Polar Pearl
If created history is considered as the all-enduring touchpoint of life, then created memories are certainly the framing device of all humanity. You can convince yourself of anything to be backstored in your memory, if you're persistent enough. Human recording devices and solid-state storage units, also known as their minds, are quite easily manipulable, from within as well as from without.
This to say: Minoth has been aging, slowly by slowly, and indeed persistently, ever since Addam first met him. It's invisible just as much as it is visible, detectable, and if shown photographs of the man in 3556 and 3606 together, one might not be able to tell, at first, what's different, even though something indubitably is.
More creases around his eyes. The scar, perhaps. Other miscellaneous tears around lips and jaws.
More than that: a deepness in his eyes. Melding of the edges of the scar to the skin around, in new and natural ways. Smiles and storms that spin from each crack.
Addam has aged like any old man, none too affected by his Aegis resonance, graying from youth and becoming more forgetful with each passing day. Perhaps it's repeating phrases, pointing to this bit of furniture or that and describing its function or proper treatment, the same statement each time. Perhaps it's blithe repetitions of love - "You're the best friend I've ever had, you know that? I tell you every day..." As if Minoth were an inanimate object, or a cat, and couldn't know. If there were others present, they'd know.
Minoth still never forgets. Minoth still traps as steel and wires, swears and wit.
Minoth doesn't feel like an old man, even though he's always traded himself as a perpetual one, because it's an old man he's caring for. And it's not...odd, or distorted, an age gap of uncomfortable proportion, but it's perturbing in its own way, of course.
The Lord of Aletta before Addam had been an old man who'd wandered off the mortal coil as stumblingly as one can wander off the top of one of Torna's nearby presented cavernous ribs. Before that, likely much of the same. But Addam himself had been a wellspring of eternal youth, of boyish crossed with manly energy; of bulging arms and reciprocally bulging chest, of running as a treasured hobby and sparring as the game of all games; of grins deep as winks and laughter delicious as sins.
Well. Maybe not that last. Minoth struggles, quite often, with quantification, qualification. What's the opposite of sin - a sacrament? Much too delicate, by half and by far, for Addam.
(If not Addam, then Addam's partner can claim those ultimately good-natured and debonair descriptions. For years, yet. For certain. For true?)
Even his name: earth and humanity. Not necessarily youth in purest representation, but the breeding ground for new life.
Ample, is the word. Yes, Minoth likes that word. A promise. A reward. A broad field, a good meal, and always more laughter.
The crick in his back - namely, his entire spine - needs gentle treatment, obviously can't till the fields any longer.
Anyone would fall in love with the old Addam (the young Addam, thus) so easily. Minoth had hardly thought himself alone, which had been a large part of the trouble.
Now, feebled as he is, the new Addam (the old Addam, thus) isn't much of a magnet for anything but dust and soft food. Not thin, not fat. Just extant. Just wrinkled.
Of course, Minoth doesn't like to think of him like that. His chosen Driver had always been all of strength. From strength, to strength, so the weapons and the trust had passed. From brains to brawn to brains again, and beauty, beauty, beauty.
Older people can be beautiful, in all the ways that young people can and more. You could say. It'd be a bit of a lie, but you could say it, all the same. There is nothing like the fierce, passionate love of a young person, and then again there is nothing like the tender, eternal fondness of an old person. What they can't do well, you trust that they've more than made up for in their past life of lives, being exemplars unparalleled, with every combination of facial hair and crowning style to guild them through the ages.
And there's something else, about the aging and aged: since their memory goes, you can tell them you love them as much and as often as you like, and whether they remember or not, there's no objection.
In a rocking chair with a sprawling knitted blanket, Addam nods away the evening. The sound of the shore is white and dim, ever receding, though carefully surging back now and again.
My full strength anywhere, without my Driver. Minoth has taken his evening circuit of Hero's Rest, feeling less pain in his legs than in his Core.
He'd always known he'd be an attendant at Addam's funeral, so to speak. Even as a whole Blade, he'd osmosed the Indoline idea of long-livedness, regarding stock humans from Torna, Mor Ardain, Uraya as...squishier.
Addam's not going to die tonight, nor for another few years to come.
Minoth returns to the house. Having eschewed Addam's middle-age to quiet separation, the situation now is bleak but precious.
"I'm back, my prince," he announces himself.
Addam's eyes flicker to the door, unfocused, then alight. For a moment, there's life in him, again.
"Oh! Minoth...I didn't know you were here."
Which is usually the point, yes? That's what's missing: the click of recognition, the smooth elision of love into love.
Minoth crosses the floor, minding the creaky floorboard as consciously as he minds Addam's weak, crepey hands. He kneels. The floor gives.
"I'm here," he repeats.
Nothing else really matters, does it? Hasn't ever, will never.
In time, the chiseled face splits. "You're the best friend I've ever had. Have I ever told you that?"
"I love you," Minoth says, with a devoted squeeze of Addam's pale, pale hand.