Who am I?

Not many people have had the chance to ask themselves that, I think. After all, one would have to be in serious trouble to so inquire into one’s own existence. There is simply no happy reason to embark on such a quest, you see. A fruitless journey, where no definite destination awaits, but ever it draws away like the horizon, mocking at the edge of our sight. And who knows, what lies at the end of the rainbows may not be as remotely ludicrous as one may think. So why must needs go through all the troubles?

Galanthus, my silly pledge-sister, troubles herself with the idea of the self very often, mostly mine. She knows what she is, and everyone else is like to think they do, too. I am not so sure. For one, she could be many persons. Sometimes she’s a lover, sometimes a tyrant, sometimes a savior, and once, a destroyer. Why settle with one identity? I suppose simplicity is a virtue unto itself, and one person’s mind can only comprehend so many versions of themselves. I do not care for it though. This world could afford to be a little more colored, I think.

Once, Galanthus gifted me with a many-colored stone, taken from a petrified ship’s vault, one nestled deep in the belly of a leviathan, whose remains smeared still the Underland to this day. An exciting origin, is it not? All the more, she said that stone resembled me, for it could be admired from so many angles, its beauty shifts as it spins between my fingers. I appreciated the sentiment, and it was her gift, so I treasured it. That does not mean I think it’s aught unique to my person. There are so many people out there, after all, each carries different facets in different circumstances. Sometimes they can be a lover, sometimes a sorrow maker, and so on and so forth.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is there’s no one way to look at things. And that asking oneself, “Who am I?”, is such a silly endeavor it doesn’t even merit a serious answer in the first place. I am just me, and some. Is that not enough?

It only so happened that once, long ago, I had been someone else. But that is how we all are, is it not? Often we look backward in time and can scarce recognize the person we used to be. Only, from my name to my body, even my favorite color, every single little thing had changed since then.

Tithonus is a sunny city, and it is my home country. It is in these dusty walls, the ancient cornerstones, and the palm tree’s blissful shades, that you may find my first concrete existence. Everything began there.

But the city of mine is still quite desolate, and the picture is devoid of life. So first you must populate it. The people at the beginning, those of my parents, my grandfathers and grandmothers, my uncles and aunts... so many old people. Still, if you but put their faces together, old or young, you could glimpse somewhat of my features therein. Families are like that and all, sharing in the same kind of blood and flesh. And nose. Nose, for you see, save for Aunt Seren, whose nostrils were on the large size (to compensate for her short temper), ours were a tad tinier than other Tithonese. Wisteria liked to remark much on it too, peculiar as she always was regarding cosmetic stuff. She possessed a high bridge and a tall temple, and like Aunt Seren, her temper was short, if often that her appearance belied the fact. Hmmm, is there perhaps a connection between a taller nose and an angrier disposition we could make here? Could that there be one! Well, at any rate, with the addition of Wisteria you now have a near complete picture of me.

The city I called home. The people I called family. The girl I loved.

That, of course, was before all the terrible things happened. No dramatic changes could ever be done without an equally devastating catalyst, you see. What things, you ask? I shall spare you the details. Only it was definitely not the case where no one was really in the wrong and one could blame it all on misfortunes and unfavored happenstances. Rather, every single person involved had been at fault, and had come out punished for it. Some foolish decisions on my family’s part, resentment stirred some more in Wisteria’s, resulting in my old world being destroyed. All the while this tragedy transpired, I was elsewhere, far from Tithonus, far from them, far from solid grounds, high upon the clouds, onboard the Daybright.

There had been anger in me at the time. I do not pretend my fault did not play the chief part in the tragedy. If I was with them then, mayhap suspicion, anger and grief wouldn’t have driven my family to destruction. But regardless, I was not there. Do I blame Wisteria? She betrayed me after all. She did. She severed our bond. And yet I do not think any of us could ever fathom her reason, not even herself. But she did. And though complete destruction would come only later for all of us, it began for me at that point. 

So in short, Wisteria was done with me and I was wanting for naught in that city, so I left. Too young to participate in the ritual, I sneaked aboard the ship in midsummer rain as a stowaway. Not unnoticed, I think, but the crew did not care, I was one of them, a Tithonese and a female child absconding for whatever reason. So they took me in, a sullen wayward kid, alone of my age on the famed Daybright. So it was that my service began earlier than most. 

Following were these idyllic days where I hung about the cats more than I did the adults, oblivious of the tragedy going on in my home country.

And of course, it was then that I first met her, someone whose mien was far more lonesome than mine, whose presence a greater mismatch among her peers. Galanthus.

She could never quite fit in with the rest of the Anemones, you see. Yet she had been there ever since the beginning. And even the eldest alares recalled her solitude as a given article in the hall from their first day onboard to their last. Of course without a pair, she did not belong in an ala. Lonelier than a cat she was, and seeming in a quarrel with everyone and everything but the Mistress, who alone looked at her favorably. The beloved wyvern, they called her, and many unpleasant names besides.

At any rate, we met. ‘Twas easy to assume our disposition matched, so I did. I fancied then that much like her, the whole world was against me, and I alone its chosen victim. That for as long as I should live, I may never find happiness again. Suffice to say, ‘twas but one laughable tantrum to put beside Galanthus’ circumstance, whose immense implication I only learned long after our first meeting.

