Sunlight after the rain (first draft)

Partly adaptation of "Silence"and "I am a shrine of my sister's fear"

Written for Smith Precollege writing program assignment

Three perspectives on a single series of events

1 - You. (Zrayuu)

You do not remember now how long you have been floating for. Nor do you remember how it is you came to be this form.  Did you start from the stream of trickling water, sliding down mountains and forming great pools? Did you wake up suspended in the sky, simply floating in wisps of cold air? Or were you awoken when finally, coming from the greyest of clouds, the droplet of ancient history you’d joined fell to the dirt, to be absorbed and taken in as nutrients of a plant?

It does not matter now. You flow with the gusts of wind that nudge you along. You paint the endless blue with your translucent white, travelling across the sky as the breeze will take you. You briefly recognize that you are not just part of the clouds you have been travelling along – you were something more before. But your memories of the past are hazy – in what you believe is your mind, they dance around you, taunt you, and abandon you in a torturous state of unknowing. You look to – or rather, perceive – your side, where the clouds end and the sky starts. It dawns on you that the colors where the haze transitions to azure seem extremely familiar. 

Amel. Your sister. How could you have forgotten?

Sometimes, when you were sitting alone in your suffocating office, you would remember the way her hair would ripple in pools of white and blue. Her peculiar hair color was a result of a failed attempt to dye away the species-specific feature of your people: snow white hair. You remember how you had to explain how it was forbidden to erase such identifying features in Cynthrite. It was a discriminatory law enforced by the Council to divide the “humans” from the “monsters”. As you searched for how to explain why this was the case, Amel leaned a little into your hand, which had been absentmindedly placed on her right cheek. 

“I’m not ‘human’, nor am I a monster, so why should my hair color matter?”, she pouted.

She was right: after all, being a human or monster was not a binary. The silver-white hair you shared was certainly not characteristic of those paintings you’d seen of the ancient humans – but it certainly didn’t mark them as ‘monsters’, a derogatory term that denoted those that physically resembled ‘uncivilized beasts’ more than humans. You couldn’t find the words to explain that as the direct family of a senior member of the Council, the two of you were supposed to accept the rules that were set. When the awkward silence you’d created hung from the air for more than a minute, Amel sighed and said something about how even ‘the smartest person in the world’ – that was what she thought of you back then – didn’t know the answer to her question. She got on the tip of her toes, quickly pecked you on the forehead, and trotted away, asking the servants around her if they could help cut some of her hair off. 

For some reason, the dye never got fully removed. It ended up becoming a permanent, watered-down portrayal of childhood innocence. Whenever you were reminded of this incident, years after your relationship with Amel had become irreparable, a quiet chuckle would escape from the apathetic facade you wore every day.

Amel. Your sister. How could you have not loved her?

You thrived in seeing her grow everyday. Watching her wilt as you distanced yourself from her was torturous, but you knew it was for the best. You had remained stagnant in that moment years ago, when you had started to devise your plan to stop the world, your sister’s world, from ending. You were fueled forward only by the desire for her happiness. She needed to be with people that would uplift her. People that wouldn’t betray her trust, no matter if it would benefit her eventually or not. People that weren't going to drag her into a murky abyss and frame it as love. 

People unlike you. 

The rain that had been welling up like tears in the mist has drizzled down for a while now. You pray for the clouds to part, to let the sunlight endow its warmth to your sister whom you’ve left behind, and they follow your will. You take it to be a farewell present of some sorts. Instinctively, words of gratitude attempt to escape from you – but you have no mouth to speak with, and the clouds have no ears.

You rip away from the mist that was holding you as the gulf separating the clouds widens. The freezing temperature of the surrounding air rattles through your nonexistent body, startling you. You wonder how one still feels such physical sensations even when their body has perished, but you dismiss this question passively, instead focusing once again on the tiny specks on the vast expanse of land behind you. Finding your sister, the size of half a sesame seed on the colossal quilt laid out in front of you, seems impossible at first. You wander around for a minute, hesitating on whether to get closer to the surface or not, when you feel a gentle tug. Tentative but softly persistent; just like the one you would always feel at the sleeves of your tailored uniform as you turned your back to a little girl that called out your forgotten name pitifully. 

Amel. Your sister. She is calling for you. 

