Descente: An Obscure Augury

Painted eyes stare into our world.
A window to our soul.
Une âme, bereft of light and joy.

Pour me another cup.
The wineskin ever comforts.
As it carries me over oceans vast and mountains tall.

I see you deep within,
And draw him in your likeness.
Though your face eludes me now.
As empty as the space you left behind.

Petals and spirits to drown you in.
The gifts of one realm to the next.
Live on, mon frère.
And fare thee well.
From one realm to the next.

An ode to Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, an experience that cut deep. Maybe deeper than any other of its kind I’ve come across.
The plight of the Dessendre family, while steeped in the fantastical, is very much rooted in fundamental, primal emotion.

Loss and grief.
The future paths which the bereaved envisioned, taken from them as they are left behind.
For where those lost to us go, we cannot follow.

We try to grasp the ethereal glimpses they leave behind, and lock them deep within—equal parts of pain and joy sprouting from these memories.

Some lose themselves in self-destruction.
Some in cathartic creation.
Some in both.
And some–

Some become trapped in an echoing void within—a dark collapse that folds in on itself, time and time again.

But for everyone confronted with the grief of losing those dear to them, there is a single, unified truth: the radiant, burning emptiness cannot be ignored or undone.
Though time may ease the most searing pain, the embers smolder on.
Yet, the path they walked once crossed with ours, and left its mark—a flag they planted through a journey shared, a beacon left behind to help us find our way whenever the road is lost to us.

And so, their spirit joins us ever forth.

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