Work Text:
I have lost count of the year-days it has been. An implausible number of millenia ago I lost control of my body, but I know not whether I have at last been collected and thrown against the puppet strings, or whether my spirit has finally ground into dust against infinity.
The Collector placed me here, in a lake of space a film’s breadth away from the Demons Realm. I no longer recognize it. The Boiling Isles are no more. Even the Knee has subsided into the sea. New titans walk, fall, die, fester, sink. This new realm with strange continents is of no interest to me.
To preserve myself from tedium, I keep this diary carved in stone. Each letter takes an eon-hour, but my thoughts are so sparse that millions of years pass before a new one catches within my head.
What has occupied me are my— [ the carved line slips, which must be deliberate ] brother-sons.
It would have been kinder for the Collector to place me on the moon, but instead I am in the company of puppets of my grimwalkers. It has been many ages and they have not even gathered dust. They do not fade, for there is no harsh light and hardly any air.
When the Collector remembers I waste away here in this puddle, he will reenact scenes he knows I know, all with their woody corpses. He makes Caleb play Eda, or Luz, or Hooty, or if he seeks to wound me, Hunter. Between the games, we are here together in this varnished sliver of forever, and yet I no longer yearn for him.
The Collector has blessed and broken me with detachment. I watch the constellations warp with age and curse him with my mouth that has no jaw. I find myself saying, how does one end the life of an immortal? If I knew and had that rusty blade here, well, would it end him or me?