He reached the higher places near the end of what passed for a day in the heavens, the pale light shifting subtly toward something warmer, and he stood at the threshold of where the asking would need to happen and found himself, for one final moment, unable to continue forward without first doing something he had never once permitted himself across the entire span of his existence.
He needed to speak directly.
Not to anyone in particular. Not to Illia, who already knew most of what mattered, and not to whoever waited beyond the threshold ahead of him, who would learn everything soon enough regardless. He needed, finally, to speak to the thing he had been narrating toward for longer than he could properly measure, the particular audience he had addressed and immediately dismissed in a graveyard weeks ago, the one he had told himself, more than once, was not actually listening.
BLK: I don't know if anyone's ever really been there. On the other end of this. I told myself for a long time that no one was, because believing that made it easier to keep talking without feeling foolish about it.
He paused, the way he always paused when he caught himself doing this, except this time he did not follow the pause with dismissal.
BLK: I think I was wrong to assume that. Or maybe I wasn't. Maybe it doesn't matter either way. I think what matters is that I needed somewhere to put all of this, and you, whoever or whatever you are, became that place, whether or not you ever actually received any of it.
The pale light held its particular quality around him, warm now at its edges, and Blook continued, the words arriving easier than they ever had before, the particular relief of finally allowing himself the thing he had spent so long performing and dismissing in the same breath.
BLK: I've watched five people learn how to let go of things that hurt them. I watched them grieve properly, for the first time in my experience actually grieve, transform their losses into something they could carry forward instead of simply carrying. I didn't think, when I started watching them, that I would end up needing to learn the same lesson myself.
He looked out at the pale light, the formless place that had been the entirety of his existence, and felt something in his chest that was not quite sorrow and not quite relief, some complicated third thing that did not yet have a settled name.
BLK: I'm not going to be the one telling this story anymore. After this. I wanted to say that directly, instead of just disappearing the way these things sometimes do. I wanted whoever has been listening, if anyone has, to know that the silence afterward isn't abandonment. It's just an ending. The kind I never let myself have before.
He thought of the list, finally laid to rest in his memory after one final complete recitation. He thought of Nilah and Maeve and Johann, the three who had sat differently than the rest. He thought of Astra and Lisa and Alexander and Noel and Ivy, each of them finding their way through grief into something whole and changed and entirely their own.
BLK: Thank you, I think. For whatever this was. Whether you were ever actually there or not.
He let the words settle into the pale light, unanswered the way they always had been, and found that the lack of an answer no longer felt like the particular loneliness it had once carried. It simply felt complete. A thing said because it needed saying, regardless of whether saying it changed anything beyond the saying itself.
GBR: That was a kind thing to say.
Blook turned. A figure stood a short distance away, warm light gathering gently around a presence that had always, in the rare moments Blook had encountered it across his existence, carried the particular quality of unhurried kindness, a guardian of the higher reaches who had never once, in any interaction Blook could recall, raised anything resembling judgment toward the things he witnessed.
BLK: Gabriel. It's been so long since I've seen you. I thought you'd never show up again.
GBR: I felt you approaching. I assumed you'd come to ask something, eventually. I confess I expected it sooner.
BLK: I wasn't ready sooner.
GBR: No. I imagine you weren't.
Gabriel's expression carried the particular warmth that had always accompanied him, the kind that did not minimize difficulty but somehow made it feel survivable simply by being present alongside it, and he studied Blook for a long moment with an attention that felt entirely unhurried, as though there was nowhere else in all of existence he needed to be in this exact moment.
GBR: You want to become mortal.
BLK: Yes.
GBR: You understand what that requires. The forgetting. Every name, every memory, everything you have ever held across more years than I think even I could properly measure. It will not return to you. Not in this life, and you will not remember enough to know there was ever anything to mourn the loss of.
BLK: I understand.
GBR: You understand it will not be a full life either. What you are, unmade and remade into something mortal, will not carry the full span that those born into mortality typically receive. There is a cost to becoming something you were never originally built to be. The borrowed time will be shorter than you might hope.
Blook absorbed this without flinching, the particular acceptance of someone who had already done the harder work of deciding before arriving to hear the terms.
BLK: I understand that too.
GBR: And you still want this.
It was not quite a question, though it carried the shape of one, the particular gentle confirmation that Gabriel seemed to specialize in, never pushing, simply offering the space for someone to arrive at their own certainty without feeling rushed toward it.
Blook thought, one final time, of everything he was choosing to release. The list. The centuries. Illia, and every conversation he would never remember having had. The formless place between the story and the telling of it, the only home his existence had ever known.
He thought of Astra's portrait, Lisa's flower, Alexander's road, Noel's vow, Ivy's name spoken plainly. He thought of what an ending might finally feel like, after watching so many of them happen to other people without ever once being permitted one of his own.
BLK: I still want this.
GBR: Then let's begin.
Gabriel's expression softened further, the particular warmth deepening into something that looked, for just a moment, almost like pride.