written december 2024 | edited april-may 2025
authors note: i wrote this during christmas break in junior year. i had heard a song (when its cold id like to die by moby) online somewhere and it filled me with such grief that it possessed me and i came back and i wrote this and another piece. at the end of my junior year, i modified it and turned it in. this is based off my character greeaon, or azael serrano. this is where he would keep the name.
My brother had told me of all the moments he had gone out and pretended to be human. He described the battles and relationships he had been in during the Crusades. Exciting, heart-racing. Tales you tell to your fellow comrades and await star-struck eyes.
The more he told his tale, the more I wanted to act too. To star in my own play.
So, I went. My first play was before the Great War. I decided to go by the name Azael Taskolski. I took the face of a man I consumed in the east mountains long before these events. His face was wide and soft. His hair was curly and dark.
In the nearest city, I met a man named Krasmir. He was lanky but had hidden strength underneath. His face was angular but his skin was fair. His eyes were sunken in, but bright enough that it seemed as if they were actually protruding. His hair was wavy and light. He was born in the east and had come to the city for a job.
Krasmir was my teacher. He taught me many, many things. He taught me about coffee and friendship. He never had 'access to milk or creamer' (as he told me), so he preferred his coffee dark. I learned to prefer my coffee this way too.
Me and Krasmir had not much in common. He was gregarious, while I preferred silence. He loved beets and I despised them. He was living, and I was not. But, despite that, he included me in everything he did. He dragged me along to every function and every visit. I still don't exactly know his reasoning. (I never will.)
He worked in the iron factory with his friend Irek. Irek hailed from the west. I do not recall his face anymore. A part of me was jealous of his close relationship with Krasmir. (I was a young idiot.)
When Krasmir introduced me to Irek, he called me his friend.
Having a friend was very, very pleasant.
We drank coffee in a shop next to a common shopper's market many times. Krasmir laughed, and that lit the entire room. It was strange to be near such a bright human. I was not used to it.
...
Now knowing more, I wish I gave Krasmir a proper, human burial. But I didn't.
Holding his dead body, worn from war, I had realized one major revelation I should have known when he first called me his friend. This was never a play. This was life, and I was not living. You cannot act the same play twice. We finally had one thing in common, except I was still moving. He never will again.
I wish I could see my Krasmir laugh and walk again. To hear about his stories back home, I would go through all Hell just to see one smile. I wish to see him healthy with a family he holds dear. But I had given up.
Instead of taking him back to the camp, to anywhere else in those mountains, I had given up. I gave up the lead role. Irek probably had thought we both died in the snow. I held Krasmir closer than I ever could.
I now wear his face. I hold him tight. He told me not to leave, and to meet him again. I meet him again in my reflection and when I drink dark coffee. I speak his language better than I did then. I try to stand the taste of beets so he can have one. I read books so he can see how it is to read.
It is what I can do to keep him alive in the arms of Death. Maybe he could have become the dear Earth if I left him there.
Maybe, in the far horribly far future, when the Sun burns and the Moon falls and my kind dies out—
he will become the dear Earth with me.