'When exactly did I close my eyes?'
The king clad in magnificence thought to himself as he viewed the capital city of the kingdom he ruled from a wide balcony located at the castle's highest tower.
He gripped the leathery lace of his necklace and continued to slide down the joint that connected it to the pendant portion. He then brought the pendant piece close to one eye.
The pendant was a small global, almost blood-red gem that refracted little light.
Gilgamesh peered inside it and saw the city in a different hue.
"It's beautiful." Gilgamesh remarked. "Or so you've said."
He was alone but it appeared like he was talking to someone while looking far into the distance.
With a lifeless expression which no one would have thought could come from him, the king let go of the pendant and it instantly fell back to his chest and his vision returned from seeing colors to a monochrome black and white.
He turned his back and walked away.
The room he was in was definitely grand and spacious with it's white walls and floor that appeared to have spared no effort in adorations but for some reason it felt melancholic.
Aside from the columns and few artworks on display, it was empty. No trace of life could be seen anywhere within the area.
Gilgamesh got out of the room. The corridors were the same. He already walked a fair distance but met no one.
He stopped for a moment in front of a large door and hesitantly turned its latch.
The forlorn king remained frozen and didn't push open the double-leaf door. He slowly turned the latch back returning it to its original position.
"OPEN UP!"
No one answered.
He continued to bang on the door while calling out for someone to open from the inside.
"OPEN THIS DOOR! OPEN UP! If I tell you to open, you follow!! I am KING, you hear me?!"
It felt like it was going to go on forever. The magnificence he once showed was now inexistent as he shouted and banged like an unreasonable child.
The king stopped and dead silence was heard once again. He grabbed on to one handle as his whole body shivered and then leaned his head over the door while looking down on the floor.
"Please..."
No one came.
He stood there motionless for a brief moment until he stood up straight once again and continued to walk like nothing happened.
Before he left the front of the door, his tunic brushed over scorch marks that came from inside the room.
Empty silence dwelled inside the room he gave up to open. There were scorch marks everywhere. Its walls long forgotten its own splendor. What were once sculptures were reduced gravel, the large bed, which probably was the most expensive of its kind ever made, was now charcoal black and eroded slowly as wind from the open window blew past it. They were burned to the extent that the thick gold and silver platings used on all of the furnitures inside melted on the ground.
Everything inside the room was smashed and burned. All but one...
Close to the now broken glass-paneled door that opened to the room's terrace was a large portrait; still in one piece and in perfect condition. It was so out of place within the burned room.
The portrait showed the king, a black-haired man with his usual stern expression, with a beautiful platinum-blonde haired woman who had a blood-red eye on the left and a gray one on the right while carrying a black-haired baby with golden eyes. It was a picture of delight that contrasted the sorrow of the rest of the room.
But still, even if the king have knocked for an eternity, no one would have opened the door for him. It was empty like the rest of the palace.
Gilgamesh got out of the palace and went straight to the temple beside it. Ignoring the lush garden and scenery that might remind him of a past he might never have again.
The moment he entered the temple and started to walk towards the altar, the handsome king with jet-black hair and golden eyes remembered the dream he's been having for the last hundred years:
But the trees, the grass and the earth, they so mournfully remember the tragedy that had occurred inside the palace walls.
"God, don't you think he's just the most despicable thing?" The young king asked as he looked up towards the sky in a daze which appeared grey in his vision whilst laying on the grassy garden of the castle.
"Why so?"
"Well, you know how everyone compares me to Noah, right?" The young king began. "Everyone says I look better but they'd pick him any day because I look dead and my condition is called a mark of the devil."
The young girl he was talking to giggled and answered, "...And your point is?"
"I think I wouldn't be so depressing if I could see the same way everyone does."
He turned to face the city and away from the girl he was talking to. He was embarrassed for himself for starting the conversation but he just couldn't stop now.
"Noah's greater in everything because he was born that way. I have to struggle to learn things. And it's not like I wanted to be called the white prince."
The young Gilgamesh couldn't see but he felt that the child he was talking to was doing something on the ground behind him and was probably not listening.
"It's the only color I can appreciate aside from black so it's the only color I choose to wear even though both of them aren't exactly colors."
"You're almost a hundred years old and still talk like that?"
