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The Beast looks harried when he steps from the shadows of the winter wood into the dying sunset that painted Pottsfeild gold.
There was snow clinging to his furs and his antlers were splintered and broken off in places, he was slow and staggered on his feet as if put on balance and Enoch notices he’s missing an arm.
Horror pools in Enoch’s being as anger at whatever did this to the Beast rears its ugly head.
Rot billows up around them.
He surges forward, aghast, ribbons fluttering to touch the wound and trace the splintered edges of his arm stump as the Beast hops nimbly up over the fence.
The Beast waves him off with his remaining hand.
“I took the short way down a tall mountain during a hunt, I am fine, Harvest Lord. They are planted.” He reassures. “My arm is already burning in the lantern, it will regrow.”
Enoch immediately began to fret.
That’s not all there is to it, he knows it.
The Beast is slow and careless in his movements and posture, not… not… not calculated and careful as he often was, it was careless in a way that showed he was not only physically wounded, but gravely distracted.
Enoch wraps himself tightly around the Beast, spilling over his vessel and trickling into the empty void of the Beast, practically carrying him rather than ushering him into the barn. The Beast hisses appreciatively at his excess presence and nuzzles into him.
Enoch throws the barn doors open wide and quickly slams them shut behind him as he settles in the hay, the Beast sprawling across him.
“Mortals,” He starts but stops abruptly.
Enoch waits patiently, his previous urgency and fear dulled now that the Beast is safe in his barn and entwined in his ribbons.
When the Beast starts again, he does not cut himself off.
“Mortals have such strange notions about eternity.”
Enoch hums, shoving his ribbons perhaps a bit too roughly under the Beast’s furs to feel where his arm was cleaved off.
“Yes, if I recall correctly, when Miss Clara first turned up she was disquieted at the notion. Said she’d run out of things to do with herself, but look at her now, a handful of thousand years and she’s still busier than a church mouse.”
“They have such strange analogies for it.” The Beast murmurs. “There is one, about a little bird and a mountain, and every thousand years the bird sharpens its beak upon the mountain. They say that the time it takes the bird to wear down the mountain is only a day in the scheme of eternity.”
Enoch is a bit taken aback.
“Do birds sharpen their beaks?”
The Beast’s eyes light up with rings of color, evidently ignoring Enoch’s question.
“There is another, about taking all the grains of sand from one beach to another, or a painter wearing down a mountain range with his brush.
“My,” Enoch hums. “That is hardly an eternity, why that would pass in…” He waves his streamers idly. “A blink of an eye, if I’m not careful to keep a hold of time.”
“They need a way to quantify it. Their minds cannot fathom endlessness.”
“Can ours?” Enoch purrs as he feels the Beast’s bark shifting as his arm begins to regrow.
The Beast pauses as if to ponder that.
“A mortal can only conceive of time for as long as they have lived, if we are the same, I suppose not, but we can certainly conceive of more than they.”
“One might argue they can perceive time double the span of their life, because they know the time it takes to get there, and what it would take to double it. I would wager no more, though, it is easy when it becomes nothing more than numbers.”
The Beast hums at that.
“Then perhaps we can,” He toys with one of Enoch’s ribbons and turns those blazing eyes to Enoch. The harvest lord nearly swoons. “Would you say we’ve lived for half an eternity, Harvest Lord?”
Had Enoch been mortal, he might have forgotten to breath under that piercing gaze.
“No,” The Beast says, not waiting for an answer, shaking his head and looking away. “The very nature of eternity is non-linear, a ring, feeding into itself forever, but we are not so linear, you and I.”
He chuckles.
“You less so than I.”
“What is the difference between emptiness and eternity?” Enoch queries.
The Beast’s head swings to him, eyes narrowing.
“One is measured in time and the other is measured in lacking.”
“Then there you have it.” Enoch says, clasping his feelers together. “If they are both endlessness in different measures, and you can comprehend one, then you can comprehend the other.”
“Emptiness has no physical measure.”
“Nor does time.”
“It has no accurate measure, but there are indicators it has passed, emptiness is about perception.”
“Is time not also?”
“Time is linear.” His gaze is pointed. “Or, rather, it should be, Harvest Lord. Eternity is not.”
