Work Text:
It’s not until years and years later that Aloy can be shaken from slumber without snarling and thrashing in defense.
But Aloy survives. She fights, she mourns, she grows. Those years do pass—one and then another, step after step, a blur—like a slow walk that breaks gradually, seamlessly, into a run. Wounds heal where you can see them and where you can’t. Scarred, but always reaching for the light, she lets go, and lets herself begin to flourish.
And today (years and years, they echo behind her), she wakes calmly to a weight scrambling onto the bed and a quick jostle of her shoulder.
It’s past the time when she usually rises. Slowly, she coaxes her eyes open, squinting against the bold Meridian sun streaming in through the bedroom windows. As her vision clears, it settles on another pair of eyes, intent and bright, hovering very close.
It’s the same amber gaze she’s grown used to waking up beside, reprised on a small face that Aloy knows is half her own—even if most couldn’t tell from a single glance.
Talisah, three years old and bursting with every bit of its energetic willfulness, leans in and speaks a little too loudly for the distance.
“It’s morning, mommy.”
Aloy blinks hard and reels back from the near-shout with a soft, surprised laugh. Voice scratchy with oversleep, she says, “So it is, girl.” By habit, she lifts her finger to tap her daughter’s nose—Talisah scrunches her freckle-dusted face into a grin. It’s Talanah’s smile, through and through. “How come you’re waking me?”
She says, “For your birthday,” and Aloy feigns cluelessness.
“Today’s my birthday?”
Talisah nods eagerly, scooting closer on her knees to crowd against Aloy. “Mama said.”
Aloy shifts to sit upright, pretending to ponder that for a moment. “Well. If mama said that, it must be true.” She gives the girl a big shrug. “I guess it’s my birthday.”
Satisfied with the concession and clearly raring to move on, Talisah retrieves a leaf of parchment from behind her and all but shoves it into Aloy’s face. “Here. Look!”
Once Aloy gets it held at a more suitable distance, the childlike and colorful pigment markings on the page take shape. Vivid blue sky, dazzling yellow sun (of course). A herd of four-legged machines grazes in a field full of sunflowers and the purple-petaled stems they keep in vases around their home. Among them stand four smiling human figures: three large, one small.
And even though Aloy’s fairly sure she’s understood the concept, she asks anyway.
“This is so nice, Lis. Did you make it for me?” Talisah nods again, beaming. A few pieces of hair fall astray from her messy little tie-up. Aloy tucks them behind her ear. “Will you tell me about it?”
“It’s Grazers,” Talisah explains, nestling easily into the crook of Aloy’s elbow. She has grown so much, but she feels so warm and still fits just right. A crucial part of the new whole. “And us, petting them.” Of course. Putting her hands on any machine is her absolute favorite thing to do, in spite of Talanah’s cautious concern. “See mommy, there’s Aunt Milu—” (she points at the tallest, broadest figure, scribbled in green) “—mama—” (long hair, tied back, holding a bow) “—you—” (red braids and a spear) “ —and me.”
Her own smaller shape is standing closest to the Grazers, connected to Aloy’s at the hand.
And for the umpteenth time in three years, Aloy thinks of how unfathomable and effortless it is to love and to be loved this fiercely. Throat full of embers, she presses a kiss into Talisah’s silky black hair.
“I love this, little one,” she murmurs. “Is it alright if I keep it with me? In one of my pouches?”
“Yeah!” Talisah replies, puffed up with pride, snuggling closer into Aloy’s side. “Don’t rip it, please.”
“You have my word,” Aloy swears. Then, a thought strikes her. She contemplates the drawing again, trying to find what's missing. “Hey, hold on. What about Aunt Beta?”
Without missing a beat, Talisah points to another figure Aloy hadn’t noticed before—sitting a few paces away from the group in the shade of a boulder. “Got sunburn.”
Incredible. Aloy snorts out loud, imagining the indignant face Beta will pull when she sees it later. “That sounds about right.”
Talisah looks up at Aloy through her long lashes, expression as hopeful as any three-year-old’s could be. “Good birthday, mommy?”
Truth be told, Aloy has celebrated very few of them. She’s only known when it actually is for less than a third of her life, and let it be known to others for an even smaller share. It’s always come and gone as a quiet turn of the world—she’s surrounded herself with people who understand why she prefers that, without needing to ask.
But with Talisah, that changed. She reflects her own contagious joy outwards, with no reason not to. A traditional Carja birthday celebration is her only context, and all comparisons are still simple. If for her, why not for everyone else?
And it still feels uncomfortable for Aloy to acknowledge her importance and worth for its own sake—to separate herself from the role she was given, and the ghost whose footsteps she followed. But the years have helped, and maybe it’s never supposed to be completely comfortable to untangle yourself from what’s laid out behind you. Maybe the point is to keep walking on through the rawness of it, and to keep trying.
Aloy looks down at the watchful child in her arms and tries.
(She makes trying easy.)
“The best,” Aloy says, and means it. She lays a gentle palm on Talisah’s clean-scrubbed cheek. “Do you remember what the Nora do on their birthdays?” Talisah shakes her head, and her brow furrows in reflexive concentration, ready and eager to devour every new bit of information she is offered. “They spend the whole day celebrating their mothers. Would you like that? Giving mama and me gifts on your birthday?”
“Yes,” Talisah answers without hesitation. Then, less than a heartbeat later, with quiet uncertainty: “Would I still get mine?”
Aloy chuckles, rolling her eyes. Talisah’s life is full of safety and an abundance of affection, spoken and unspoken alike. Aloy would accept nothing less. “Of course you would, girl.”
For a moment, Talisah looks assured. Then she gives Aloy another thoughtful frown, a curious glint lighting her gaze.
“What about Elisabet, today?” she asks, sparking a connection between what she knows and the small ways she’s heard that story told. Someday Aloy will tell her the rest. “Your mommy.”
It’s a marvel how smart she is. How quickly she cuts to the center of questions Aloy avoids asking herself.
There’s an ache that comes with it, now. A flare of awareness—an old emptiness that no amount of longing ever could have filled.
But where some parts linger empty, others run overfull. That, Aloy has learned, can be its own kind of wholeness. Words from long ago, in a voice that sounds like her own, resound gently into the present—into this world of Elisabet’s vision and Aloy’s fulfillment, the only world Talisah has ever known.
(I would have wanted—her, to be…)
“I think Elisabet would want us to celebrate by going to see some Grazers.”
Talisah almost quivers with abrupt excitement, eyes wide and sparkling. Her hand slips into Aloy’s, gentle and warm. “Can we? Please?”
“We’ll ask mama.” Aloy gives her a reassuring squeeze. “Is she making breakfast? I hope so. I’m hungry.”
“Maize cakes. With honey and peaches.”
“Our favorite.” Aloy smiles and kisses Talisah’s head again. Then she sets the parchment aside and wraps her little daughter into a tight hug. “Thank you for my gift, Lis. I’m going to look at it all the time.”
(It’s the truth. She will, and she’ll remember this morning.)
Talisah hugs her back, clinging to the soft-worn linen of Aloy’s shirt and burying her face against her chest. “Love you mommy.”
Aloy’s heart swells—in that moment, like always, it’s enough to overwhelm every empty space she has ever felt or begun to forget.
“Wherever you go,” she whispers, a promise she’s made every day since Talisah came red-faced and screaming into this new and hopeful world, “I will follow.”
They lie cuddled close and quiet and content in the sunlight until Talanah calls them for breakfast.
Years and years ago, everything came open for this—this is the future that was worth fighting for.