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You weren’t ready.
You knew this path set after disabling the Ash Twin Project had no way back. You knew that everyone and everything outside this strange glade was well and truly gone. You couldn’t turn around. You couldn’t rewind. This was the last step and the last step. The end of the line; the end of everything; everyone you hold dear. It hovers near.
Within an arm’s reach away, only asking for you to stand onto your tiptoes to seal.
You weren’t ready.
You couldn't do it. You couldn’t do it yet.
You grasped the edges of their helmet more aware than ever of how the hard, thin latches pressed into their thick gloves. How the gloves’ cloth creased around their fingers, how their pulse beat through their fingers. How heavy their breaths had become– The helmet itself is heavier than ever as you lift it over your head and into your lap, but at last your long ears can spring free and you can suck in a breath of something other than stale, stuffy air to ease those sob-ached lungs.
Let me have this a while longer, you plead in silence to the bound possibilities before them. Let us play together a little more. Don’t make them go now.
The globe doesn’t answer. Of course, it doesn’t do anything. The shadows within swirl just as indecipherably as before, incomprehensible silt in a spherical river. Neither do your friends– or rather their echoes– whose instruments have fallen quiet, as though anticipating a change. A shy voice inside you wonders if they’re scared, too. You wish they would say something more. Any of them– suggest another song or another round of marshmallows. But they all seemed accepting of the fate to come. And you couldn’t bring yourself to prod them about that.
Feldspar would just tell you you had to be brave. Gabbro would say something about it not mattering what happens at this point. Riebeck would probably be excited in that weird anxious way. You never knew Chert too well but you got the feeling, after all those loops curled over before the dying sun, they’d say it can only go up from here. And Solanum would encourage you to open your mind to the possibilities to come.
Esker might offer comfort but… it seemed hatchling-ish to ask for after everything they’d pushed through. They were older now after the loops.
And yet, they couldn’t bring themself to take that final leap forward, either.
What would even be next without any of them?
So you wait, too. Get comfortable on the ground and close your eyes in front of the dwindling campfire and just wait for the doubts to pass.
You can’t remember if it was on purpose that you drifted off, but you remembered slowing your breath in intervals. The ghosts of the fire dance on the backs of your eyelidsuntil the smoke and heaviness force you away.
…………..
You breathe in cool air.
The smell of woodsmoke.
And the stars. So many of them, brighter than ever, swathed in vivid purples, greens, and blues conceived only in distant space clouds that astrophysicists yearn to glimpse, floating so close you can imagine touching them if you climbed the tallest mountain. Almost literally, as the nearest crag in sight stretched high, high into the sky, curving like a ramp toward a pale star that passed overhead. At least four spun in orbit, all twirling broken shells like skirts in an elliptical dance.
Dizzyingly, you realize that the crags of this planet all curve. You look behind and up.
Sure enough, a tiny mote of light sits far above you, and forests have taken up the sky beyond it.
You look down and think about closing your eyes. It was dark despite the nearby light source. But textured. Grounding. There were pebbles, roots, and broad-leafed little plants. Patches of bare dirt crisscrossed by more familiar needles. And…
Was that…firelight?
You watch the underbrush to the right. It could be a figment of the imagination. But there it was again: a flicker of orange. You make your way closer. Even in this strange place, you cannot help but investigate. The fire pulls you in, the scent of woodsmoke returning, and a faint chirping greets you, growing stronger with the smell until you are at the edge of the copse.
Baffling is probably the most polite way to describe the group of creatures standing ‘round it– Or are they people? They stand leaning forward with ruddy-brown shells that dully reflect the orange light, long antennae dangling over their faces. Large thoraxes balanced them on oddly bent legs as they held sticks in the flame, their large, compound eyes gleaming bright. They sort of remind you of chirpbugs.
One of them lifts their stick and pulls off a perfectly golden marshmallow with a pair of mandibles. Definitely people.
The insectoid next to them, smaller and with green eyes, chitters in clicks and string-sounds you impossibly knew the meaning of: “Can we see the archive thing again?”
The mallow-eater tilts their head to them. “The what?"
The largest one of the three, with pale eyes and paler scratches crisscrossing their shell, hums from a place that isn’t their mouth. “I’m not sure we have time for that tonight. We rise early tomorrow.”
“We have to show them, Ripple! They’ve never seen it!” the smallest, green-eyed one chirps excitedly, perking up. Their companion leans forward in agreement, interest piquing their antennae. Both insectoids dangle their antennae closer to their elder’s face, until they drag out a dramatic sigh– a sonorous, string-like sound. They bent and dragged out a large, egg-shaped backpack out between them. “Alright, alright, grubs. Okay. But be careful with it. We haven’t found anything like it.”
