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"I guess we can start." The voice echoed through the hall, reaching no one in particular. Its speaker, Ouro Kronii, regardless, sat down at her station as the Warden of Time. Beside her were four other seats arranged in a half circle, one to her right and three others to her left. All but one were empty. The hall was faintly illuminated by a hanging chandelier, just enough for Kronii to see the entire spacious room. Large windows flanking the great thrones opened out into the void of space, into darkness punctuated by distant stars. There were curtains once, but they had fallen and no one had thought to put them back up.
"Hello, everyone. Any news to discuss?" Kronii asked by way of introduction. Of course, there wasn't. No more humans to cause any wars. No new species were coming into being. The stars and planets were in their fixed orbits. Even the entropy of the universe seemed to fizzle out, and all that remained was time. The Warden knew all of this, and yet she still asked like she did every meeting. It was the only proper way to begin.
Above the central chamber was a great screen, able to project a multitude of images, depending on the council’s wishes. Now, it only showed the council’s podiums, all deserted save for one. If she looked hard enough, she could imagine four other silhouettes in those seats. But for today, there was just her. Despite the lack of observers, Kronii still dressed in her original Warden of Time uniform, with a white top, striped black skirt with black tights. Her two swords were busy collecting dust on the floor of her bedroom.
The room had been lively once upon a time; there were games and laughter and heartfelt conversations. It had been a place Kronii had desperately wished she could be in forever, despite knowing for a fact that could never be true. As the Warden of Time, she had seen the future. She had known that loneliness and isolation would befall her. Yet still she did her best to smile and ignore the future. Perhaps she had even accomplished that; it had been so long ago, it was hard to remember now. She had loved all the members of the council at some point, but now she was left with only memories. Bitter memories, in one particular case.
Kronii sighed and looked at the seats surrounding her. Farthest from her had sat the Keeper of Nature. Next to her was the Guardian of Civilization. In the middle of course sat the Leader, Chaos Incarnate. Fourth in line was Kronii herself as the Warden of Time, and finally the Speaker of Space at the end. They had been the mighty council, tasked with maintaining the balance of the universe. Yet now even their seats were starting to crumble.
With no motions put forth by any of the present members, Kronii folded her arms on her podium and declared, "I believe a motion to nap is then in order. All in favor?"
"Aye," she answered herself.
"Any opposed?" There was silence, and with the lack of any objections, she opted to rest her head on her arms and close her eyes. Sleeping was how Kronii spent most of her time now. It comforted her, and if she was lucky, she'd even get to dream.
This time though, she was unlucky, and the dream turned into a nightmare.
It was an eternity ago, the council's last complete meeting. The five sat penitently in their seats as an image was displayed overhead. Some clever humans had put their final hope in a lump of metal hurtling through space at great speed, and though the tube had traveled far, it was to be humanity’s last hurrah. Its passengers were all asleep now, and getting colder by the second. All five members of the council watched in silence.
"Was there really nothing we could do?" the Guardian asked suddenly, her face unreadable.
Kronii and the Speaker glanced at each other before shaking their heads.
The Guardian thought for a moment, then continued. "I suppose they did everything they could then." She turned her attention back to the screen, as Kronii followed her gaze. The tube was now completely cold, the last vestiges of heat sapped away by the uncaring void of space.
The Leader spoke up. "That's just the way of the universe. Everything returns to entropy eventually." Kronii wasn’t sure if that was meant to be comforting, but if it was, it didn’t work. Despite a desperate attempt, the Speaker and the Keeper couldn't help themselves from crying. Kronii kept her tears in check, having seen this outcome many times already. But some fates were too powerful to change, and not even the Warden of Time could keep humanity from its end.
"I guess I'll be going now then." The Guardian said, looking down. "I'm not really needed anymore." Nobody was able to say anything.
Kronii stood up, but before she could say anything, the Keeper lept from her seat and wrapped her arms around the Guardian. "There, there," the Keeper said warmly. "Shhh."
