[ Original mirror is at Nekoweb and the full experience for the artwork involved. ]
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Blue Horizon: what he sees at your side.
by Naila Moonsi
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100,000 years in the future, far past the era the people of planet Earth began traversing across the galaxy…
There’s something you don’t want to forget.
You are Antonio Chandrani-Rivera. You are 21. There’s something you seem to be forgetting.
You are the worst thing in this world…
And this world that’s yours, it feels a little jarring. It feels out of place. In dreams, there are domains for people. This domain was made for you.
Your twin brother’s. Fernando’s.
Upon this seaside isle with an eerily quiet forestry, a deep and quiet gloom, evergreen, leading some place deeper… With the waterfalls and their thrum, in the drumming depths…
Upon the shore, it has a calm lull to it. There’s no sun in sight. Only an endless blue—the drifting ocean and the dreamy skies. It’s like if you turned, you could see the sun; the sun isn’t there when you do. The sun is on you. It warms you.
For some reason, Alejandro Altaha is here. The Protector of Worlds upon the planet Imion is at your side again…!
Years apart, too excruciating. Years apart, too excruciating.
These years apart…
You are glad you’ve been apart. The two of you might deserve something better than that day he died. The last days of your adolescence hadn’t needed university to begin.
You peer at him. He’s noticeably confused, with his gaze darting around the place. The world around you suddenly brings to mind the seaside you both know. Your true home upon the planet Imion—the Chandrani complex, with its low cliffs and their many cozy pink-brown brick houses, it’s beside the seaside the two of you grew up running across…
You nearly feel it. Being there together in real life instead of a great distance apart.
“The djinn is playing tricks again?” you murmur.
Alejandro whirls around. His long dark locks, the ones you once liked occasionally pressing by your face so much, they dance with him as he does. The scarlet red of his eyes glow a little higher than usual.
“Toni!” Alejandro exclaims. “A dream like this—I didn’t expect it! How funny.”
Alejandro, he’s laughing.
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Alejandro’s curious, looking you over.
What’s up with him?
He seems to notice something about you that you don’t notice about yourself. It’s often like that with people.
Many have long dreaded meeting it, the strength of your Red. Among Spectral clans, the Red drink emotion, and the worst thing in the world, it will take all feeling from all people. Many believe this; you’ve seen it spoken about among the talking heads on the astra screens.
“The Djinn of Waters said if I find the right person, I’ll gain the power I want…” You trail off.
The glow of Alejandro’s Red is unbearably familiar.
“What sort of power?” he asks you.
He doesn’t ask, ‘What do you want to do with it?’
It seems obvious between you.
Your hands come together; the red-brown of your skin is darker than you expected from these past years shut inside a study. Uncertainty colors you, and then—
A diamond shape centers right over Alejandro’s face. A gentler ochre; it has always been loved by the sun.
You say, “I will gain back ‘the world.’ Only with the right person. I decide, and the person decides… No—listen—it isn’t like our past together, Ale! What I need isn’t us. I need ‘their world.’”
The winds are yours. They have been forever. They pick up around you, the both of you, and you feel more confident, staring above the diamond shape now. Right into his eyes. Your hands fall away.
Alejandro is looking you over again. He’s incredibly curious.
“You and I both know this world isn’t mine,” he says.
“Obviously—”
“My world, you should find it.” Alejandro says.
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You’re too silent; he spins away from you, striding off. His feet are now drenched in ocean waters, the aqua dreamy with the memory of light from somewhere far away. The ocean here always whispers. You can’t parse it well, the song.
You are not your twin brother.
Alejandro sings over it. He sings, “If and when you find my world, I’ll decide! I’ll decide whether to give you my full power. Yours and mine, together again. What do you think?”
Antonio…
You are afraid. You say to him, “Our power…”
He is staring out at the even dreamier blue horizon. “It wasn’t about our power. One day, I woke up and realized it. That you loved me the way I loved you when I was younger. I started weeping after I woke to it… The truth is, it’s not our world anymore. That’s fine—it’s fine—I don’t want to share the power you want to share. Will you still find my world? I want to tell you something while there.”
“Alejandro.”
Light glitters and flashes—he is light, and he is blinding you again, only for an instant—
He melts and drifts across the ocean, and it glimmers like the sun is there. His light dances into the sky, and you know he will wake soon in the real world.
Your feet are amid ocean waters. They drift, more peaceable than they might be in real life. They are yours, and as you stare down at them, they seem to remember you need your reflection.
They reflect him back at you. Fernando.
There’s a power Fernando took from you. It’s simply a game of power.
It’s nothing else.
fin.
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Note: Blue Horizon is an adult science fantasy multimedia project. Wanted to host the short story on Nekoweb to give people the full experience. Written and uploaded on Nekoweb 12/19/2025 and mirrored on Neocities 12/20.
Further notes for Neocities—I created this as a pre-release and prelude for the upcoming Blue Horizon: The Art and Dance of Fernando Chandrani-Rivera visual novel.
