“I’m going to miss you all.”  I tell them.  It doesn’t really communicate anything new; of course I’m going to miss them, and of course they know.  They’re the only people who understand me.  No one in the world is going to really get what it’s like, to live this long, to hurt this much, to see this far.  They might try, and they’ll glimpse a portion of the whole, and they’ll nod and comfort me and weep, or maybe try to put me in a box and study me, for all the good that would do.  But they wouldn’t be my friends, who know .  “So much.”  I add, adding nothing.

But I say it anyway.  Because I want them to know.  Not just to sort of know, but to know , to feel it in their hearts when I say the words and the sound resonates off what they already suspect I feel and it turns to liquid truth in their souls.  I want to pour every scrap of myself into these people who have become and been my family between life after life, and to have them wake up on their next world with the pure knowledge that no matter what happens, no matter how long it is or what pain is between the gap, that I will see them again and love them the same as when we said goodbye.

We’ve had good days together.  Just a couple, running out the clock on these unliving lives, though still not enough to wear each other to annoyance.  After hundreds or thousands of years, it gets harder and harder to actually be irate with the people you love, even as it becomes ever easier to sigh deeply in exasperation at them.

I read an old favorite book in the hallway that looks out over the roses in the dusk-touched garden while Ellin played around with aura permutations for her next attempted rebellion in a living world, and the two of us talked about how we had both come to like the feeling of our bones not quite fitting while growing up in human bodies.  Molly and I had raced to throw a collection of marks at Six when one of the vendors showed up so he could buy a coffee maker and only learned afterward that the coffee maker is essentially a fancy paperweight without roasted and ground coffee beans , which of course, we don’t have.  Mark and I spent a thousand heartbeats in an unmoving hug, the both of us drawing warmth and comfort from the other as we try to patch over lifetimes of lost friends and healing scars.  And I cheered with the others when Jules precisely guessed how many times Six had disguised himself as a low-ranking noble in order to infiltrate a crime run that operated out of a sewer.

Good times, shared with good people.  Time I’ll take with me to my next world, and that will buoy me through the life that I don’t think I’ll feel that connected to anyway.  But I’m going to try.  We’ve all made the promise, again; we are going to try .

Try, for what, I don’t know.  I don’t think any of us do.  Maybe it’s the wrong way to say it. Maybe it would be better to say we’re all going to take it seriously.  Commit to the game of living, and do it without feeling like we should overthink it.

“You know what I hate?”  Ellin asks as we all cluster around the bar for one last drink together as she smiles sadly at my comment.

Mark, expertly showing off at pouring from three different sources of wildly different drinks in sequence and juggling bottles and a teapot while doing it, answers without hesitation.  “Slave empires.  Judging by how many different traits and perks you have for murdering their leadership.”

Jules and Molly separate from a passionate kiss that I don’t fully understand the mechanics of given that neither of them really have baseline human lips.  “It’s not murder if they’re acceptable military targets!”  Molly reminds us with a gasp of air that her false lungs still burn for.

“I was going to simplify it to ‘unjust authority’, but also my dear is correct as well.”  Jules adds, his triangular red eyes shifting to upturned points.

“Not stabbing things.”  Six suggests with a monotone quip, not looking up from where he sits with one hand holding the religious text I brought back open, perusing the words idly.

I decide to add my own joke to the pile, and then falter with my mouth open.  “…Six stole mine, sorry Ellin.”  I wrap my tail around one of her legs, trying to tickle her through the wraps on her foot.

“That’s fine, I know you still love me.”  Ellin’s toothy smile strikes my heart through the fog of anxiety about leaving soon, and I find myself smiling back without thinking about it.

Mark starts sliding us our drinks, and we all take a moment to appreciate the last of Six’s homebrew, or a burning draw of rice wine, or in Jules’ case, the calm sip of hot tea.  “So?”  He asks after taking an appreciative sip of his own amber liquor.

“So what?”  Ellin asks, breaking away from staring into my eyes to instead fix the same kind of loving gaze on Mark.

“So what do you hate?  Or do we keep guessing?”

“Oy!”  She slaps the counter.  “I forgot!  You all made me forget!  Bun’cha gremlins, all of you!”  And then Ellin does something I don’t see much from her, and sighs, settling back with a relaxed slump to her shoulders.  “It doesn’t matter much, though, does it?  Ach, eh.  Maybe I should stop worrying about what I hate.  Especially here.  What am I supposed to hate here, that I can actually do something about?  Everything I could change is stuff I love.  Like you.  Not that you all count as stuff, exactly.”

Mark and Six both tip their heads in different little motions of agreement.  Molly gives a canid grin, her long tongue lolling out of her mouth as she smiles at Ellin’s turn toward her own more cheerful assault on life.

