kundush and ararat - of wuyue

Introduced in The Beginning.
Continued in Vesper Meeting.

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Inauspiciousness spelled the theme of that cycle. The nights seemed colder and harsher as the lanceolate foliage of Elysium turns a dull brown despite the endless downpour of the preceding fortnights. Wuyue was gradually sublimating to the ethereality of nothingness. She has had very little improvement since the last bestowing cycle. Ararat can do none more than lay witness to her degenerative progress. First the cerulean of her skin turning into the pale flesh-tones of a freshly-caught salmon, then her hair slowly turns from silvery to pitch black. She has lost appetite even for the gluchan she used to devour with much gusto. These days subsistence consists of a few drops of nightdew and a waft of edelweiss.

The antikythera clicked with a foreboding reverberation. It was as if an omen was being sent, yet its discrete nature ensures that none would take heed. It was a silent harbinger ticking amidst the anarchy of the impending cyclic closure. Only meant to remind, but never to remember. It was a dissolution that will find a voice after a segue have long passed. A song finding its rhythm when it’s player has freed the instrument.

Wuyue was fast sublimating. Her palms cold from the struggle to remain in this plane. The dews of the edelweiss was no longer effective in alleviating her pain. She was almost gone.

“Take my minstrel,” implored Ararat.
“No,” she replied.
“I beg you Wuyue. I can’t lose you.”
“You won’t. As long as you’re here, I’ll be here. In you. With you.”
“Please. Here won’t make sense if here is without you.”

He bared his chest, revealing the glint that cerulean vesper annals speak of. The Law of Ethos was now in play. He reached in, pulling his minstril from the depths of his spirit. Beautiful. Sporadic. Effervescent. Perfect. Ararat was moving quickly. He knew he had but a few moments before the quanta-cycle is concluded. He already missed the chance when transcendence came and Wuyue first refused. He held out his minstril in haste, ready to bestow it. Tears were flowing from his burning peridot eyes. His lips trembling as luthian phrases spelled out in chant. He could taste the salt. There was no time.

“Take it,” he begged.
“I love you Ararat.”

Then she was gone.

Suddenly it came to him. The events of the past few fortnights. Her dwindling health. The loss that his fragile heart could not bear. The trauma that perseveres and engulfs. Complete irrevocable. He lost Wuyue, but in the process he has also lost his minstril. Both cannot be regained. He knew that very moment that only time will tell when her fate will be his. Yet surprisingly no fear crept. He’d rather be with her in oblivion than spend an eternity in solitude.

So he waited. Days in contemplation. Waiting for his eventual end. He lost interest in the luthian scripts. In the gluchan he used to cook. Meaning was devoid, a distant and forgotten throbbing. Emotion were absent, a mere weakness to prolong a pain. Days became months, months became years. Yet his virile posture remained. And the end he longed for never came. Wuyue became a reminder, then a memory, then a feeling, and finally a hymn. Subtle yet omnipresent. Palpable yet intangible. She was gone, and so was his will.

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Then one evening, the heaven’s wailed. A wail so painful it almost brought him to tears. Piercing like Wuyue’s last utterance. And a faint sobbing was heard outside his abode’s threshold.