The Guardian couldn't help it anymore and finally broke down crying, sobbing relentlessly into the Keeper's shoulder. She whispered something Kronii couldn't hear, and the Keeper stroked her hair and replied, "You did a wonderful job. Humanity was absolutely spectacular.” The Guardian sobbed some more incoherently, to which the Keeper continued, "Don't you worry your fluffy little head. I promise we'll remember each and everyone one of them."
This seemed to calm her down, and the Guardian managed to choke out a little louder, "Thank you for everything, everyone." She sniffled. "I was truly happy, the whole time." With her arms still wrapped around the Keeper, she gave the others one last look, before she disappeared.
For a moment, the council was frozen, nobody dared to speak. The only sounds were the Speaker trying to reign in her tears. Even the Keeper stayed at the Guardian’s seat, her arms now wrapped around nothing but air. Finally, she put her arms down and broke the silence. "Don't worry, Mumei," she whispered. "I won't be far behind."
Then suddenly, the Keeper stood up and looked directly at Kronii. Her usually calm demeanor was now twisted into a burning rage. WIth eyes filled with hatred and tears still falling down her cheeks, she opened her mouth to deliver a rage-filled invective. But before the Keeper could utter a word, Kronii suddenly jerked awake.
Kronii touched her face and found it was wet with tears. “Ah,” she said aloud. “That dream again.” It seemed as though her luck was actually mixed. Unfortunate enough to have the nightmare in the first place, but luckily enough to skip the most painful part; the part she could never bring herself to remember. The part that caused Kronii to stop feeling anything.
After cleaning her face and sitting up, Kronii again looked out at the council room. "Anything else before we wrap up?" The four empty seats declined to answer, and Kronii decided to remove herself. Taking the stairs down, she made a dedicated effort to walk past one of the seats. When she reached the hallway, she looked back at the council room, feeling many things and also nothing. The council had adjourned. Everyone was free to go.
Like clockwork, this particular routine had gone on for a long, long time. But that was all that remained for Kronii to do. The flow of time had been constant, without humans and their pesky free will, there were no paradoxes to fix. Time now only existed to mark the spinning of rocks and gas around other chunks of rock and gas. Neither days or decades held any meaning anymore, and so Kronii kept track only by the number of meetings she presided over. But after the rest of the council disappeared, she found there was no reason to count those either and gave up a little past 1 trillion.
Kronii’s heels echoed down the halls as she made her way to her room, each clack rang out at a precise interval. About halfway through, she stopped in front of a bedroom. Kronii made a valiant effort not to look in a particular room. She made this effort every time and succeeded about 40% of the time. She lost this one, and peaked her head in. The ancient wood furniture once finely crafted was splintered and fractured with a fine layer of dust covering every surface. The cotton covers were ragged, but not completely torn. The great window showed only more empty space.
Kronii let herself in, shut the door, and sat down on the bed. The wood groaned but held up for now. One day of course it would collapse, but today it held. Any trace of the former occupant had long faded, but Kronii liked to imagine she could still feel her.
She shouldn't keep doing this, she kept telling herself. It only leads to loneliness. "And memory," she added aloud. A bitter memory, in fact, but one she couldn't stop from rising again.
It was an eternity ago, and the Keeper was in her bed, while Kronii stood beside her. The Keeper's breath was ragged and her face was twisted in pain. Her once vibrant hair was ashen and brittle. Kronii replaced the rag on her forehead with a cooler one, and then sat back down. She glanced out the window. The lonely planet below was charred black, and an oppressive red sun blazed behind it.
The ailing Keeper licked her lips, then spoke, "You came." She was smiling.
Kronii forced herself to smile back. She was the last to visit, the Speaker and the Leader were respectfully waiting out in the hallways. "Of course I did. Where else would I be?" Seeing the Keeper like this was harder than Kronii realized. Her once brilliant hair was a muted grey, fraying and thin. Her face was weathered and cracked. Even her eyes had lost their shine, although not completely.