And then I speak up.  “You know what I hate?”  I say, and Molly and Jules shatter into fits of giggles and buzzing laughter.  Mark just presses a fist to his mouth, while Six gives me an actual honest grin, and Ellin bursts out in a belly laugh that turns to her swearing at me while the others get caught up in the tide of humor and their laughing becomes less steady and more gasping.

“What do you hate, Luri?”  Six says, one grey finger wiping at the corners of his uncompromised eyes as the others try to catch their breaths and recover.

“I…” I stop myself as I realize I’ve actually thought of something.  “…I hate that I’m not going to wake up tomorrow and see you all again.”  I say.

The words we’re not supposed to say.  Because it’s not fair, and it’s stupid, and we can’t do anything about it.  Life comes for us all, eventually.  The between cannot be denied, no matter how we try.  The best we could hope for is to have a moment of clarity and then never show up again; moving on to… what, something else?  Something greater?  Or just nothing?

I don’t want nothing , what I want is my family.  But even now, I’ve wasted our precious last heartbeats together on complaining about something we can’t ever fight.

“I hate that we have a coffee maker that doesn’t make coffee.”  Mark says, coming to my rescue.  “You know how badly I wanted coffee?”

“I could take it with me as an equippable.”  Six offers.  “And fill the barrels with coffee for you.”

“That is… an utterly wretched idea, that would not do what you think it would do.”  Jules’ voice is a humming wince so sour that it vibrates my heart in my chest.  “Six, you are a sworn companion to me; I have know you for years that stretch across eras, and we have taught each other so much that we qualify for the librarian’s oath a dozen times over.  Have you, in all your lives, never had coffee, and I am only just now learning this?”

“…it smells unpleasant.”  Six says, drinking his rice wine that smells like cleaning fluid waiting for an excuse to catch fire.

Ellin’s hand grabs onto the base of my tail as she reels in shock.  “Oh.  Oh!  Everyone with the plant pseudo, slot that shit now !  We need to bring back a coffee kelp for Six to experience!”

“… kelp ?”  Jules’ tentacles fold against the top of his main stalk with a pressure that would crush most people.  “What are all of you?!”  He demands.

Molly turns on her stool next to him, stopping herself with well placed taps of her long clawed feet and wrapping her legs around Jules’ form.  “Hey, I love you so much, I feel like it’s time I stopped keeping this secret from you…”

“No.”

“I pretty much only get blended espresso drinks that’re mostly sugar.”

“ No. ”

“Like, I know they’re bad for me, but I kinda use them as a socially acceptable excuse to eat whipped cream and pudding orbs and sprinkles?  On the worlds that have the kind of economy that let me get away with it, obviously.”

Jules looks like his world is collapsing around him.  “Luri.  Luri, precious Luri.  Please.  Tell me not you too.”

There’s a temptation to tell Jules that I’m allergic to coffee and see how he processes that, or if I have actually found a way to deal psychic damage to someone in the between.  But I opt for honesty and kindness.  “I like the frozen coffee concentrate stuff so I can make Nactan Ices.”  I say.

“I’ve died and this is my punishment.”  Jules whines.

Ellin snorts at him.  “Oh, you big baby.  Only half of that is true.”  She thinks for a second and then adds, “Though it is true over and over again, so as a percentage, that sentence is mostly correct.  Also you bring back a coffee… vine?”

Jules gives an utterly defeated buzz.  “Tree.”

“Tree!  If you’re so into it! Read Luri’s book about trees and get the tree buff and then show us how it’s done!”  Ellin challenges him.  “I bet you I can find a better coffee thing than you can.  Come on.  I’ll ante up two random perks.  Let’s do this, Jules.”

“…I’m going to miss you all.”  Jules says, instead of accepting or denying the wager.  “So much.”

“We’re all going to miss each other.”  Mark comments.  Not maliciously, or like he’s annoyed.  He’s just saying the thing that we all know.  “We’re… irreplaceable to each other.  At least you all are to me.   Everyone is irreplaceable, though, aren’t they?  We’re just the only ones who don’t wear out under scrutiny from the universe.”

Molly raises a claw.  “I wear out!”  She states with chipper glee.  “Ask Jules!”

“Do not ask me about that.”  Jules countermands with a pointed tentacle at each of us.

“I’m serious though.”  Mark smiles as he reaches a long arm across to refill Jules’ tea, before pouring himself a cup and forgoing any of the eight traditional ceremonies we’ve shared with each other.  “I’m going to miss all of you.  But we’ll miss the people we leave behind in thirty, fifty, a hundred years, just the same, won’t we?  We’ll come back here and find each other waiting all over again, but we’ll never get that with the ones on the other side.”