It seems that by calling you, she ignited a connection between herself and your soul. You can see her so clearly now, pushing past the doors in the wooden cottage you had built in case she needed a place to rest after the long battle. She grabs a small umbrella and shuffles into an oversized raincoat, seemingly headed towards the garden. The garden where you’d planted those blue hydrangea-like flowers she used to make bouquets and crowns out of when she was young.

Disgust creeps into your mind as a surge of joy overwhelms you. You reckon that every single second you lived was a prolonged second of hypocrisy. You had wished Amel would be able to move on from you and live her life happily in the past, but now, you are happy that she still thinks of you – that memories of you will linger with her for the rest of her life, like the battle scars and burns that pattern her body now.

No heaven would admit you now. You move forward, forward, and forward again – just as you did when you were alive – to reach your sister, one last time. A selfish desire, you know it, but still, you can’t stop yourself. The rain that you were once part of continues to drizzle down, but the sunlight wafts through, lifting the curtains of dull grey away. The heat scorches your entire being as you push towards where you believe Amel is, but all you can feel is the cold sensation of the dripping rain and the draft of wind that pelts against your movement. 

You hope that only the forgiving sunlight after the rain reaches her.

2 - My sister. (Amel)

And she must have been scared too, right?

My sister, she must have been scared.

As she sank her feet into the wretched ground she would die on, as she turned to face the man that would inevitably be her end, as she let his sword pierce into her body, she must have been scared. I don’t quite remember what I did to get to the battlefield she’d decided to head to. The time leading up from when I’d finally realized the extent she was willing to go to ensure my safety to when I finally spotted Zrayuu on the open clearing where she had been fighting Damon is a blur.

Each wave of sounds crash over the horizon one after another. Amidst the chaos of the battlefield, somehow there seems to be order in the clamor of agony that surrounds me. The world whirls around for every laboured breath I inhale, and though I am running towards wherever I believe my sister is, it feels like I am falling backwards, or going nowhere at all. Soldiers – people that I recognize, people I’ve been greeting and talking to casually just a week before, people I’ve met briefly at the outskirts of Euryclade when I was patrolling the borders as part of my duties here – collapse to the floor like ragdolls. I call out my sister’s name – “Zrayuu!” – but there is no answer. How could anyone hear anything in this cataclysmic tornado of sound? Tears are streaming down my face. I don’t know when I started crying. A stray arrow whistles past me – I think it grazed the outside of my thigh, because I stumble forward and almost fall into a pit of snow. Someone shouts my name, their voice filled with concern, but I don’t know who. I can only look forward, crawling on all fours to try to stand up, wailing for my sister like a pathetic chick chirping for its mother. 

Once I regain my balance, I notice that there’s a trail of red next to the footsteps I’m dragging across the sunken floor. It must be the arrow. It hurts,, but the only thing I can think of right now is my sister. I can’t live without her. I left her because she wanted me to but I can’t let her leave me forever. Not like this. Not after I’ve only just realized why she’d been doing all those horrible things for Damon. I trudge along the tall pines that obstruct the battlefield. Xemu and Eclis catch up to me and say something about going back and treating my wounds, but I shake myself away from their grasp. I cry, and cry, and cry again. It’s pathetic. They exchange worried glances – God that’s a first – but they give up and help me walk across these familiar snowy plains. Xemu mentions there’s a clearing in the forest that the Duke Desiderium – my sister – might be, going against Damon. We head towards that direction, and although we’re still quite far away, I can see her. I can sense her. Her clothes, usually uptight and maintained with such good care, are tattered and ripped in so many places, and splotches of crimson spread around each of those little shreds. I call out her name – Zrayuu? – and watch as her eyes, both the black one and the blue – widen in surprise. She didn’t expect me to come find her. And so did Damon. He whips around, sword still in hand, his eyes squinting against the aggressive snow slapping against him. There’s a chasm in the concentration he’s upheld for the battle. Zrayuu notices this. She bolts towards him with a certain sense of determination, and somehow I know she’s not going to attack him. I know something bad is about to happen. I yank myself away from Eclis, surging forward, crying no, please don’t, please, Zrayuu, because I know what’s going to happen, and–

I could see it in her eyes. The last time I saw that flash of blue she tried so hard to hide, a flash of fear swept across her face. She ran straight into his sword as she pushed her own into him. Collapsing with the slowest passage of time, she looked me in the eye, and she was scared, she was so damn scared, but she smiled at me.

