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Griffin found Luna sobbing.
He automatically winced in sympathy, but hovered for a few heartbeats, unsure whether or not she wanted him around right then. But then he thought of how she liked talking, or even just listening to him talk (which was unbelievable enough on its own), and when he was freaking out she'd try to make him laugh with the catastrophizing game or something.
He roosted a body-length away, so she could tell him to leave if she wanted and he wouldn't have gotten too close.
She scrubbed at her eyes with a claw and looked up. "Griffin!"
"Um, are you—" No, Are you okay? was a stupid question. Of course she wasn't! "Is…can I do anything? To help, I mean?"
"I—" She gulped back another wave of tears. "I forgot about Skye's sister!"
Griffin, for once, was quiet, frowning in confusion. Even for him that was underwhelming. It was embarrassing, he guessed, but he'd never seen Luna so upset about something like that. Besides, it wasn't as if Luna really hung out with Skye's sister, whose name also escaped Griffin's memory.
Luna immediately noticed his expression. "You don't understand!" she cried. "I'm forgetting everything, I'm still forgetting everything! I forgot Rowan had a crush on Comet, I forgot about my aunt, I forgot about Falstaff's log with the beetles, I forgot—I didn't even think to ask my father's name until last night!" She hiccuped and tears started streaming down her face again.
Oh. That was worse.
He didn't know what to say. It sounded terrifying, forgetting so much, even if it was little things—he knew he'd feel crazy if that happened to him. What's the worst that could happen wasn't the right game right now. Not when the danger was Luna's own brain.
"I mean—it's coming back, isn't it?" he stammered. "Um, down there, you didn't remember anything, but it started coming back really fast, right? Like when you called me Griff, and I started telling you some things, but then you remembered more and more all on your own. Just—maybe the smaller things take longer."
She gasped in a breath. "I don't know. I don't know if I'm still remembering or if it's done and that's all I get. I don't—what if there's something really important? What if there's something really horrible, like the fire, and no one wants to tell me? Or something only I knew, so nobody can tell me, and now it's gone forever? And what if it changed something in me and now it'll be harder for me to remember, and I forget new things too? It's—it's all crumbling away and I don't know if I'll get it back."
"I think I'm supposed to be the one saying all the terrible what-ifs," Griffin said, trying to lighten the mood.
Luna twisted around to face him with a snarl. "You're not the only one who gets scared!" she shouted. "I have things to worry about too!"
He quailed, falling silent, but she hadn't told him to leave so he didn't.
Through a blur of tears, she glared at him accusatorily. "How come you don't forget?"
Uneasily, Griffin remembered what Frieda had told him. Those who died suddenly or violently, or very young, struggled the most to understand that they were dead. Maybe it was the hardest for them to remember their life, too. None of the Pilgrims, who understood enough to seek out the Tree, had been young. Java and Murk had gray in their fur.
But Griffin had died that way too. Sudden and violent, and he wasn't any older than Luna. Why did he remember?
"I think," he said slowly, "it's because I knew about it all before I died. I knew what the Underworld would look like, and what happens when you die, and where I was, because I went there when I was alive. And it didn't change. I mean, I woke up right where—" Where I'd died. Where that cannibal killed me. Some part of him thought of the monstrous cannibal wearing his father's skin as Goth, his father's nemesis from all the stories. He had no way of knowing if that was true, but it haunted him that the villain of every daybreak story might be alive somewhere.
"I'm sorry." Luna sighed and buried her face in her claws, muffling her voice slightly. "I shouldn't yell at you. I know you didn't mean it like that." For several moments she just breathed, taking deep breaths and cleaning the tears from her face. Eventually, she asked, "Does it still hurt?"
He knew what she meant. His scars weren't as visible while he roosted, not like Luna's scorched wings, but every time he took flight the vicious mess of deep, ridged scars on his neck and chest screamed in pain. He got used to it again every evening, but sometimes it got hard to breathe when he flew too fast. The cannibal's (Goth's?) teeth had torn and twisted something deep inside him, and even the perfect song and glow of his father's life hadn't fixed it completely.
"Yes."
Another moment.
"Do you want me to say more?" he offered. "About before?"
Slowly, she shook her head. "I don't think it'll help. It's…it's small things, mostly. You told me the important things you know about."
Even the fire, eventually. Even if it took too long.
"Well, you can always ask me later if you want me to," he said. "And if you forget anything else, I can remind you. I'll be like your assistant."
She smiled tightly, but it wasn't a mean sort of tight, just sad. "Nothing's ever going to go back to normal, is it?" she said quietly. "There's always going to be something left over from that place."
Griffin thought about how he wasn't going to see his father when they migrated.
"We just have to live with it," he told her, because thanks to his father they were alive.