Six sets his cup down, a small thunk on the black stone of the bar, the reflection of overhead neon off the polished surface briefly interrupted by the obstacle he adds to it.  “We’ve all, always known.”  He says.  “And when next we are here, I will tell you the stories of those lost, Luri will take a small vow of silence in their honor, and you will openly speak the emotions that we all roil in and be better for sharing.”

“And I’ll keep everyone at spearpoint, and Jules will drown himself in art or something!”  Ellin helpfully adds.  “While we’re alive, I mean.  And, and… Molly, how do you cope with it?”

“I love people.”  Molly says, scratching her claw along the fur of her flank.  “And all that love is real, but I know it won’t be forever.  I’m like Luri, you know?  Never and forever aren’t real words.  Being temporary doesn’t mean it isn’t real, and knowing that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, but I refuse to give up!”  Her muzzle forms a beaming grin while her eyes show her ancient age.

“You know what I’m going to miss?”  I say, twisting the cup I’m holding and watching the liquid inside stay level.  The others look to me, and I take a deep breath.  “A bed.”

“What?”

“When I come back.”  I tell them.  “Because we will be back, right?  I’m gonna miss a bed.  I’ve got one in my between-room, but I don’t ever stay there.  But when I’m alive, I usually get a bed maybe… two thirds of the time?  I’ll miss that!”

Ellin catches what I’m doing, and leans against me, pulling my tail up to hold in her lap.  “I’m gonna miss being hungry.”  She states.

“… really .”  Mark looks at her with a majestically cocked eyebrow.  “Hunger, you’ll miss?”

“I mean, it’s convenient here, sure.  But have you ever gotten a stick of roast meat from a street vendor in the dead of night when you’re super drunk?”  Ellin settles her elbow on my shoulder and shakes her head, lost in a wistful dream. “ Nothing  tastes like food when you’re starving.”

Jules shifts his bulk, tentacles pulling him back into place between the barstools.  “I was prepared to say that I will miss the feeling of missing here.”  He offers.  “But that is perhaps slightly too recursive, and epochs of life experience have not prepared me to want to sort through that many layers of conversation.  So instead, I am going to tell you Luri that we did purchase a closet from the vendor.  We could put a small bed or perhaps a cot in it, and have a bed here for you.”

“But what would I miss!”  I throw my arms in the air, dislodging Ellin as I do so.  “You’re undermining my entire point about how there’s something worth living for!”

“Yes yes, it’s very poetic, but also you are significantly less grumpy when you have had a nap in the between and I simply wish to make that experience available to you.”  Jules puts an aristocratic air on the humming sniff he offers.

Molly, beautiful as she is, tries to gnaw on one of Jules’ tentacles for me.  I don’t even have to ask, which is the measure of true friendship.

“I do not believe I will miss anything.”  Six says, watching Jules try to fling Molly off him and ending with her arcing straight up in the air.  Briefly.  “Living is often interesting, and provides opportunities to learn,” he says as Jules frantically catches his lover in a frantic writhing embrace, “but when I think about things I will miss, all I truly think is that nowhere is as accepting as here.”

Mark nods with pursed lips.  “Nowhere out there is as safe as here, really.”  He says.

“Nowhere out there,” Ellin adds as she turns to look between me and Mark, “is as happy for me as here with you.”

“Nowhere out there lets me be myself.”  Jules grudgingly admits.  “Not like this.”

Molly hugs him, her struggles dropping in an instant as she senses his need for comfort.  “Nowhere out there has you.”

I don’t have anything to add, except to say the one thing that all of them have spoken parts of. “Nowhere out there is home.”  I raise my glass in a toast, and everyone around me mimics the motion.  “So we will simply have to come back.”

We drink whatever we’re drinking, glasses hitting the bar in sequence.  Overhead, the prop engine fan turns with its slow clicks, and the neon sign buzzes.  Around us, a collection of evidence that we once lived adorns walls and shelves.  And while none of us want to leave, we’ve had time together to say what we really wanted to this time.

That we want to be here.  And that we won’t give up.  Not yet.

It’s the true unspoken thing.  That it would be perhaps too easy to give in to despair, and live listlessly, and simply not care.  To stop and falter and fall and never bother getting back up.  To watch heartbeat counts get lower and lower, until live and death perhaps become a blur of flickering nothing and our minds think no thoughts at all.  To accept oblivion through apathy.

We have many things we don’t say too often, or perhaps hold ourselves back from, even now.  Vulnerability is a hard learned process when so many lives and worlds harden us.  But there is one thing we never say.  Never think, if we can help it.

That we could give up.

But we say the antithesis, without any reservations.  That we want to be here, we want to love and be loved, we want to live and die and shine brightly doing it.  Sometimes I think about stepping off that edge.  But not today.  I will again, I’m sure.  But it may not be for a very, very long time, with my family here to call me back.

