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“Akivili, Akivili!” -Aha
Ever since gaining the path of remembrance, their dreams had not been their own. They’d dreamt of things they had seen, mundane things, in Amphoreus; but it had not been through their eyes. The dreams were hazy, unclear most of the time; they would be on the express, staring out into the stars; sometimes, the opposite; the stars staring down at fleeting mortal forms.
Always, the name the members of the express called them by didn’t stick. In the dreams, it was just their name. And when they woke up, the memory of it would have faded to stardust. Mem said nothing about it; Fuli’s gaze was unyielding and yet never present. Alive, and not. It befit the remembrance.
The remembrance was the strangest path they’d ever travelled. At least, they supposed it must be; had they embarked on a different journey, once, and had another path under their control? In the dreams, they had none of the paths they knew, but one pulsed underneath their skin like part of them.
Not as a gift, but a birthright.
On Planarcadia, their slumber was different. Sharper, almost. Like they were close to a memory, holding it in the palm of their hand, but it would be the mist at midday when dawn came; vanished, evaporated into the air. But parts stuck. Fragments of a life they didn’t remember living.
That night, the one after defeating Sparxie, had a clearer dream than most.
“You have fallen too long and the universe has lost its order.” -Aha
“What brings you here?” THEY asked, not irritated in the slightest; if Elation wished to traverse the ❄︎❒︎♋︎♓︎●︎♌︎●︎♋︎⌘︎♏︎, THEY could not complain. But THEY had the feeling that was not what Aha was here for. The aeon smiled at THEM, with more masks than faces, if they even had a recognizable face; but THEY knew that if THEY had one, THEY wouldn’t allow THEM to see it.
“Surely you don’t mind that THEY came to visit you, ✌︎🙵♓︎❖︎♓︎●︎♓︎.” Aha laughed. “THEY’re just curious about the express, is all!”
“The last time you were curious about the express,” ✌︎🙵♓︎❖︎♓︎●︎♓︎ said, “it was in flames one day, and covered in glitter the next.” Mischief crawled into Aha’s gaze.
“Oh, come on! Show THEM your true ✌︎♏︎□︎■︎♓︎♍︎ form! THEY’re boreeeeed.” Aha whined; THEY wrapped a hand around THEM; this form of THEIRs was small enough to fit on the express, likely a poor fool’s, who’d been ensnared by their own mask. THEY would feel pity, but it was part of THEIR 🏱︎♋︎⧫︎♒︎; trying and failing to succeed in the future.
THEY shook THEIR head. “It is too dangerous, here. You know what happens when they cannot comprehend. You have seen it with the fools.”
Aha groaned, floating in the air and flopping over dramatically. “Then leave the parlor car, ✌︎🙵♓︎❖︎♓︎●︎♓︎! It’s not hard, you know the vacuum can’t hurt you!”
But stubbornly, ✌︎🙵♓︎❖︎♓︎●︎♓︎ insisted. “The vacuum can hurt them. And I don’t want to drag them into this.”
“You’re so stubborn about your ❄︎❒︎♋︎♓︎●︎♌︎●︎♋︎⌘︎♏︎❒︎⬧︎. What can THEY do to change your mind?”
THEY shook their head, firmly. Aha’s presence made the cosmos pulse under THEIR skin, itching to be let out of the small container THEY insisted on keeping it in. It was a feeling THEY were intimately familiar with, something THEY’d come to accept as part of THEM.
“You can do nothing, Aha.”
The Trailblazer woke up in a sweat. For a second, they were in the parlor car, not their room; and the itching feeling of the stars being embedded into them had yet to vanish. The Elation’s presence was strong on this planet; they dismissed the dream as a result of this, and stood up to get dressed.
The supplicant mask’s power thrummed in their hands. It was familiar in a way the other paths weren’t, familiar like an old friend reaching out through a text, and the Stellaron in their chest quieted like holding a breath. They felt a deep longing for absolutely nothing at all, and wore it on the side of their head.
It was the best and worst piece of ‘clothing’ they owned.
The mask was a hug from a treasured friend. It was a taste of something they were missing and had been since they had woken up on Herta Space station. When they wore it, they felt complete; it patched holes they hadn’t realized they had, smoothed over scars that they’d thought were a natural part of everybody’s skin.
The mask was a knife from their worst enemy. It made their skin shudder and their teeth ache. It made the stellaron pulse, and when they wore it for too long, it made them bleed cosmic agony. It made them realize that their body was too small, too tight, too restrained. It told them there was something they could do, but it never said what.
They wore the mask that day, while they ran around helping people in Planarcadia; a bridge named Ms. Joye, who was a superstar that they saved from death; a detective, Mercator, and then her adversary, who was living a normal life despite the ability to curse somebody to death.
Their expeditions that day stopped them from even thinking about taking it off; exhausted, they even went to sleep with it on.