The two nodded in unison and gingerly took the object as their elder– Ripple– reached into their bag and placed it in their hands. It’s– You balk. That’s your Scout. White paint with three legs, the Outer Wilds Ventures logo painted on its side. What?
Green-Eyes chitters as they face the screen to their friend. “Look at this!”
Their friend’s lidless eyes somehow widen further as they flip through files stored in your Scout.
It’s a familiar vision that nearly knocks you on your butt– Two pointy-eared folks sitting next to each other by a fire, roasting marshmallows. One had on a welding mask. They’d finished up checking over everything on their latest ship (your ship) and just sat down. And the other one… The other one had your face. They offered you snack from their stick. One last non-space mallow before your big launch.
Emotion swells in your chest, threatening to tear apart your heart. How were those your pictures? The ones that you took? It was your Scout– But what was going on? How did it get here?
Mallow-Eater chirped, fuzzy amidst your spiraling. “What are those?”
“Right? Aren’t they weird?”
“Are those marshmallows? Are they roasting marshmallows?!”
“Yeah! Maybe? I think so–”
They looked to Ripple. “What are these things? Are they aliens?”
The weathered insectoid shakes their head and gives a chuckle-like chitter. “‘Don’t know, sweetness. I’ve never seen anything like ‘em. It probably came a long way to get here.”
A tangible awe falls over the two of them, coloring the air with a thick silence. They’d been chirping since you got here and the pause hung unnaturally. It’s like by merely existing, they made music.
It was during this pause that you finally noticed their fingers wrapped around the Scout. They had three, on each hand.
Mallow-Eater points to the screen again. “This one looks like you.”
Green-Eyes squeaks in outrage, “What? No! That’s totally you, if anything!”
“I’m not the one who biffed a flip into a mud puddle!”
While the two traded squeaky insults, you gazed up at the little stars in an effort to lessen the pulling on your heartstrings. Now you know what the Nomai must’ve felt like being ogled by another sentient species. You weren’t sure what to make of it. It widened the sad pit in your stomach at the same time it warmed you.
What you thought to be infant stars were actually white holes. At least one of them had to be– Because stars didn’t have that wispy sort of glow, did they? It might explain why this universe looked like this– all broken and cobbled together. Had the planets crumbled before, or were the holes’ gravity responsible? In either case, they were all here now, scooped up from wherever they once were and deposited here as if by a hatchling with a butterfly net and deposited in a vibrant new system.
Your head whips toward the treeline. The branches there trembled. A faint, bluish glow moved amidst the trunks. Something was out there. Something large.
You noticed that Ripple had done the same. One of their antennae twitched, but they didn’t alert the grubs. The glow passed eventually. It seems there was more to this place than the bug-folk ‘round campfire.
They flicked their antenna again and turned to interrupt their squabbling companions. “If we do ever meet these blue folks, we’d have to figure out how to communicate. We haven’t even talked to the aliens in our own solar system yet.”
If they didn’t meet, would more stuff from Timber Hearth find its way here? Or from the Twins, Brittle Hollow, Giant’s Deep? Void forbid these cheery bugs met a critter from Dark Bramble, you thought.
Green-Eyes turned and huffed. “Why not though? It’s not like they’re dumb."
“It’s more like they don’t want to talk, Eddy. Thistletrolls are shy folk. We’ve seen ‘em, and they just back into the shade.”
“I hope they want to meet us,” Mallow-Eater says softly. They stare at the Hearthian faces on the screen, finger tracing their ears dreamily.
There was something in the way they said it. A rhythm that plays on your heartstrings. The arrangement of sounds. Like a refrain from a song you knew so well, played on instruments you’d never heard. A song that transcended time and space.
You wish you could meet them, too. You have the feeling you’d get along swell.
…Wait, what was Mallow-Eater’s name-?
Ripple, Eddy, and…
…………..
Your eyes flutter open.
As you regain your bearings, the visions and whispers that’d been played for you replay again and again through your mind until your heart cries enough.
It squeezes, forcing your tired lungs to fill and your fingers to curl tight ‘round your helmet like a hatchling doll. And you laugh. You laugh and you sob, until your chest no longer throbs.
What you observed didn’t change anything. You still have a universe to say goodbye to.
But you might be ready now. There was a catharsis that wasn't there before; that word Gabbro taught you before all this began. A strange comfort in peering into one of the many possibilities that lay in wait for you. You sniffle. Wipe your nose on your glove.
The sphere hovered just as hazily as ever, expectant but unaffected. Waiting to be collapsed. To become defined.
Hypothesis: You might not get to see the universe continue, but at least you know the parts that matter would. Friendship, music, marshmallows shared ‘round the campfire, and ceaselessly hopeful curiosity. And that is more than enough for you to take the leap and collapse the scattered possibilities, at last, into a new reality.
You stand and look around at all your friends looking back at you ‘round the campfire. Then, reach for the globe on your tiptoes.