A Song Ending
Arista found Thoth exactly where she expected, settled at the coastal ridge he'd taken to favoring these past few months, wings folded, dish tilted toward the horizon in patient stillness.
She sat with him a long while before saying anything at all, unsure how to begin.
"...Query," Thoth said eventually, dish rotating toward her. "You have been silent for eleven minutes. This is atypical."
"...I have something difficult to tell you," Arista admitted, the words arriving harder than any of the others had, harder even than Squishy's or Selen's. "And I don't know how to say it, because it's different with you than with anyone else."
"Why is it different for me?"
"Because you're mine, Thoth. I pulled you out of that scrap heap. I built you. You asked me to give you a name and purpose." Her voice caught. "You're the closest thing to family I have here."
Thoth's dish held steady, waiting.
"...I'm leaving," she started, the same careful line she'd given everyone else already forming in her mouth. "In a few months. I wanted you to—"
She stopped.
She looked at him, at the dish still patiently waiting on her, and found she couldn't do it. Couldn't give him the gentle, half-true version, the one that let the others keep believing their own world simply carried on without her. Not him. Not the one she'd pulled out of a scrap heap with her own hands.
"The world is ending, Thoth," she said instead, voice breaking apart as it came. "This whole world. It closes in a few months, and a new one replaces it, and I don't know what that means for you. I don't know if anything of you carries forward. I don't even know if there will be anything there resembling you at all." She pressed a hand over her mouth for a moment, hating herself a little for being unable to spare him the same mercy she'd managed for everyone else. "I'm sorry. I couldn't lie to you. I tried, and I couldn't."
Thoth was quiet for a long moment, dish rotating slowly through several cycles.
"...I see," he said finally, simple and unreadable.
"...I built you," Arista continued, voice unsteady now, the words tumbling out faster than she'd planned. "I gave you purpose. And now I'm the one telling you it has an ending, and I don't know how to reconcile that. I don't know how to tell you this without it feeling like I'm undoing the one thing I was proudest of ever giving you."
Thoth considered this, dish motionless between them.
"...I do not believe you are undoing anything," he said finally.
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Arista looked at him, uncertain. "...How can you say that?"
"Because a temporary function is not necessarily an invalid one," Thoth said, steady and clear. He paused, dish tilting toward the horizon, toward the whole sprawling world stretching out beneath the evening light. "A song ending does not mean the music was meaningless. It simply means it was finite. The value existed in the playing of it."
Arista looked down at her hands.
"...You're saying this ending doesn't erase what already happened."
"Precisely that," Thoth confirmed. "I existed in the wreckage field, functionless, for an unknown duration before you arrived. That existence held no meaning I could identify. What followed, reconstruction, purpose, the roller coaster, the conversation with Selen, the countless hours spent simply observing this world's construction, that held meaning. Its possible ending does not retroactively erase what it was while it lasted."
"...Even knowing it might not continue," Arista said quietly. "Even knowing there might be no version of you waiting in whatever comes next."
"Even knowing that," Thoth confirmed. "What you gave me was worthwhile. I do not need to know how long it will last to know that."
The tears she'd been holding back finally slipped free. "...I'm going to miss you," she said, voice thick. "More than I think I know how to put into words."
"I find I will miss you as well," Thoth admitted, "though I am uncertain whether 'missing' is the precise term for a function that may cease to exist alongside everything else."
"...That's almost worse," Arista said, managing a laugh despite herself. "Somehow."
"Perhaps," Thoth said.
Arista reached out, resting a hand against his cool, familiar plating.
"...I know it's not fair to ask," she said, "but could you keep this to yourself? The world closing, I mean. I don't want to frighten the others."
"I will not tell them, Creator."
"...Thank you," she said softly. "For everything. For trusting me to rebuild you. For becoming so much more than I ever expected when I first pulled you out of that wreckage."
"Thank you," Thoth said, dish inclining slightly, "for giving a discarded core a genuine song to be part of, however long it ultimately played."
They sat together a while longer, watching the evening settle over the coastline, Arista's grief no quieter than it had been, but no longer carried entirely alone.
Thoth found Selen at the shoreline the following day. He had spent much of the intervening time processing a question his conversation with Arista had left unresolved. She surfaced in the shallows, curious at the unannounced visit.
"...Thoth," she said, warm. "I did not expect you so soon."
"I spoke with Creator yesterday," he said. "She is leaving in a few months."
"I know," Selen said.
"She believes she is taking something from us by leaving. I told her this was not true. I explained why, as clearly as I was able."
"And?"
"She wept regardless. My explanation did not appear to resolve her grief, despite being, as far as I can determine, correct."
Selen considered that. "She wept with us too, when she told Squishy and me. He tried to reassure her, the same way you appear to have tried. It did not stop her tears either."
"...Then my explanation was not uniquely insufficient."
"No," Selen said. "I do not think any explanation would have been enough on its own. She is not grieving a misunderstanding. She is grieving an actual loss, even if she has done nothing wrong."
Thoth's dish tilted, processing. "Then what was the purpose of Squishy's reassurance? Or mine?"
"Being there while she felt it," Selen said. "Not every comfort is meant to fix something."
Thoth's dish settled, still, watching the water.
"...I sat with her afterward. I did not resolve anything further. I simply remained."
"Then you already found your answer," Selen said, gentle.