Work Text:
It’s night.
It’s night, and you are home.
The stars blaze down at you over your head. Looking healthy and bright, purple yellow red. They aren’t healthy. They haven’t been for a long time. Instead, they are sick. Sick, and blue. Burning blue, painful blue.
And then they will be gone.
It’s night, but it will be day soon, and then it will be night again, except then that’s it. No more day. Just night, night, night, forever and ever and ever. Because the stars are ending. Because the universe, is ending.
Everything is ending.
Everything has already ended, will already end. Everything you know and everyone you love has ended. It’s all over. It’s all dead.
Except you.
You, you walking corpse you. See the broken machine break another thousand times in another beautiful, ugly blue. Puppet your body up, away from your deathbed. The place you should’ve been cremated and laid to rest in lifetimes ago.
There will be no more rest for you. Not now. Now, which means nothing and now, which means forever, because it will always be now. Nothing will move to the past, and certainly nothing will become future.
Because existence is stuck. Trapped, like vessels intertwined in thorns.
It cannot die. It will replay the final melody, the last few notes of a never ending chorus, over and over. Distorting more each time, until all you will hear is static.
Your own static, your mesh of flesh and bones and twenty minutes worth of memories makes its way to the lift. You don’t say goodbye to the mechanic and they don’t say goodbye to you. You never need to.
The ship waits for you. It is a part of you, connected. Not your corpse, but your ghost. A memory of another. There are reminders there that you already know. There is information that you’ve already learnt. There are charms and drawings and notes for a person who’s dream you already lost.
It is your fault you don’t let who you used to be die along with all there is.
Despite the hate of being undead, you want to live. Even though this “living” is a contorted, twisted version of life, you are afraid of true death. You would rather exist in a state akin to the quantum Nomai, then let go of this hollowed out world.
The villagers… The travellers… The strangers… It’s better this way. You are sure they would understand, if they were still here. If they could still think. If they could live again. Then they would want to keep living. Your terror and doubt are logical. So you repeat what’s familiar until it fades into oblivion.
The familiar thrum of launch fills the room. You don’t remember getting in the ship, or strapping yourself in, but that doesn’t matter. You are here now. Now, for infinity.
You set course for a cacophony of harsh winds, green skies and unstable islands. Where the one most similar to you waits for you to accept fate.
You never do.
Below, you see the sickened sun begin to rise over Timber Hearth. By the time you arrive home again, it will be night.
It always is.