The Keeper's smile became a grimace. "It hurts," she whispered.
"I know," was all Kronii was able to say. She had seen this long ago, knew exactly how long the pain would last even. Not much longer now, as it turns out.
"Can I-" The Keeper weakly stuck out her hand. Kronii grasped it gently, letting both hands fall to the soft sheets. Her hand was sticky with sweat, and could only barely apply any force. There was a time once when Kronii would have given anything to just hold his hand.
"I'm right here," Kronii told her, meaning every word.
"Kronii," The Keeper mumbled, as she turned her head to look at the Warden. "I-I," she tried to say.
"Shh," Kronii interrupted. "It's okay." Whatever it was the Keeper wanted to say, it was probably too late, and not worth the exertion.
"N-no, it's not," the Keeper was firm regardless. "What I… said before. It wasn't okay. It was cruel and mean." She tried to sit up, but Kronii gently kept her down on the bed.
"It's okay, really. I've pretty much forgotten it anyway."
"I didn't even realize I could be so harsh, it just came out of me so suddenly. I was so scared of myself and scared of facing you. I thought for sure you must have hated me." Tears began to fall down the Keeper's cheeks.
Kronii squeezed the Keeper's hands. "I could never hate you."
"I know you did everything you could, I know you gave humanity their best shot. I just." She coughed. "I just couldn't take losing her." Kronii didn't know what to say.
The Keeper continued. "And after all that happened, I knew how you felt, and I… I just couldn't…" She trailed off, but Kronii understood.
"Fauna," Kronii finally said, gently brushing the Keeper's hair. "It's really okay."
The Keeper smiled, her first in a long time. "You finally said my name." Her voice was fading. "It's been so long… Kronii." Finally, she closed her eyes.
"Sleep well, Keeper of Nature," Kronii whispered, as she leaned down towards the fragile girl. Just before she could kiss her forehead though, she was gone. Kronii let her hand fall onto the now empty bed, where it resided for an unknown amount of time.
Kronii blinked and found that the moment was over. She turned around and found herself in the long abandoned room again, sitting on the long abandoned bed. She put her head in her hands.
Everything that had happened after the Keeper disappeared was a blur. Eventually nothing even remained of that planet, all traces were consumed. The council meetings got quieter and quieter. At some point the Leader was the next to go, walking out of the council room never to return. How long ago was that? Why did she go again? Well, it didn't matter.
At another point, Kronii woke up to find the Speaker gone as well. That was fine of course. Kronii had already been alone for a long time. And so Kronii was by herself, with four empty seats for company.
She used to peer into the future, as was her job. She saw this loneliness coming, she saw the disappearance of the council. But she could never see anything past it. No matter how far into the future she looked, it was just darkness and solitude ahead. And eventually, she stopped looking. Kronii had herself and her memories now, and that would have to be enough. There was no meaning to a future anymore.
With nowhere to go and nothing to do, Kronii began one day with the only thing she could think of. She dressed in her usual uniform, walked into the council room and took her usual seat. She cleared her throat, looked around, and announced, "I guess we can start."
And so Kronii's thoughts returned to the present, the only time she tried to think of these days. Feeling the energy drain out of her, Kronii couldn't stop herself from reclining on the bed. Morbid or not, she liked to think that maybe she could wake up, and for just the briefest instance, maybe they could be reunited. It was a lovely delusion, Kronii thought as she closed her eyes.
But sleep would not come to her. In fact, she wouldn't even get close, because a few minutes later, the door to the bedroom flung open. The opened with such force that it fell off its hinges and sputtered on the floor. The commotion jerked Kronii awake, and she sat up immediately to see what had caused it.
Whoops," came a bubbly voice. "didn't mean to do that."
It was an eternity ago that Kronii had heard another voice. She turned towards its directly cautiously, as if moving too quickly would make the source disappear. But to her surprise, there stood the Speaker of Space, with her usual cheerful smile. She wore the same uniform Kronii had last seen her in, but her long golden hair was now tied up into one long ponytail. "Wha-" Kronii started, convinced she must be dreaming.
