It began the way everything had always begun, vast and formless, the particular texture of existence before existence had learned to call itself anything in particular.
He was aware of light, first. Not light as a single thing but light as a category, every variation of it he had ever witnessed compressed into a single overwhelming impression, starlight and sunlight and the particular pale endless glow of the heavens, all of it arriving together and then receding, the way a tide arrived and receded, present everywhere at once before pulling back into something quieter.
He was aware of sound after that.
Every voice he had ever heard, layered atop itself in a way that should have been chaos and instead felt like music, the particular harmony of countless individual notes that had each, in their own moment, meant everything to someone. Laughter. Grief. The particular silence between words that sometimes carried more than the words themselves.
He was aware of names.
They arrived the way the list had always arrived, but faster now, compressed, the particular accounting of everyone he had ever watched pass through existence rushing past him in a blur too quick to individually register, and he let them pass without trying to hold any single one in place, understanding somewhere beneath conscious thought that holding on was no longer the correct posture for what was happening.
The vastness began to narrow.
Slowly, the way morning narrowed from the full breadth of night into the specific clarity of a single sunrise, the overwhelming totality of everything he had ever witnessed beginning to focus, details sharpening, the particular wide angle of an entire existence gradually resolving into something more specific, more individual, more capable of being held in a single coherent shape.
He remembered hands holding a brush.
Not his hands. Hers. The particular confident looseness of someone who painted the way other people breathed, without needing to think about the mechanics of it, and he remembered watching her work on countless afternoons across countless centuries, the easy company of someone who had agreed, without hesitation, to sit outside a grieving woman's door for two weeks because he had asked her to. He remembered her voice.
ILA: You're being quiet again.
He remembered the particular cadence of it, cheerful and direct and entirely without patience for his deflections, the voice that had cut through more of his careful avoidance than anything else across his entire existence.
He remembered the mountain she had painted just to see if she could, still standing somewhere, a geographical problem or a great success depending on who you asked. He remembered her telling Astra that. He remembered the particular satisfaction in her voice when she described it.
He remembered asking her to help Astra, and the way she had agreed before he had even finished the request. He remembered her asking him, simply and without judgment, whether he had ever tried to end this.
He remembered her telling him not to disappear without telling her first. The narrowing continued, the vast totality of his existence settling more and more fully into this one specific thread, the centuries of her particular brand of company becoming, in this final compression, the clearest and most solid thing he had left to hold.
He remembered the last conversation properly.
BLK: Illia...
The heavens, pale and warm at their edges. Gabriel's gentle confirmation. The particular weight of choosing an ending after refusing one for longer than any single accounting could measure. He remembered the fear that had walked with him the entire way and had never once left, exactly as he had expected it wouldn't. He remembered deciding he still wanted this, even knowing everything it would cost.
GBR: Before he wakes, allow me a moment with you directly. I do not often speak this way, and I suspect I will not again, but I felt this once deserved an exception. I hope, whoever you are, wherever you have been reading this from, that you enjoyed his voice across all the time he carried it. He worried, more than he ever let on, that no one was listening. I think you should know he worried more than he was ever willing to admit, and that knowing he was heard would have meant more to him than he had the courage to ask for outright. I would ask, if you are willing, that you hold a small measure of gratitude for him. Not for the story he told, though I hope that part brought you something worth keeping. For the courage it took to finally ask for an ending after refusing himself one for longer than I think even he understood. That is not a small thing. I have watched a great many beings face death. Very few of them had to first learn how to want it for the right reasons. He was a dear friend to me, in whatever capacity a being like myself is permitted friends. I will miss the particular shape of his company more than I expect to easily admit again after this. I am glad, more than I can properly express, that he finally let himself have this. Thank him, if you can find a way to. I do not think he will ever know it. But I believe, somehow, it will still matter.
The light began to change. It was not the pale endless glow of the heavens anymore. It was warmer, more specific, the particular quality of sunlight filtered through something overhead, leaves perhaps, the dappled shifting pattern of light moving through branches in a gentle wind.
He became aware of grass beneath him.
He became aware of his own breathing, which felt strange in a way he could not immediately place, the particular rhythm of something that required continuation, that would eventually stop if not maintained, the first mortal fact his body had ever needed to learn.
He opened his eyes.
A vast green field stretched in every direction, the grass moving gently in a breeze that carried the particular smell of growing things, and above him a tree spread its branches wide, dappled light falling through the leaves in shifting patterns across his face. He was lying beneath it, the ground solid and real beneath his back, and somewhere in the distance he could hear the particular sounds of a world going about its ordinary business, birds, wind, the faint murmur of something that might have been a stream. He did not know who he was.
The thought arrived without panic, the particular calm uncertainty of someone encountering a question for the first time rather than rediscovering one they had lost. He had no name yet, in his own awareness. He had no memory of light layered atop light, no recollection of a list that never finished, no understanding of formless places between stories and their telling.
He simply was.
Present. Breathing. Lying beneath a tree in a green field with the sun moving gently through the leaves above him, and he felt, without knowing why, like he had been waiting a very long time to be exactly here, in this exact moment, with nothing behind him and nothing yet decided ahead.
He sat up slowly. The field continued in every direction, vast and green and entirely ordinary, the particular unremarkable beauty of a world that asked nothing of whoever happened to be standing in it. Somewhere beyond the trees at the field's edge, he could hear voices, the distant sound of other living things going about their lives, and something in him, quiet and instinctive and entirely without history to draw from, understood that he could walk toward those voices if he wanted to.
He was not waiting anymore. He stood, brushing grass from clothes he did not remember choosing, and looked out at the field, at the tree, at the particular ordinary morning unfolding around him without any weight of accumulated grief attached to any part of it.
He began to walk. He did not know where he was going. He did not need to know. The not knowing, for the first time in an existence he could no longer remember having had, felt like nothing more complicated than simply being alive.