Stone Screw
"Well, Nia...it's time to put this world to bed, isn't it?"
"Our child?" Nia teases. "Tuck it in, dear Aionios, and whisper a bedtime story?"
Melia trails off, presentiment, already teary-eyed. "We did bring it off together, didn't we?"
It's an easy joke, and one that had emerged from the surprising intimacy of something so clinical as zipping up the paired worlds into an archive, to be re-expanded on the other side, without so much as a fingerprint placed from either of them.
This child will never again wake, however. Its ancestors, bright and strapping things handed bouquets of promise by their former gods - one unworthy god, in twain -, will bound on from their stasis merrily, readily, joyously, in all earnestness and pride.
It's practically a sure thing, by the upright coincidence of it all, that one day the spheres of influence will swing back together, hearkened by the sound of micromatter stirring and listing and grasping for interplanetary rings. These worlds, so self-evident (and full of Nopon, at that), could never remain apart for long.
If Aionios is the evidence of a longing, of course, then the security of their castles is evidence of the strength of their union.
Not just a part and parcel of the universal good, but a separate stateliness all its own.
That is to say, the divine mothers of this unholy world do think themselves, in some darked-out recess, special, among the eternal citizens.
But the creation of Aionios was, ultimately, simple and methodical. It had to be, or else something crucial might have gotten left off. They did not play with unparted power, with the potency of a mere thought to manifest an entire uprooted tree of life.
So now it's goodbye - so long, farewell, I bid you, I try myself not to dance and strafe. Now it's the simple, methodical end.
With a thought, the interphase blinking, the queens stand feather-light in ungainly boots, ghosts to everything but each other.
One palm facing up, the other turned over and down.
"It's been an honor, my lady Melia."
Usually such a statement from Nia would be purely sarcastic, sly and nose-thumbing. No more pretending, no more hiding, no more running, but an even-keel treatment of the royal device that plagued her for so long (indeed, a thousand-odd years). No more sanding away of her stripes.
Even so, in this case, it's not that. It's neither stilted-sanctimonious nor stable-sardonic.
(It's an indicator that they really must now be at world's end.)
Nia delivers the proclamation from her throat and her chest. Those famous golden Alrestian eyes are too tired and weary to flash and sparkle; instead, they still and shine.
Melia, the wisest of any remaining in this world, finds instability only rarely, in her prime of age. Neither can she teeter now, with Nia here to guide her.
"I'll be thinking of you," she replies simply. "The children...they won't have the luxury. But I will."
"We will," Nia corrects her. "We are forever."
Forever like cats and birds, left and right, breath and blood, air and ether.
"It's not fair, is it?" Melia muses. "We two, set aside, able to remember."
Nia scoffs. "Oh, it's plenty fair, Mels. For we've had a thousand years of it, and they only the ten at a time!"
A thousand years of waiting already, heart and soul. Oh, yes, they'll be alright.