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The chill seeps through Aloy’s leathers as she perches on the rocky outcropping above Mother’s Cradle. She finds she enjoys all the noise now, as long as she isn’t in it. The drums float up, occasionally singing with chaotic harmonies that remind her of her proving, and despite being denied all of this her entire life, it feels more like home than anywhere else.
And she’s going to be leaving again soon.
Not that she minds. Listening to the Nora up here is fine. Peaceful. Grounding. Walking among them is awkward at best, but more often just infuriating. She has no control over what they call her. Anointed. Daughter of the Goddess. Savior.
She nurses the ale in her lap, a slow source of warmth for her belly on a rare night when she can just relax. “Are you ready to hear it?” she asks Varl.
He’s the only one of them who sees her. He sees the other version, too, and sometimes his double vision seems to make him dizzy as he looks at her. She’s felt his questions churning just beneath the surface, the way his jaw clenches as he decides again not to ask. He can’t decide if he wants answers. He wants the truth, but he doesn’t want his entire life to change. Not like hers had. He wants to reconcile the two Aloys in his head, or at least settle on one version, but one is safe, and one is honest, and he can’t decide.
Without answers, she knows he’ll revert to calling her anointed. But Varl—she doesn’t know why, but she wants him to truly see her. To know her. She thinks out of all of the Nora he can, if he tries. And it will mean something. She’s not sure if she just wants one Nora—any Nora—to see her as she is, or if there’s something about him, Varl, the first person she ever fought with side by side as braves, as equals. He was the first person she ever touched, after Rost. He took her hand and pulled her up into the ruins, and it was such a simple thing, but after the battle was over, when she tried to get some sleep, she remembered how his hand felt and how much she wanted that contact again.
She doesn’t want to think about how she’ll feel if his vision settles on the wrong Aloy.
“Yeah,” he says, though he sounds anything but certain, “I think I am. I want to be. I want to know the truth.”
She tells him, and this part is easy. The life and death of the Ancients. The origin of their people. Everything that went wrong. Everything that went right. The second ending of everything that he helped prevent. Then the trickiest parts—How she was born. Why she was born.
The settlement is asleep and quiet by the time she’s done. Varl is silent for a long time. Their cups are both empty, and she feels the chill in her bones.
He lets out a small puff of air, a tiny bitter laugh. “The Goddess trusted us to raise you, and the Matriarchs cast you out.”
Aloy wants to protest, but she isn’t going to complain about someone doubting that decision. If it makes them doubt casting out children as a practice in general, good. “Makes you wonder what else they got wrong.”
“I know you don’t care what the Matriarchs have to say, that you don’t believe it,” he responds, “And I understand why. I do. But they weren’t completely wrong about you. You were sent by the mother of all of us. You’re… you’re her mother.”
“Guess I’m ready to be a Matriarch,” Aloy mutters. If she’s Gaia’s mother, she has enough generations beneath her to outvote them all.
Varl chuckles, sort of, more nerves than anything else, and Aloy clutches to the tiny hope in her chest. “The mountain might just be a machine like you say, but it did nurture our ancestors. And within the machine, there is an entity who cares about us. Who loves you, specifically. You say she’s not the Goddess of the Matriarchs, but she created life out of a tainted earth. I can’t say it makes much difference to me what we call her. She gave us the world and she brought us into it, and that’s a power I don’t understand.”
Aloy feels something inside herself crumple. He’s right, in his frustratingly Nora way, but after everything, he’s still going to see her the way they do. Aloy can’t herself comprehend the full capabilities of the AI that Elisabet created, but she knows something made by people isn’t sacred. “There’s nothing holy about me, Varl. That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”
She dreads what she’ll see on his face, but when she looks at him, he doesn’t look away. He holds her gaze, still an equal. He nods. “You’re impressive, incredible even, but I think I get it now. You aren’t holy. Important to the world in a way that still don’t completely understand, maybe I’ll never understand, but you’re human. And…” He trails off, swallows. He doesn’t finish his thought.
She doesn’t push. There’s a strange tension, like that moment before the override kicks in and the machine on the other end of her spear makes one last attempt at freedom—but that’s not a good analogy. She doesn’t want to override Varl’s beliefs, reprogram him or drag him out of Nora culture. She wants to convince him. But if she pushes him now, he’ll spook.
“The task she gave me—it’s not over. I have to rebuild her somehow. Stop the machines from getting worse. I’ll have to leave the Sacred Lands again. I don’t know when I’ll come back.” If I’ll come back, she thinks to herself. She supposes she’ll have no reason anymore.
“Well, even if you weren’t a Seeker, I’d bet the Matriarchs would call any land you stand on sacred, so I wouldn’t worry about exile.” Varl smiles, and if he’s joking about her holiness, they really have a chance here. “Shit, standing within a five-foot radius of you would probably protect against exile, no matter how tainted the land.”
Aloy laughs. Her spear stretched out in front of her reaches about five feet, and with it she banishes corruption. Varl might have a point. “Care to try it out? You want to go out west, Varl?”
He doesn’t laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll come with you.”
“Wait, what?” She turns her head to find him smiling at her shocked expression. He doesn’t look scared at all.
“I’ve been thinking about this since before tonight. I know what I said in Meridian, about tainted lands and other tribes. I just needed some time to decide if I wanted my world to stay small. I don’t know exactly what to believe anymore. But I believe in you, Aloy. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. I’d be a fool not to go with you.”
She never thought he’d leave the Sacred Lands. She hadn’t thought to have anyone on the journey with her. Elisabet wasn’t alone, she reminds herself. She recruited people, a team to restore the world. Maybe Aloy didn’t have to do this alone.
“Not as an acolyte,” she warns, smiling to pretend it's a joke.
“A fellow brave,” Varl agrees, “A friend.”
Aloy exhales as the sun breaks over the horizon. She moves her hand from the rough stone and places it over his. The first hand she ever held, and he flips his palm up to grasp hers. He looks warm in the pink light of dawn. “A friend.”