Because she knew that she had saved me. Damon stumbled away, cursing at the untreatable gash she’d left him. Zrayuu was the only one providing him with the healing abilities that let him recover from injuries so fast, and now that she was dying, he would be left with a severe wound, hindering his ability function for a while. Her plan to stop him had finally been initiated. If the plan was successful, and she knew it would be, because she would never allow herself to be wrong, then the world would be saved. I would be saved. Her death was her way of atonement, and it was her way of assurance. Through her death, she was reassuring me that everything would be fine, that she had taken the worst of the blows and buried it deep within her, so that I wouldn’t be as hurt. She died so I would have one less scratch on my body.

Now I’m here, alive, sitting in the garden we were supposed to share; in the house we were supposed to live together in; embraced by the warmth of the sunlight that we should have felt together. It was raining a few minutes ago, but when I finally decided to visit the garden I had been avoiding for so long, the clouds that had shrouded over the sun all swam away across the horizon. I lock eyes with the sun. Perhaps if I stare at it long enough, the light will burn its path into my sclera – and beyond that blindness, I will be able to see my sister again. 

I trace the few burns and scars that are left on my skin from the aftermath of my sister’s plan with my fingertips, and they tell me that once again, Zrayuu was right. My comrades and I were successful in overthrowing Damon’s empire, and I was successful in saving Vhayan from himself. She was right to let herself perish, because she was right to trust us. She was right to let herself be scared. 

Each breath I take is a reminder that I am here. She is gone, but I am here, and I should be satisfied, no, grateful, of this result. Her death is evidence of her love for me, and that’s what I always wanted, right? To be loved by her, to be shown through her actions that I am loved, I am important, I am—

I am scared.

The split second of honesty Zrayuu allowed herself in her last moments on this world, the anxiety that pervaded through the blood that was spurting out of her body, has haunted me ever since. Because she was scared all her life, and she never let herself be released from that fear, even in her death. Every day, I am alive, and my sister is scared. 

Every day, I am scared, and my sister is dead.

The sunlight is warm. It’s so warm it’s painful. 

I yearn to feel the rain again. 

3 - That woman. (Damon)

Only a single sliver of sunshine, let down through the fissure on the ceiling that was supposedly a window, was allowed to linger in the solitary cell. It cut through the room in a violent continuous stroke, dividing the space to what could be reached and what was untouchable. On days the sunbeam was strong, it would bounce off the hard titanium floor, sparks of light hitting the dust particles flying in all directions.The cell itself was quite large – the Council had deemed its inhabitant worthy of the maximum levels of security, and found that only a larger room could accommodate for the multiplicity of restraints and shackles that kept him down. As if to prove the purpose of those said devices, there were numerous dents on the wall, all created by the inmate in efforts to escape. But these attempts were futile: Amel, now filling in the void where Zrayuu was, had made sure that the walls were indestructible, and even if they were damaged, they were reverted back to their original state by those with repairing abilities every few hours. Out of the shackles, restraints and chains that were bound around the man’s neck, ankles, and wrists, many were for the sole purpose of suppressing his treacherous ability. Without the power he had used to manipulate others for his gain, and without Zrayuu, his convenient tool, he was just a pathetic remnant of the man he used to be.

Damon sat there, everyday, and reminisced about the rage he felt when that woman had died. He hadn’t cared for her before. She was just another person he could manipulate, another weak being that would serve her purpose sufficiently. She was weak because she had her sister, and that was the only thing that she cared about. He hadn’t expected someone so weak could be so– brave. The only version of love he’d known was this overpowering force that made him obsessed over his target – and if they’d reject his love, he would just do anything to make them love him. That was exactly what he’d planned to do with Vhayan. If no one else existed except for just the two of them, then surely Vhayan would look at him too. But that woman, in all her weakness, had ruined everything. He cursed her success.

Today, masses of clouds drifted across the sky, looming above the opening to heaven. A bleak darkness filled the chamber, making the only source of light the soulless glimmer of Damon’s porcelain eyes. The faint rhythm of water droplets dripping against the window pane echoed in the silent cell. As he reached his arms towards the sky, hoping for some hint of sunlight, the chains on his wrist forced his arm down. The rain drummed against the thick walls that enclosed him, and for a brief instant, it sounded like a familiar dying heartbeat. 

Damon would continue hoping for the sun, drenched in rain, probably for all eternity.