Trauma is a hole that can only be mapped by absence. There are so many stories I've read where the narrative paces around it, drawing an ever tightening spiral around an uncrossable boundary.
Sometimes, to name something is to make it real.
When I play In Stars And Time I think a lot about trauma and about the unsolvability of it! Spoilers for all of In Stars And Time below the read more (and also, go play it!)
There are many things I love about In Stars And Time but the forgotten country is one of my favorite. I expected (like many players) that the resolution to the plot would involve restoring the memory of the forgotten country somehow.
The hole it leaves is catastrophic. It's world-ending. There are no words to describe what the forcible erasing of an entire country does to the world, much less to the people from that country. Siblings, culture, art, books, technology, cooking, and crafts have all been ripped away and no one can remember that they're missing.
The world of In Stars And Time is broken. Siffrin is broken. The King is broken too, and has decided to break in return. I love that the game leaves this question open -- sometimes healing is not about fixing. Restoring the forgotten country is a way to fix things, but it is not the only way. It may not even be the best way. It certainly isn't something that any one person must shoulder / needs to shoulder.
In the end, Siffrin makes peace with it because they must look forward instead of back into the wound. Absence is a hole in the heart, but the heart can be so much more than the absence.
Before I end this post though, I love the way that the forgotten country is introduced -- by books that can't be read, by symbols that can't be understood. It's unsettling that something so important can just be ignored. How can you ignore that your sister is missing? You forget you ever had a sister at all.
We can chart the edges of the forgotten country by what is missing, but what if something else has vanished that can't even be mapped this way? What is something disappears so totally even the edges to mark its absence has vanished?
I can't tell if I'm reading too much into it -- but in a game that has so much symbolism around stars and the universe...
Where is the moon?