kitten daddy's about to kill himself

"You look just like him."

In Shulk's very voice, there is the wash of the beach, of the shore in Makna and the bar of the Colony separating here from there.

A has no lines. A is all colors.

Grains, and infinitesimals, and spooling sand.

"Truly?"

"Despite...all of that. You look just like him." Shulk pauses, lost in age. "I don't even think I should apologize."

Those eyes, which echo also, look into close, middle, and far distance all at once, perpetually. "I am certainly more than just a repository of Alvis's make, designed to appear before you in pleasure. I am a balance to this world that is sorely needed. This you know."

"But you didn't say I should apologize."

A smile. "Of course I am flattered. And whatever it is I can do to motivate you, to preserve the clarity of your will; there can be no greater tribute to what it is that I stand for."

"Literally," says Shulk.

"Literally," echoes A.

"You need to be here," Shulk muses. "It's a different sort of significance to the one the...vessel had."

"Significance has always been a part of the fact of me. As insignificance."

To speak of key details, even if A is not composed of all that, innocent and beyond, which Shulk desires, in opposition to the great god that gives not an inch, the grounded quality of Aionios's voice settles lower; closer to his human heart.

What Alvis was was always ethereal. Now A is ethereal by method of corporeal literality.

My imaginary friend. As ever, I'm talking to myself. Aionios is just a playground of the mind. It's insanity.

"It'd drive me crazy, if it wasn't so wonderful," Shulk remarks sadly.

"And this simple feeling will remain with you forever," replies A.