"The heavens is the blue. Home is the dark. The heavens is the bright outside. Home is the distorted reality."
Simple. Elegant. Proper. Almost obvious. But, most times, it was just these that were buried in incomprehension.
"Where do you get that from?" Dia asked.
She was clearly the most invested among all of us. In that moment, there was only me in her eyes, just her and me in her world.
She followed my eyes to the wall. Saw Ryirawra's runes. And fell silent.
**
An old sun is no different. No more brighter. No less darker. Changes nothing.
Yet everything is changed. Everything, different.
The window is wider. The wind stronger. I'm lighter.
I ride the wind. Up to the heavens. To where I am inevitably headed. To where a new home awaits. A home so much the same as wholly unlike.
An old sun, my quiet companion.
**
"The final words," Jerry said. "Probably the most popular expression of the Nashi free form."
The twins nodded. Dia took over, as the truer expert.
"Personally, I hold this particular set of runes as the epitome of the free form."
Looking directly at me, she spoke in the voice of a senior offering lessons.
"Free form was born in the oppression of the Vyaraishi. A break out idea from the artists of the capital, a group that was the most reverential of the fundamental ideals of Vyaraishi. Which is why it is so surprising and so powerful. Free form fell in Vyaraishi with the collapse of the revolt. But it didn't die out. A wisp escaped, and bore fruit on the peaks of the Hyngraves, with the Nashi. The core idea of free form is expression of the purest form, free of all limiting restrictions. Since it was born from the Vyaraishi fundamental ideals, the similarities are abound. But the differences are great as well."
"I have to concede on this point," Pratt said solemnly. "Imagine a Ryirawra in Vyaraishi. She would be a whole other person. Certainly not the wonderful poet Nashi turned her into."
"Sometimes, we are the worst enemy to our heirs."
It wasn't a sentence I was expecting from Dia. But it sounded so much like her, in the moment.
"I'll get us something to eat," Pratt said, destroying the mood. "Jerry was right. Dean is worse than the lot of us. It's been hours. We've missed like two whole meals. Now that I've brought it up, I'm sure you'll both hear it too. The cry of hunger."
Dia smiled. I nodded. Pratt left. Jerry stood looking at us.
"Let's turn away from the wall for now," he said. "Until we've eaten. Then, we'll return. For now, follow me. I've got something I want to show the both of you."
He was beaming like a child who discovered a secret room filled with all kind of chocolate. I laughed out loud as I pictured Jerry leaping into a mountain of chocolate.
Jerry and Dia looked at me questioningly. I shook my head, but I was ready with the answer. Looking at Jerry, I spoke.
"I just remembered what Denise said about you and chocolate."
Jerry's face contorted. It was a sight extremely funny in itself. I burst out laughing. Dia couldn't keep from smiling either, even though she wasn't exactly sure what I was talking about. Jerry wouldn't give me the opportunity to explain.
"Alright," he said, clearing his throat. "Dinah Pharaohs was a perfectly healthy child until the age of seven, when she fell ill and her life changed entirely. She came over here, to recuperate. And because she needed the quiet. Here, she discovered two of her greatest loves. The second, and comparatively lesser, was the Nashi. The first, and greater, love, was the forest."
Dia was clearly surprised. Was ready to argue, when we looked out the window. And saw the forest.
Jerry put an open notebook on the sill.
**
The forests of the Hyngraves. A name that's as befitting as the name of the illness that ties me to the wheelchair.
Still, I'm fortunate. Father built me a house in the forests of the Hyngraves, which he's sure I'll fall in love with. Mother got me a notebook with the most beautiful pen, for she says I'm precocious with words.
Father was right. I did quickly fall in love with the forest outside the window. I couldn't go in, though. I couldn't walk. And the wheelchair has no place in the forest. The window is as far as I go, as near as I get to the forest. But it is enough. The forest is truly beautiful. And the forest describes seasons even more beautifully.
Green and orange and brown and green again. Loud and quiet, in an endlessly repeating loop. The truest form of freedom and self.
The forest had me wondering if it was fate's design that brought me here. Nashi provided confirmation. My destiny had always lain waiting here.
**
"Dinah Pharaohs couldn't see it," Jerry said after a while. "Even though she commented on the similarities between her circumstances and Ryirawra's. Even though they both looked out windows, Ryirawra at the heavens, she at the forests. Dinah Pharaohs was just too close to see what was obvious. If only she stopped to consider why the forest was so important to her, she would have understood the importance of the heavens. It's something many of us failed to realise too. Only a few months ago, as the dots were connected between the notebooks and the runes, that the answer was discovered. Which is why you deserve praise Dean. You saw it. So easily."
I didn't believe I deserved praise. It was extremely familiar. Felt extremely close. How could I not see?
I remained silent. As did Jerry and Dia.
We stood by the window, looking out at the forest that Dinah loved most.