"Hey Kroni-nii!" The Speaker greeted. "I thought you'd be in here when you weren't in your room. Even though it's kinda weird when you think about it. By the way, you really should clean your room more often."
"What," Kronii's mind was overloading, "what are you- Where have you-?" Kronii's mind was racing trying to process everything. "Why-"
Before she could get any answers, the Speaker reached out and grabbed Kronii's arm. With a tug, she pulled the still reeling woman to her feet. "No time for that, we gotta run!"
The Speaker began leading Kronii out of the room, towards the exit of the council hall. "Run?"
"Yes, run!" The two reached the portal to the outside, and without letting Kronii ask any more questions, the Speaker pushed Kronii through.
"Gwak!" She yelled in surprise. "W-wait Sana!"
Time and Space compressed and expanded until finally they regained their usual forms. Kronii found herself floating in the darkness of space, with the Speaker beaming next to her. She could sense that she had moved a vast distance, practically to the other side of the universe. "Where are we?" Kronii asked, panting.
The Speaker giggled and simply pointed towards her feet. Kronii looked down and below her was a gently spinning mass of blue and white, a Neptune-style ice giant perhaps. Two moons were quietly orbiting the planet. Kronii looked back at the Speaker quizzically. "Look closer," she was told.
Upon another look, the planet was remarkably small for a gas giant. And there was something else. Yes, something indeed. The white streaks sped away to reveal pockets of brown interrupted the blue vastness. "Is that… land?" Kronii asked incredulously.
"Solid ground," the Speaker nodded. "Although they're still rising, and a lot of volcanic activity will still happen. And there's still the entire other half, but whatever. Now come on!" And while grabbing Kronii's hand, she pulled the two of them towards the planet's surface, right towards one of the landmasses.
The gentle woman laughed as they descended. "Didn't you see this coming? We had no idea how to keep a secret from someone who can see into the future."
"I stopped looking," Kronii admitted sheepishly. Her grip on the Speaker's hand was tight, as if she were afraid she'd disappear at any moment. "All I ever saw was me alone in that room."
"Hmm," the Speaker contemplated. "I guess you just didn't look far enough then. It took us a looooong time to get it right."
"Us?" She asked as they made a soft landing on the surface.
"That's right!" a shrill voice replies from a few meters away. The small figure was sitting on a rock jutting out from the land. With her ratty t-shirt and fiery, wild hair, there was no mistaking her as the Leader of the Council. “Sup, Kronii,” she greeted. “We would have found you a lot sooner, but someone kept accidentally blowing up the planets.”
“What? Who?” the Speaker feigned ignorance, and she walked to stand by the Leader.
“You just haaaad to go and smell the weird moss last time, didn’t ya?”
“It was purple! How could I not. It’s not like I wanted to sneeze.” She laughed. "And besides, it's not like I was the only one! You're the one who smashed up the last one." She pointed at the Leader.
The small redhead blushed. "Hey, we needed water, and those comets looked a lot smaller from far away!" She shrugged. "I like this one better anyway. It's got more pizzazz."
The Speaker nodded. “Who would have guessed it would be HD1? Or as I like to call this galaxy, Better Milky Way the 11th.”
“Bruh, we gotta work on your names. I keep saying this.”
Kronii was reeling from their rapid fire dialogue, suddenly it was hard to concentrate. She hadn’t spoken to a soul in eons, and now she suddenly had to understand this? The Leader noticed her struggle and cleared her throat. “Anyway, sorry it took us so long, Kronii,” she said, carefully addressing the very distraught Warden.
Kronii responded after a pause, “You guys… did this for me?”
The Leader smiled. “Even though it was hard for everyone, we know you took it the hardest after Fauna… and we thought this would be the best way to make things better.”
The Speaker nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you were really sad. Just lying in Faufau’s bed like that. It was kinda weird, actually.”
