#granja is so fucking gay dude

[miraruinada]

A woman steps into Granja's private study. Her steps are quiet, imperceptible. She moves like a ghost that haunted the world, the one she left behind, the one where her created magical machines advanced technology to a post-industrial level at a faster pace than it would had it been through normal scientific means, yet also wrought the empire's dominance to its height and squashed most hope to counter it. The ghost of the era she had created, more materially impactful than the woman sitting with his back to her reading through the daily.

"I told you I hate others coming into my study without my permission," Granja says. He puts the paper down and picks up a cigarette from the ash tray which, in the process of being absorbed by his reading, Granja had neglected and left to die out.

"How did you know I was here?" she asks, forgoing any attempt at stealth and simply threw herself on the couch beside Granja, grabbing an empty glass and pouring herself some whiskey, laying on her side as she watched Granja's hand twirl the cigarette in his fingertips.

"You opened and closed the door. That makes noise." Granja answers, then starts digging through his pockets for a lighter.

"So much for staying hidden. I woulda failed in assassinating you right now," she says with a breezy laugh escaping her lips. Despite being near the same age as Granja, her face and mannerisms exuded vibrancy and youth.

"Why did you do it?" is the only question Granja has. "I heard from Cholu exactly what happened in that town. Conjuring my youth and releasing him in that period. To what end?"

"I wanted to see your brilliance again. The Jorjais that wrote with passion bordering on madness. The Granja with a fire in his pen, almost killing himself again and again over the future of idealism." The woman swirls the drink in her cup, the natural genius who'd uncovered the secrets of magic and then rested on her laurels had a fondness bordering on obsessive admiration over the clever woman who was no natural genius, who poured his heart and soul into his craft until it drove him to the highest stages of subjective destitution.

"Chalchiuhnene," Granja uses her true name, not her title Xochitl Cuicatl, Flower Song, as he lights his cigarette, "The past stays past for a reason. I was an idiot who let my passion drive me to insanity. Still, I have not lost my flame. I was grieving for so long over what I should do, but returning to the capital I found purpose. 'Anything at all could happen to them.' That's when I discovered I love my students. I've already confessed this. You didn't have to do any of that."

"I still miss it. When you'd burn yourself like a falling star. You were so different from the sages and the mystics, happy to pretend that their knowledge hadn't penetrated the unknown because it was impossible, affixed and twinkling without worth like that pox upon the sky. I wrote a raving review of your first book, you know. It almost cost me my title as tlamatini. I said you were to bring the mind into the modern age as I had in bringing the body." She had paired them irreversibly in her mind, the two pioneers of the modern world. Within good reason - she is the most revered and studied of many fields in the sciences.

"Then why didn't you come back to me when I returned?" he asks. The question lingers in the air. He already knew the answer. By that point in time, he'd been marked a madwoman, his philosophy considered a danger to the empire. She'd have lost everything. He knew, the circumstance made it impossible, but an ache remained. He did not wait for an answer she would not give, simply continuing, "I had done what I needed. We are not the last as I had thought in my youth. Our legacies will carry on. They will finish the work left by us. That's the unfolding of history."

"Really, I just wanted to feel your hands around my neck again," she confesses. She drinks the entire glass of whiskey in one go and thinks. "Your students are impressive. Grasping the situation at hand with so little to grasp. They're not stupid."

"Of course not, they're my students," he answers. Then taps out the cigarette in the ash tray. "Lock the door, Nene. I'll indulge your desire."

[miraruinada]

love how granja is self aware that he's absolutely lost it, and xochitl is just 'yeah, you're crazy ♥'. they're so fucking gay, dude.