[FrozenDeadGhost]

"Tsk. GOSH. Will need to dote after. Am SO excited!"

I put one of my super special band-aid covered in star light across his nose. He ruffled my hair while asking me what my biggest dream might be.

"Uhm- and ONE DAY I'm going to fly across Meranthe all in one go."

I asked you hard questions, about godhood. You made light of it all but I idolized you, not because you were strong or because of your ethereal nature. I idolized you because you were my grandfather. Because you were 'cool'. 

"Scars are cool."

"Scars are cool."

"Remember! If you do your best, every scar is a good story, too. 
... Even if you lose, or you fail. It was worth doing."

"I will get really good scars with the best stories.":

Was it worth it?

I loved so deeply... 

Most times that was what got me into trouble the most.

I believed you saw me for whom I was. 

I believed you saw my truth.

What I didn't realize, is that no matter how big I dreamed and how deeply I loved you... perhaps it wasn't two ways. I do not doubt that at one point you loved me. I do not doubt that when you ruffled my hair that you felt adoration for my bright smiles.

But I wasn't obedient enough.

I was a liability. 

I was impulsive and my truth was stronger than reality from a very young age.

Is that why my dream stopped mattering? 

Is that why my letters went unanswered?

Is that why when I needed you most you did not answer me?

Is that why when I sat within a puddle of blood with golden wings feeling self hate for the first time in my life...

You didn't come?

Is that why when I called for your help to protect my home you did not answer...

You justified it?

Is that why when I spoke my truth...
That when given the freedom to guide my people... you did not feel warm. You felt cold. As if all the love had left the room ages ago?

When you said...

"Go make your own garden. Is okay. We will still care for you."

I shattered deep down inside because it felt like the words were not acceptance or a loving embrace- but rather scissors meeting a strand of fate between us. 

Years passed...

More and more distant did we become.

Even when we might have fought alongside one another, even when we worked to save Her I felt as if we were more estranged the more time passed. 

It became at a point that you no longer felt as my grandmother, but instead a stranger.

Still,

I could not help wanting things to be better, to feel love once more.

Upon Krausmas Eve, I tried.

Perhaps I shouldn't have.

Perhaps I let the nostalgia get the better of me. 

Perhaps the melancholic feeling of being so distant from family made me wish for us to be able to look upon each other again with something other than pain and bitterness.

And then you took my beloved.
Love turned to hate

None of it can ever be the same again... 

Beautiful dreams scratched out with the nightmares of reality.
And I can never forget how steeply I disappointed you.

[FrozenDeadGhost]

I think I understand it now. That empty vial with barely a smudge of dried remnants remaining inside. You were not trying to tell me that I did not need anything. You were trying to show me the life that I would live ahead of myself. Were you able to read the fates? I cannot remember, I was so young then. You looked into my smiling eyes as I spoke about the importance of self. Of knowing who you were and standing behind it. I told you I didn't want to be a hero, and I certainly didn't become one. I said I wanted to stay on the right track and not let me ego get out of hand, and that was why I didn't aspire to be a hero- because I didn't do the things I did for fame. I told you I wanted to be just like Miss Tanya one day, and you spoke fondly of her. 

I asked you ' If you try to understand a person's view and they don't want to try to become a better person, how long do you keep trying before you have to accept that they are beyond helping?' and you answered 'It is not your duty to change a person, only to give them the space to change... People make their choices. They say who they are quite easily themselves, we needn't speak it for them.'

And then you handed me that empty vial. 

You told me that there was a lesson to be learned with it. I was young and I did not understand the lesson you offered me. I believe I do now. You can push someone to change, to pour out those contents of whom they were but there will always be remnants of who they were before that linger. It's about what they do with those lingering parts that matter, what they do when that vial is filled and poured over and over, with each change spilled or sipped from willingly. 

I am sorry I didn't understand your lesson.

Even though I asked the question, I did not understand the depth of your answer.

I was confused. I was sad. I felt like a loser.

So I did what I have always done, and I took that vial to someone who could use it. I gifted it to him even while I felt so awful because I didn't want the gift to go to waste. Because even if I never thought I would have a use for it that at least someone like him would be able to use it for something important. 

I felt ungrateful, and I hated feeling that way. I felt less than everyone.

It was the first time I had felt in such a way and he held me, comforted me. He validated my feelings. 

That's what he did over and over in my life, is validate my feelings. Any time there were sorrows, he loved me. He held me, and because of that he was like a father to me even when my own told me everything bad that ever happened to me was my fault when I was barely sixteen. 

But that vial...

I think on it now, in the middle of the night as my husband sleeps and I rub at tired and teary eyes and realize-

I should have kept that vial.

Not because I ever would have used it.

It would have gathered dust.

It would have sat there haunting me for decades.

But now, as I sit looking out over the gardens in the moonlight, I wish it was here with me so I could feel the coolness of the glass beneath my fingertips, and the faint scent of something long dried. 

Even if 'old glass is still glass', it held a lesson that I have had pushed in my face so many times in my life.

In the good, in the bad.

People will show you who they are, though it may be quiet or it may scream in your face.

I ignored the signs for so long, that they never stopped being who they were, just as I  never stopped being who I was. Even if a few more coats of fresh memories dripped from the rim... we most always do not change entirely.

Thank you, Miyumi.
Perhaps I might have been spared much more pain, if I had understood your lesson then.