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"That's it. I'm out of ideas. I am actually out of ideas this time." The Princess's voices exhausted in a so-familiar way. But it's not game pieces on a table she's staring at listlessly. It's reality. The latest reality, after the countless deaths and rebirths of all the realities that came before it. That's the thing about eternity. It keeps going.
You envelop her in your wings. She is infinite, and yet you are somehow so much bigger, big enough to be a whole world around her and a figure by her side all at once. It's dark within your wings, lit only by star-like pinpricks of light from the true world.
She stares at you, emotions clearly mixed, as each of her faces holds a different expression. Trust and love, wariness and the readiness to fight, confusion and the flat death of emotion to the boredom beginning to riddle her souls. One of her smaller selves looks between her and the avatar you've made for yourself and the pseudo-world that is the rest of you, sizing up the situation. The small one's eyes catch on the starlight, and that soothes her, makes her reach a hand up to the multi-faced core, to guide the greater being's gazes.
"This is where we danced," the Princess says.
You nod, quiet, happy that she still remembers after eternity. For all you plan to wreck that happiness.
You've laid the puzzle out for her, the Skeptic mutters within you. Will she put the pieces together, I wonder?
A puzzle? You'll be the death of romance for us all, the Smitten chided. She doesn't need a puzzle. She needs to remember how wonderful it is that we're together, that we—
Do you remember how well that worked out for you this time? the Hero. The one Voice who has seen everything. Including this moment. Including what led to it. And remembers even the details your own memory's gotten fuzzy on, like whether it was the Skeptic or the Opportunist who was here at this end.
"You talking to yourself?" the Princess asks. More than one of her has seen inside you.
You nod, trying not to let the voices distract you too much. You've already made the decisions about where this path will lead, if she'll let it.
"Want to let me in on the conversation?" a slight edge of frustration to her tone. She hates not knowing. But they're not entirely outside of you, they're thoughts, your thoughts. You should get to keep some for yourself.
"Do you know why I've brought you here?" you ask that instead of answering her question.
She looks around. Up the hill to the open cabin, with its plush carpet and stained-glass windows and its stairs that go up.
"You're not putting me back there, are you?" but it's relaxed, half-sarcastic. She's begun to shed her usual appearance—she's down several faces, her voice barely even echoing, and she hasn't even made one proclamation of Truth.
"Of course not."
"Good." She rubs her hands over her arms—down to four, now—as if remembering the cold of when she collected this vessel. When she was collected as this vessel. "I hated that place. No offense, Smitten, you tried to make it nice—" she's gotten comfortable addressing the Voices, always anticipating a group conversation, "—but nice was never going to make up for living our whole lives out stuck in there." She makes a soft sound, contemplative. "But I'm not stuck anywhere, so why…" She's down to two hands, now, and one face, and she buries that face in her two hands. "Oh."
"Yeah. I thought it might be like that."
"But we have all of infinity!"
"But we have all of eternity."
"But, I—we already decided, I gave up my chance to die—"
"No!" Panic jolts in you before even Smitten can cry out. "That's not what I mean, that's not what I'm saying."
"Then what?"
"The Echo spoke to me a lot."
"I know." Voice twinned, brutal and bitter.
"But it wasn't all just about murdering you. It was also about what he thought the world needed to be like, without you."
Her expression grows sharp. "I remember this. His final words. They found their way to me. He wanted to make people forgetful. So they'd re-discover what they loved, over and over."
"Yes. That."
"I made you forget, so many times… but I could only do that because you were mortal—or, well, unawakened to your true being. I—" she holds up a hand to forestall the interruptions the Voices have already begun to rattle your head with, "—If one of us spoke to a mortal, maybe. And got them to believe things about my powers over memory, or about how my memories work. Perhaps then?"
We hashed it out. What to say, to whom, to how many. We'd done such things before—formed religions, then learned better from the chaos the noise of that many minds inflicted on her. Formed smaller cults and secret societies, selected prophets, and learned from there how to somewhat control it, as much as any mind could be controlled. The Narrator was right about one thing—free will really did complicate the equation.
Worlds had ended that way.
We could hear prayers, if we wished to, and found the prayer of one pleading that their agonizing memories be taken away. The shifting Goddess can make anyone forget, I whispered in their ear, and in the next moment, the Princess took away the mortal's memories and her own in a single puff of divine breath. The mortal could no longer remember the Goddess, so we risked no further shaping of her, and the Princess…
…was once more blinking lights in a dark city, an ocean reduced to shallow creeks.