I came to feel sorry for her. I really did, ever since the first day I ventured into the Hall of Wreaths unseen, spying the lone girl on an island of her own, surrounded yet so distant from her gay company. I was but the floating dust she could scarce marked out from this world of ruin, a confused and needy creature, even as the cats that flocked around her chaise. And indeed, she stirred something of old in my heart. Something that craved sunlight and laughter. Because, I like to think, there is no place more suited, more sensitive to light than the deepest dark. It is a place where even the tiniest, most flawed and pathetic light can be discerned. And mine was exceedingly weak then. Enough still for us both. We clung onto each other since that day, scarce a spoken word, kindling that sickly flame between us, so that one day we may bear it together unto daylight. Five months later, I took the pledge with Galanthus for the first time.

I do wonder if such delight should be allowed to those who had sinned gravely. Still, these days occurred, and forever they will be part of me, though fate might have robbed me of its essence, may have shown me what it’s like to look back to paradise from the realm of the exiled. I have no regret, no, it is wrong in the first place to expect unalloyed happiness. The truth is always tainted, marching time the eroding storm clouds that spare not even the brightest palaces.

Anyway, in time, the Daybright returned to her home port. And like her or not, the city was mine also. But no, not in the same way she used to be. I had returned an alaris with a pledge in hand, proud and sober from past trauma. But no triumphant awaited me, no happy tears of reunion, no bittersweet rendezvous with an old love. Not a one. For I found only my entire line long extinguished in a blood feud between the apostolic families. A certain lie to my ears at first that Wisteria had become my blood enemy. But the Mistress ascertained it all as infallible truths. All that and some, for though I played no physical part in it, I was no less a Venier. The Mistress did not mark me for death, for though being from a traitorous line, I was a warrior who had fought in her service. And yet all the same I could not be permitted on her ship. A punishment worse than death. I, who had nothing left, no family, no home, no future, would be deprived of the one thing I cherished more than my own life yet. 

Galanthus could not leave. 

And so to stay and be with her, I must no longer be a Vernier.

The answer seemed obvious now, but to the me back then that was beyond thoughts and dreams. Though I was prepared to pay any price, I had not the mind nor the imagination to fathom how far and deep that price could be. It arrived only when all hopes for salvation had proved futile, and refusal no more a possibility.

The captain’s dreadful and ultimate sentence tormented me to its utmost capacity on the last desperate day of summer, when news of the Daybright’s imminent departure arrived. I could already scarce stand the limited hours of day Galanthus and I could meet at the wharf, and yet soon she would be borne away for uncounted seasons. How was I to bear such a thing? I would do aught to again sneak aboard the vessel as I had done as a stowaway the year before. But this time no pitying crew would admit my entrance, officially banished as I was by the highest authority. And the Mistress knew, oh she ever knew, of my desperation. Even death seemed a favorable risk then.

It was on that night that a woman I had known since my childhood sent for me with a proposal. I could not trust her. Even her daughter who I once loved I could not bear to look in the eyes. But my existence had become pure despair, and no more was I so attached to my hatred and grudge that I could afford to waive this last slim chance.

So it was that I stole my entrance to the Loredans’ estate through a hidden passage with the guidance of a manservant named Pastore. When led to her chamber, I saw not the proud woman who had once been a ruler of the city. She whose brush had painted Wisteria and I in our youth, whose adept hands had for long years guided public affairs, now appeared a recumbent invalid before my eyes. The feud and subsequent destruction of a major apostolic family had been the end of her, and her final hours drew near. 

She grieved all the destruction that had befallen my family, and wished to grant me a boon. And yet for all that she had been, Wisteria’s mother was never a sorceress. I never knew how she came across the means, but she granted me a boon that I could have never dreamed of: an opening to the Daybright, where Galanthus was. It came with a dear cost, she said, one that requires my very soul to realize. For if I shalln’t ever set foot abroad as a Venier again, I ought to abandon my old self and become a new person. But though she had the means to extract my soul, I must seek for myself another to endow my earthly vessel. 

But souls, as we all know, are sacred. No person would give up theirs willingly, nor is a demonic pact always at hand to so desecrate a creature’s most valuable possession. No, I was not the protagonist of a cautionary tale, and so had not a treachery demon to perform that rite. But I had Galanthus. And some thought she a creature far more nefarious than demons.

And so on the morn of the Daybright’s departure, I brought her my last request, my desperate wish and crazed desire. 

My soul I offered away. My everything I professed forfeited. And to fill that vacant space, what could be more congruous than the only other soul closest to my heart, whose very depth I had sounded? Alares declare in their vow that the knight and the wyvern are one in the pledge. If so then what could ours be but the one true pledge? For one soul Galanthus and I indeed share. We are one. I took on her features, her place in the world I imitated, and her color became mine.

Thus made the pact. And though in me still lingered the memory of my past life, the faint identity of the late Hyacinth, I am no more that pitiable girl. Acis I am. And Acis ever I will be. I have no childhood. I have no past. My present with Galanthus is all that matters. 

So when you ask me, “Who am I?” as though presenting yourself that question, I could but answer that I was once someone, and now someone else. Does that satisfy you? If so then answer mine! Who are you? Why is it that your color be so familiar? How could it be that you look like that Hyacinth unchanged of yore? And why did you step out of that yond painting and smil the same smile I had long forgone?

Who are you?

And what is this place so dark?