just as the time bell rings

Over millennia, many thoughts recur. Much (much, much, much) sand passes through the sieve.

Was Origin...completed? Released? Launched? Birthed?

Was Origin grown, via a data-sharing placenta? And if so, who so chose to cut the umbilical cord? Which woefully unqualified nurse attendant determined when the time was ripe to deliver these two worlds, twain cleft, unto the universe once more?

They iterate with their own echoes, one can only suppose. They continue haunted by the images of their past.

They cannot but. They are overwrit for began again. They are fragmented fully-formed copies, spawned quite freely as the parent process yet exists.

Right? Isn't that it? We cannot hope to achieve perfect succession, series nonparallelism, split-streaming for ideal unredundancy.

We do not devote ourselves in any aspect to our children by simply presenting them and then subsequently, immediately, passing away.

Origin continues in canon with itself. Melia and Nia sing silently, under bated breath, in the hopes that someday Eunie and Mio (and so many others, but for the sake of imagery) will hear it. Will not only hear it, but will catch onto the tune and keep singing, singing, singing.

Sing on long and loud enough that the song makes its way back to its mothers someday, happy and bright and full of feathers with fangs beneath.

Kanon, elegiac. Kanon, uncanny melancholy. Kanon, beautiful fugue representing the application of ideal fugacity; aer tendency to escape, to fly away or scurry.

A persistent reminder. A notification, recurrent, of your place in the current episode. All rendered, most often, nonverbally.

Though Kanon is silent, atmospherically melodic - wound horizontally, an unassuming electromagnet versus vertical poles - rather than realizing any direct and structured harmony, ae is indeed peculiarly warm. The déjà vu ae imparts upon anyone in conversation or earshot is a tender presence, a fond fixture of eyes.

A living testament and eulogy to everyone Melia has lost, everything Nia has lost. Perhaps, words they meant to say to each other. A soft-touch frustration with the limitations of their lighternet forum. Fantasies they once hid and had.

When Nia and Melia awake from their unfairly fairytale slumbers in separate castles, fortresses, cloudkeeps, they arise alone. If anyone bears witness, it is Teelan and Tyrea; Poppi and Dromarch. They stumble to, find Rex and Shulk, acquaint themselves with the ancient prospect of survival.

They have gone past. Just as they were supposed to. They have traversed the train tracks, transgressed the capital walls, and emerged upon the other side of it all.

"I was hoping we might have stopped for a while," murmurs Melia. "Genuinely. Would it have been so terrible if our worlds converged?"

"Well, yes, Melove, it would have," Nia reminds her gently. "From a scientific sort of view."

How many countless annhiliation events had they seen? Of course, it couldn't have been so.

"But I agree with you."

She has to stop to giggle at herself for even saying it. When has anyone ever doubted that? For even the most argumentative moods of the Lifesage had been swiftly defeated at every turn by the infinitely equanimous Summoner. She of the water, roiling and raging. She of the lightning, diplomatic relief.

"I wish we could've just...become one."

Better euphemisms, there are. Stronger. More evocative. Maybe only lewder, some of them. Still, it's not so melodramatic.

I wish it were not only a fairytale, a selfish and impossible mass hysteria hallucination, that we queens once kissed, caressed and held hands. I wish life, that we remember as real, truly manifested from will, as we might and would wish it to.

When Melia disconnects from the interlink communication and rises to disembark her formal chambers, she will think only of Nia's face - her winking eyes that so rarely anymore plead, her mischievous mouth that quirks when it stays itself from unwise commentary, her inimitable penchant for emoting with her whole head.

Well, Melia is the owlish one, when it comes to tilting and blinking. The serenity she used to practice as enforced by the Bionite Order became a trait she nurtured as the finely-aged empress. It's not so easy to take her off guard now as it once was, but isn't Nia the one ever equal to the challenge?

So this ghost image will remain upon her retinas, gladly. They will see each other behind their eyelids, in a private viewing that trusts memory more than it does live connection over light.

They will see bodies that resemble their counterparts. Telethia wings that should belong to none other than the Empress. Ears sleek and supple as only the Priestess has ever been known to possess. Sometimes paws. Sometimes talons. A beak, pointed downward and, unless cooing, clamped flushly shut.

Ae is always seen in entirety, in unjagged completeness of half and half. Kanon appears in full to both mothers, inextricable from either of them.

A lithe, wiry contour of pitch, infinitesimally audible, paints a rainbow of noise onto that visible spectrum area within the minds of those who entered Aionios under the aegis of Origin itself.

Kanon is heard, in the corner of the room. Kanon is seen, everywhere and nowhere. Kanon is felt, the threads of life woven together in a manner that cannot be duplicated, all the intimacy of hands intertwined with hands.

Kanon is smelled and tasted indirectly; aer lingering transmits the reminiscence of Spongy Spuds' deceptive lack of density and fragrant, flaky bites of fish pie.

Kanon knows only kindness, because Origin was not built to compartmentalize fear.

Data supplements. Data complements. Data rules over petty gaps and gulps.

In principle, what Kanon doesn't know is what Kanon doesn't need. In practice, what Kanon needs is what Kanon knows. Experience is somewhat curtailed, beyond that.

And when the Great Intersection comes, as it ultimately must, Kanon might not find it so straightforward to keep humming.

But at least ae will be alive. At least ae will witness the reunion of aer mothers at last.