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It's almost like poetry.
The blue and green lights are dancing above your head to a melody that everyone (/everyone/, gods, on every plane, in every existence, it's something your mind can still barely comprehend), /everyone/ can hear. Fisher and his child are radiant. They glow proudly as the story--/your/ story--is shared with the universe.
And suddenly no one is alone.
You feel this sharply and keenly. You have been alone, especially when Julia died, when Raven's Roost was lost, though you don't know what caused the two events (it leaves a sour taste in your mouth regardless). Then there was Taako and Merle and Angus and the Bureau and Lucretia and yet. And yet you felt the loss every day. In every moment you rushed in you knew that if it went bad, well, then you wouldn't be so alone anymore.
But in this moment, watching the lights above and before you, as everyone in existence shares in the knowledge that the world is ending, shares in the fear of the Hunger descending, you are connected to people in a way that you haven't truly felt since Lucretia erased your memory of those fateful hundred years.
As the realization hits you, you swear you can see the world around you glow white. But it's not from the eyes of the agents of the Hunger. It's from the bonds created between you and the IPRE crew and the /world/.
And you feel complete. Like the period at the end of a sentence, this moment of connection is both something ending and something beginning. It's a new stanza, a continuation, because--and it's almost enough to knock you off your feet, this realization-- /no one is ready to stand down/. You take a deep breath, and somewhere, deep within your heart, you feel everyone take the same breath, and look deep into the face of the apocalypse, and as one, say, "No."
So you stand up straight and tall, and think about your crew--your family--and the rest of the world. All of those people that you need to /protect/.
The story and the song fly above your head and through your heart, and mind, and soul. You feel the universe balance precariously between destruction and survival. You know what you need to do, and it fees so right, like the perfect rhyme.
You take one last look at the two voidfish, at the lights, and simply /feel/ everything for one more moment.
It's so beautiful. It's almost like poetry.
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It's almost like poetry.
Each line in a couplet must have a mate, something so similar and yet different enough to distinguish between the two, and allow the meaning to come across.
You had lost your meaning, though you didn't remember it ever existing in the first place. The other rhyme was gone, and so yours barely made sense, for so long. It explained a lot.
Then she was back and gone again in a flash, and the world was ending and all you wanted to do was make sure everyone felt this double loss that you had. Who cares if the world was ending? Without the next line in your story, it made no logical sense to keep going.
You feel fire in your veins, and imagine your body is hers, imagine that this is how she must have felt all the time, so powerful, so /resplendent/. You imagine the umbra-staff in your hand vibrates, your last connection to her reaching toward the anger and the loss and the hurt, and clutch it to your chest.
There's a break in your line of thought when the Hunger attacks. You ready for battle and someone appears at your side and your heart soars, thinking, hoping--and it's not, of course, it's Angus, but damn if that isn't just as good, and the realization of that almost knocks you down.
You fight with Magnus and Merle, because /that's/ what you know now, that's who you know how to work with, and you wonder if maybe your rhyme scheme has changed in the years that you've had together to unknowingly relearn their ways.
There was once a time when your couplet was part of a larger verse, two lines within seven and they all somehow made sense. Through the bonds you created, your hearts beat almost as one, keeping time with the rhythm and the flow of your lives. There was chaos, and there was destruction, but there was also balance and love. And you and her were a part of that.
When you and Magnus and Merle had (re)connected, without realizing it, you (re)connected three out of the seven parts of the original story. Not enough to make sense, but enough to begin your epic once more. You hadn't changed, you had simply found your rhythm again, those slants that you could fit your rhyme against, not perfectly, but just enough.
And you think that's maybe okay.
Until a fireball too big for a young boy to conjure up emerges from your umbra-staff, and your heart and mind and soul /reach/ for the magical instrument and you know what to do, break it in half and /there she is/, and you truly remember what it's like to be a fully realized creation, now that you and her are whole, together, balanced once more.
She shines before you, the grin on her face matching yours exactly.
It's so beautiful. It's almost like poetry.
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It's almost like poetry.
There's a beginning, and an end, and in the middle is love and plants and dancing and praying. And through it all, a constant thread, a reminder that you're never alone, keeping everything together.
Until one day, it's gone.
And you fall apart.
Pan was your constant. He was the rhythm you followed (whether you wanted to or not) because He was always just /there/. Your doubts and your complaining could not dissuade Him. He was the one thing in your life that stuck by you. Perhaps you were just fated to lose everything you cared about.
But you look up, and you see Magnus and Taako, and despite their jokes about how you "never used your healing powers anyway," you know that they are worried and afraid. And you consider what you know about constants.
It's not a lot, you realize very quickly. You've never known much about regularity, about rhythm. Your life is a disjointed stream of consciousness, of starting and giving up and restarting and running away. But with you, the whole time, was Pan. And with you, most of the time, were Taako and Magnus.
The way you three fit together was proof, your were sure, that the gods had a sense of humor. Two capable adventurers in their own rights, and you. You spent your entire quest waiting for the day they realized that even a kid like that annoying Agnes was a better and more capable companion than you.
They never did though, and that's what's getting you, as you stand here disconnected from everything that once grounded you to the universe. This whole time, you thought it was just you and Pan against the world, but Taako and Magnus were there too. And they're still here, as you deal with the loss of your god.
And you realize that, at some point, you found your rhythm, that place where you fit into the story, where you make sense. You thought Taako and Magnus had their own arcs, beginnings that didnt include you and middles and ends that didnt need you. Your own story was separate, smaller, /lesser/. In reality, it all blended together to make something so perfect and balanced that nothing could destroy it, not even the apocalypse itself.
So when the memories hit you, when the century that was stolen from you by Lucretia returns, and the initial shock of the flood of so much information wears off, you can't help but smile. The connections you made, those bonds, return in full force and it almost feels like Pan has returned. It brings the same comfort, the same sense of familiarity, of /home/.
It's so beautiful. It's almost like poetry.