
if i were here alone no one would know it ever happened.
i’m trying not to consider that might have happened to you.

now i’m here praying for you, and praying for the first primal, and the first hero.
how do you shoulder those burdens? how, without it tearing the skin off?
we have to shoulder that again, even shared amongst three hundred people.
i just wish i’d prepared. i just wish we were ready. it isn’t like the last time.

come back for the people you love, before (again) it’s all too late.

venat, can you hear me?

i don’t know what to say at this point. i’ve left so much unsaid. there’s so much that’s happened since. i miss you, though we hardly talked, i wish that we could speak again, you’d understand the emptiness. you’d understand that lonely suffering. you’d understand why azem is so torn about the events here witnessed in under two days’ time, you’d understand how all this and more is ripping the hearts out of your beloveds of both ages. i have a lot to say, and there is another trial lying ahead in a few days’ time, and i just don’t have any time left. is this how it feels to really die, no echo in sight to turn it all back? i don’t think it is. i don’t think it is. i don’t know. i’m at a loss for words now. i saved you for last and yet i’m all out of prayers. we’re running out of time. i’m running out of time. but i don’t know what else to do now but pray. i’ve been here so long and i’ve hardly regained anything for it, so all i can do is pray. i wish i could take up theogony here but i considered it too late and now all the people i’d ask are long gone, wherever in the pages they’ve gone, and there’s no writing them out of it. i wonder if we’ll end up the same, trapped in a tale of changed history that we can never escape from. i know i’m off-topic again but realize i’m panicking now because you’re one of the only people that would let me have this moment to babble in the midst of faux holy prayer in the middle of nowhere.

i have to take a breath.
i don’t know. i’ve never felt this helpless. i’ve never felt so at a loss. hardly any of the scions are here, and if they are, they hardly know me, and it hurts enough already that i don’t think i want to try at it. i don’t have anything to help people trapped in pages the way a biblos is. i don’t have anything to pry people from crystal the way the exarch was, cells rotting from the inside out. i don’t have anything for someone like themis or all the fauna and flock in mare. i’m scared, venat. and for once, i’m starting to think that no gods can help save this.

but i’ll betray you and everyone else not to try. i knew that from the start.
wherever you are in that aetherial sea, before you ever arrive here,
lend me the strength to try; to be heard; to fly forth; to keep working; to return.
lend me that and i’ll tell you a tale of the world when i find you again, and how, despite all the ugly, despite all the cosmic and new, it still managed to keep going. and it was all from the help of those looking from above like you.