"Wait what?" Bae asked confused.
Kronii suddenly felt very defensive. “Okay! I was sad, alright? You wanna go?!" And then the other two burst out laughing, causing Kronii to get even more upset.
“There’s our tsundere,” the Speaker quipped, laughing.
“I missed her angry face,” the Leader chimed in.
“I-!” Kronii started to yell as she walked up to them. “I missed you both.” She looked at the two standing before her, her oldest friends. “Sana. Bae.” She ran up to both of them and wrapped her arms around them. “I missed you so much,” she began to cry.
“Kroni-nii!” Sana started to cry as well.
“Aw shucks man!” Bae chimed it.
Kronii refused to let them go. They were back. Her millenia of endless nothing was over at last. She had to hold on.
“Ah, Kronii,” Bae squeaked.
“Kind of… tight,” Sana add.
The impassioned hugger relented and pulled away. “Oh um, sorry,” she apologized sheepishly, putting her hands behind her back.
Bae and Sana waved it away and smiled. Sana added, “Normally, I like being choked, but you haven’t even seen the best part yet!”
Before Bae could say “huh”, Sana pulled both of them inland, where a small pond surrounded by rocks was waiting. The water was crystal clear, and the rocks around it were covered in a green moss. There was a small mound of dirt beside the pond, as if someone had recently buried something. And above the mount, a singular green growth had burst out into the free air. It was the first seed on a brand new planet.
“It’s so green,” Kronii said in awe. “That means…”
Bae cut her off. “The ocean is teaming too! But it’s just easier to talk up here. Plus most of it is pretty boring."
Sana nodded. “With all this nature around, we’ll need someone to act as Keeper again. She’ll have a lot of work trying to keep everything balanced.”
“And the rules are going to be much different this time. Who knows what kind of ecosystem gets formed here?” Bae’s voice lowered and got more serious. “But, that could mean she might be different from what we know. We don’t really know, this kind of thing has never happened before.”
“A different Fauna,” Kronii said to herself. “I wonder.”
Sana jumped in. “And of course I bet a really funny looking civilization will pop up too. We’ll be a council together again!” She jumped and clapped her hands.
“Calm down!” Bae warned her. “We just got plants on this one! We don’t need more earthquakes!"
The elated Sana did her best to stay on the ground, but she was giddy with excitement. Kronii, after a forever of feeling nothing, began to feel something again. But there was something else as well, something that welled up from a dark pit in her stomach.
“You know,” Kronii started. “What you guys did for me, this is wonderful, truly wonderful. I really can't thank you enough. But I'm still the Warden of Time. I know this won’t last forever either.” Sana stopped fidgeting and Bae stared at Kronii, worried. “One day, this sun will burn out or explode, or the moons here will come crashing down, and all life will be gone just like that. All this work for nothing. And it’ll feel like we just got them back when we have to say goodbye again.”
Kronii walked over to the growing plant and knelt down. Sana and Bae watched her intently but unable to move themselves. Kronii cupped some water from the spring in her hands. Then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. In her mind she saw a warm smile, one that she had loved so long ago, and would always love, but never got the chance to be loved back. Gently, she began to pour water from her hand onto the budding sapling. “But,” Kronii finished at last, “that just means we have to enjoy the time we have with them, and then keep them in our hearts forever after.”
Sana and Bae breathed sighs of relief, before sitting next to Kronii as they admired the plant together. Soon they were telling stories and laughing together, and Kronii felt the pain of eons and eons of solitude slowly peel away.
It was an eternity ago that Kronii had felt like this. She thought she had lost it all those centuries ago, never to return. She saw only loneliness and isolation and pain in the future. But here, at the edge of the universe, with her friends by her side, she felt those dormant feelings bloom again.
“You don’t need to rush, Fauna, Mumei,” Kronii said to the sprout, after a raging fit of laughter brought upon by Sana and Bae. “We have all the time in the world.”