“I am so sad.” - Aha
THEY could tell Aha was comfortable around THEM. This was the case for every Aeon; it was THEIR nature to not harmonize, but rather relax the paths around them, to work with them in symbiosis instead of taking them over forcefully like Xipe. If this wasn’t the case, THEY wouldn’t be seeing Aha so often on the express. It was mundane, at this point; everybody had grown used to the masked visitor.
Most of the time, Aha came as the Fool.
Today however, Aha came as the Mourning.
THEIR comedy mask was gone, in place of it tragedy, and THEY leaned on THEIR shoulder, weeping. This aspect of Aha was more grounded, solid and real in ways The Fool was not. Suffering was the cornerstone of human existence, after all. Eternal mourning was always easier to achieve than eternal Elation.
“Is there something that troubles you, Aha?” THEY asked, taking this form of THEIRS and cradling it. Aha’s tears fell, not as dice as they did in THEIR Elation, but as a slew of cards. Each one: the two of clubs.
“There’s war on the horizon…” Aha pouted. “And THEIR most present followers are mourning.” Factual explanations were rare for Aha, and somewhere in the universe, a Space Anchor twitched.
“I see.” THEY said. “It will pass. Elation will override it again.”
Aha nodded, wiping THEIR mask with more hands than one being should have, until they were no longer needed and Aha had only two again. “THEY know… Oh, how THEY have known!”
✌︎🙵♓︎❖︎♓︎●︎♓︎ chuckled and shook THEIR head. THEIR skin itched more today; THEY had stuck to this form for far too long. Aha noticed this, and leapt to THEIR feet. THEY did not float when utilizing this aspect; it was a whimsy too effervescent for THEIR mourning.
“✌︎🙵♓︎❖︎♓︎●︎♓︎, come with THEM.” It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. Aha teleported THEM outside of the range of the space station, and THEY let THEIR true form through.
The dream cut off there, knowledge dangerous to their sanity just outside of reach.
The second they woke up, they regretted their moment of laziness. They felt like they were on fire, and their skin was a straightjacket. The room was both hot and cold; they shivered and sweat. Their heartbeat was erratic, trying to keep up with the demands of humanity and the pressures of something greater.
Their hands shook as they reached to take off the mask. Nothing had changed about their fingers; they weren’t sure why they were expecting it to. The mask cried as they took it off, a mourning from Aha THEMSELF. Taking it off was the stripping away of a part of themself. But it took the tide of pain and forced it to recede.
The dream was another clear one, they noted. Aha, again. What THEY had to do with them, they didn’t know. The mask smiled up at them, and they tossed it across the room; it fell with a plastic thunk, and wasn’t so much as dented. They looked at the pen in their display case like it had personally wronged them, somehow.
The dreams hurt to think about. The knowledge was never meant to belong to them; it was dangerous. Their skin crawled when they stood from their bed; they poured petals into the bathtub and sat down in it. The gun they kept there- functional, and a gift from Boothill- was a promise of safety, even though it was something they already had on the Express.
“Aha.” They muttered under their breath, and it made it seem more real. “I was talking to Aha. Who was I?” The name hovered on the tip of their tongue, but if there was forbidden knowledge in this universe, it was certainly part of it. “Were they even my own memories?” They shouldn’t be.
The rose petals offered no answer, but their pleasant scent was appreciated. They had too many in the Express, after Argenti had visited. He’d left behind gifts of roses, hundreds of thousands of them, and the latent power of the Beauty stopped them from fading. So in the bath they went.
The gun offered only one answer; fork around and find out. The gun was much more helpful than the rose petals.
“Aha.” They stated, and teleported to the Fool’s Tavern (thank aeons for the magical drying properties the Space Anchors held, though they doubted the Fools would care if they showed up soaking wet). The massive light ball fused dual sides into one mask, and they reentered the space.
It was unbearably quiet. “Aha?” They asked, their voice echoing across the pillars. “Can you hear me?” There was no answer except for a longing in their chest. The smile across the center of the room slowly faded into a frown. “I know you can hear me, Aha.” They walked to the smile to talk to it like an old friend. “Aha, I don’t know why I need you to hear this.” They didn’t. The words hurt to say, because they were never meant to be spoken in anything other than hushed whispers.
“But I’m having dreams. With you in them, I think. It’s like I knew you. And I needed to get it off my chest.” The frown somehow deepened. “Do you know me? Aha?”
The frown didn’t speak. The room was silent. The masks, though smiling and frowning and raging, were expressionless nonetheless.
“You probably couldn’t say if you wanted to.” They sighed. “My skin hurts, burns, it’s too tight. The mask makes it worse, but wearing it is…” A peal of laughter resounded through the room. “It’s not funny!” They insisted. They spun around the room, but the source of the sound was nowhere to be found.
A quote they had heard in the simulated universe came to them.
“Why did you die?” -Aha
There was the snicker of hardly-held back amusement. “For the trailblaze, THEY'RE shocked you never changed, Akivili .” A voice, playful but heavy, spoke from directly behind them.