the sands of time were eroded by the river of constant change

It is often said that one can shape a memory, reshape one's past, by simply thinking so determinedly as to overwrite the old information. Telling yourself a story so compelling that you can't help but believe sounds as folly and ridicule, but it is more than folk wisdom cited to back such claims.

A has been in a position to rewrite reality many a time, the ability proving despite owned behest. Well, not A, rather the personality that birthed, but even so...

If anyone could do it, the Ontos core could. Even and especially those derivatives much closer to an ideal of humans.

Thus: how does A persist, now? Has the remnant the prerogative to malleate those consisting memories? Has A any right to...feel?

Rex aged into his anger. Shulk aged out of it.

A aged by the very fact of it existing, even metaphorically in sole possibility, at all. And of course A also very much didn't age; a natural talent of the incarnate coalescence of memory.

In the bristle of Rex's beard and the fold of Shulk's mane, A finds many details worthy of record; details that would and could not be recorded by any other. Not even the two of them would notice such details in quite the same way.

Of course there is comfort in those who have weathered the storm together. Of course there is companionship in the closest thing this universe has to worthy gods that have not been created by man and engineered to duties of use.

In regard to Alpha, A feels the sensation of wistfulness. One can never go back again. One perhaps should feel obligated to try, and rue.

But one has all one needs, here and now - and yes, into the future.

There is much to be said for place and time. For apropos apparition, and that which one needs most - needs most to see, needs most to feel, needs most to remember - being presented, presenting itself, right where you are.