“If time is inclined to being linear, why does it fold back on itself and bend and break so easily? If I recall, when we first roamed, it was not.”
“It’s very ability to fold is what allows it to be linear while eternity continues to exist. If it is not linear in some sense, there is no way for a linear creature to comprehend it.”
“Hm, what does it mean to be non-linear, cricket?”
“To exist in multiple moments in time at once.”
“Well, if you look at it like that, then it has less to do with the composition of the creature and more to do with the nature of time where they are. You have said yourself that time in Pottsfeild slips back and forth, folding over itself and overlaying.”
“There is still the matter of comprehending, which exists more in the mind of the creature.”
“But if it is perception of time that is the basis of your comprehension of eternity, and perception is shaped by experience, then their perception of eternity as nonlinear is hinged entirely on their existence in a nonlinear world.”
“Understanding eternity requires an understanding of both linear and nonlinear time to properly understand what it means for linear time to last forever.”
Enoch hums at that.
“Would you say I can fathom eternity? Since I exist both in the linear and nonlinear?” Enoch asks.
“I have no idea.” Those eyes fix upon him again.
“Tell me, Enoch,” The Beast purrs. “Can you fathom eternity?”
Enoch giggles.
“My dear, I can barely fathom next week.”
The Beast stares at him suspiciously.
“In a linear sense.” Enoch amends.
“But in a nonlinear sense?”
“Well, yes I suppose, the point of eternity is to be rather fathomless though. Living things are built to comprehend the finite after all.”
The Beast is vibrating now with excitement.
“But we are not finite beings, Harvest Lord.”
“Perhaps you’re not, dear, I rather think there’s an end to me.” Enoch pauses. “Somewhere.”
“That is my very point, you are thinking in the way of mortals, in the way of matter .”
“I rather think there’s very little other way to think of it, my dear. At least right now I suppose, when I am in the world of matter,”
“Then do not think with what is here, think with the parts of you which are not imbued in the world of matter.”
Enoch sighs, but reaches down into the earth, past dirt and water and bone, past mater and void and stars and into a depth of himself lingering outside of the world of matter. He wakes it and holds it up before his perceptions, like a lense he focuses himself before him and grapples with the concept of eternity.
He lets go of matter, of the threads of reality, leaving only a few fragments of himself in the world of the living and grips at nothing, binding himself to the concept of time. He fragments, blooming out over the past, the present, and the future and reaches for an ever stretching end.
He feels where reality folds, where time laces into itself, where moments resonate and come in contact with one another, where time echoes and blooms.
When at last he wrestles himself back into the maypole, the Beast’s arm is half grown, and he is futzing with Enoch’s ribbons, a complex one handed game of cat’s cradle half finished between his claws.
“So tell me, Thicket Cat,” The Beast murmurs, not looking up from his twisted nest of ribbons threaded through his claws. “Do you comprehend eternity?”
“Yes.” Enoch murmurs, gently raking his ribbons through the Beast’s antlers. “Can you, cricket?”
The Beast leers at him.
“Yes.” He offers no explanation and Enoch expects none.
“What brought this on, winter warden?”
“Hm?” The Beast looks up from the ribbons threaded through his claws.
“Your interest in eternity.”
The Beast stares at him for a moment.
Then he waves Enoch off with his ribbon tangled hand.
“Yes, that. I’ve been laying in the snow for a week while my torso regrew together. It felt, as mortals say, like an eternity.” He mutters offhandedly.
“What?” Enoch thunders.
“I suppose,” The Beast says. “If we are incorrect in our perceptions of eternity, we shall have an eternity to correct them.”
“A week?”
“An eternity is a long time, one must spend it in good company I’d assume.”
“You were laying in the snow, broken, for a week?”
“I suppose there are worse entities to spend an eternity with.”
“Why didn't you send for me? Who cared for the lantern? Beast, are you listening to me?”
“I look forward to an eternity with you, thicket cat.”
“Are you really not going to address the fact you were laying splintered in the snow for a week.”
“Don't be ridiculous, Enoch. It was nothing, do not trouble yourself over it.”
“A week!”
“Calm yourself, Harvest Lord, it was hardly an eternity.”