The girl only gave a single response. Only the ruffling of the grass and swaying of the trees prevented dead silence.
Gilgamesh looked at the city as he laid on the ground and asked, "The city, what colors does it have?"
The girl didn't answer.
"You've said the twilight was warm, the blue sky felt calm and the green leaves are alive." The young king insisted an answer. "What about Noah's pride city?"
"Well, why don't you see it for yourself?"
After hearing those words, a sensation Gilgamesh has never experienced before flooded his mind.
One eye saw differently from the other as the girl behind him held a red stone over his left eye from behind. He was seeing in polychrome for the very first time!
The surprised Gilgamesh leapt from the ground and hurriedly look towards the girl he was with.
She was beautiful though still young. She had long platinum-blonde hair and her once pair of prided blood-red eyes was now ruined with one turned to grey.
"What did you do?!" Gilgamesh panicked as he saw the girl's eyes.
"Well, it's hard explaining to you everything so might as well give you one of my eyes." The girl said in a matter of fact way.
"NO! Why'd you do that?!"
"Because I can. I'm the second day of creation incarnate, remember? My divinity can cure anything and if it can't..." The girl pulled some of her hair in a tomboyish manner while she thought of an answer. "...I can always give what's mine."
The girl smiled in triumph as the boy he was talking to fell on his knees like a defeated warrior.
"Listen..." The girl started. "Why do you think God deliberately takes important things from our lives?" The girl asked.
"Why? It's as I've said. He's cruel and unfair."
"...?? You know what I think?" The girl followed.
Gilgamesh raised his head and looked at the girl in front of him.
"God takes away something important from people for us to realize that there'd be someone out there willing give up their "something important" to fill in what you are missing..."
Gilgamesh was about to cry but he chose to keep it all in. "Now you'll be shunned like that of a slave. You know how mankind views people different from them."
"Then, you'll just have to marry me so I won't be."
Gilgamesh was at a loss for words. 'Did she mean what she just said? This girl is definitely crazy!'
The girl waited for an answer but all she got was a blank stare. She opted to stand up and then said, "Well, I should be going to Noah now. I'm sure he'd marry me if I said I'd be discriminated."
The girl's statement draw Gilgamesh back to reality and instinctively grabbed her arm. "What?! Why Noah? He's a middle-aged man! FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OLD, do you hear me?
The girl stopped, looked at Gilgamesh and waited for another answer.
"Fine!" Gilgamesh flushed and looked away from the platinum-haired girl. "I'll marry you when we get older... But don't come crying to me regretting this moment in the future because I'll definitely see this through."
The young soon-to-be-king stole a glance towards the girl and there he saw, as the girl blocked one of his eyes with the red stone she was holding, in polychrome, for the very first time, the girl's wide smile as she said, "Of course I won't!!"
Gilgamesh closed his eyes and the flashback ended.
He already walked the length of the temple isle and was now in front of a beautiful platinum-blonde lady as she lay in a stone table in the altar.
Whoever would see the lady would surely say that she was elegantly sleeping while trapped in a crystal pod if not for the huge hole in her chest. The cavity inside her chest was in tatters and the heart that was once in it was missing.
"You're wrong." Gilgamesh said as he tried to scratch the surface of the crystal pod.
"God is definitely cruel. A tyrant!!"
He banged the pod in an attempt to break it but it was in vain.
Gilgamesh shivered in anger. His eyes showed a fiercer gaze like nothing before.
"This selfish world that God loves so much will see BLOOD LIKE NEVER BEFORE!"
Gilgamesh let out an absurdly loud and insane laugh that echoed through the dark temple.
His legs felt weak and fell on his knees beside his dead wife like how he once did when they were young. But this time, he couldn't help but cry.
"And then you and I will be together again... Igerna."
Unknown to him, there was someone he couldn't see hugging him from behind; an elegant and beautiful platinum-blonde woman with a grey eye on the right and a blood-red one on the left.
She wanted Gilgamesh to see her so much as she cried a river of tears on his back but he can't because she's dead.
They loved each other so much and wanted to see each other eye to eye.
It was long over. Lost for eternity.
Even though she knew he wouldn't hear him, she placed her lips closer to his ear and said, "Please stop. I can never come back..."
Her beautiful face quivered as more tears fell from her translucent eyes.
"...And —I'm sorry."