Molly and Jules go first.  They’re both low on heartbeats, and have already timed it down to the moment by feeding extras into the tree Jules brought back a few lives ago.  It sits up in the library, in a season now that looks like a volcanic eruption and with leaves that glow with veins of magma.

The two of them are embracing when their time runs out, and the rest of us press in around the offer a final hug and last minute whispered goodbyes that will never ever feel like enough .  Molly laughs, and Jules sends a shivering vibration through everyone as his own anxiety takes over against the pressure of what comfort we can offer, and one of them starts to say there’s not enough time , and then…

There’s four people left.

Six leaves next, his own clock running down.  He’s more stoic about it, but that doesn’t make it hurt less.  He gives Ellin and Mark and I individual hugs in turn, and I revel in the touch of his cool grey flesh against my bare skin as he offers the last bit of companionship that I’ll see from him for who even knows how long.

He says he needs to add the text I brought back to the library shelves, and waves almost casually as he ascends the metal steps on the far side of Bastion’s to meddle with our loosely organized board games and books and the occasional tiny plant that we keep moving around for our own amusement.   He doesn’t come back down.

“So.”  Ellin says to Mark and I.  “It’s just the three of us now.  Wanna fool around before we’re out of here?”

“Ellin, I’ve never actually loved anyone like you before, or anyone as much as I think I do with you.”  Mark states as he goes behind the bar and calmly finishes putting a few bottles and urns and jars back on the glass shelves in front of the mirrored wall.  “I love people when I’m alive, I love everyone here, I mean, I love Luri  too.  Hi Luri.  I love you, in case you didn’t know.  But you, I love you in a way that I find impossible to describe.”  He turns and locks eyes with the grinning horned woman as he folds his strong arms against his chest.  “You also have the worst fucking timing- “

And Mark is gone too.

Ellin’s grin turns brittle, grief showing through the slowly fading facade of teeth and sly humor.  I set a hand on her shoulder, and she turns to me with a wet sniff as she pulls back tears.  “So!”  Ellin is almost crying as she forces out laughing words.  “It’s just the two of us…!”

I burst into giggles, wrapping my arms around her torso as the two of us slowly start to cry, the reality of our goodbye sinking in.  Even if it’s temporary, it’s still happening, and we can’t ever roll back the clock.

“I don’t think we’d enjoy it much.”  I tell her sadly.  “Not now.  Besides, we don’t even have a bed!”

“We’ve got… some grass? Out in the garden?”  Ellin suggusts before shaking her head and snorting.  “Nah, I know what you mean.”

“I’ll bring back a bed for next time.  I’ll form an emotional attachment to some big plush canopy thing with a ton of pillows and the softest blankets.”  I tell her, maneuvering in our hug to kiss her neck softly.

Ellin snorts again.  “Oh?  How are you gonna make yourself love a bed?”

“Easy!  It’ll be a reminder of bringing it back to you!”  I smile against her rough skin, feeling her shake as she either laughs or tries not to cry into me.  My voice softens, and I hold her closer.  “It’ll be okay, you know.”  I say.  “I’ll see you again, and I won’t stop loving you.  I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Ellin pulls away, but I see the secret relief in her eyes as she wipes one of her arm wrappings against her face.  “How… much longer do you have?”  She asks me.

“Not long.”  I say.  “A few hours, if I want.  Why?”  I see her face screw up with a guilty expression, and before she can shake her head and tell me that it’s nothing, I cut her off.  “Don’t wanna watch me go?”  I ask.  And Ellin nods, slumping back into a barstool and trying not to look me in the eye.  “That’s okay.” I tell her softly.  “Ellin.  Hey.  Look at me.”  The gentlest touch forces her to do so with leverage that has nothing to do with physical force.  “I’m heading out anyway.  And I don’t mind a little time alone with Bastion’s.  Say goodbye, properly, and then go out and have an adventure in the between.  And when we’re both back, you can tell me what you find, okay?”

I can almost see the thoughts clicking through Ellin’s mind as she looks at me with a mix of relief and apologetic guilt and love.  Then she lunges her body forward, still sitting on the stool, and catches me in the powerful gravity of a kiss that goes on for long enough that I feel my heart start racing and I become certain I’ve just lost an hour to the electricity of that one act of affection.

An hour I wouldn’t give up for anything in this world or the next.

“Gonna miss you a lot.”  Ellin says.

“And I’ll miss you.”  I smile up at her as she stands and lets me go, stepping back but lingering without making moves to leave.  “Find someone really awful and stab them in my honor.”  I tell her.  “Then imagine me doing this .”  I shake my head slowly, a disapproving look on my lips.  “It’ll be like we’re together for a little bit.”

Ellin bursts out a startled laugh.  “Alright!  Well, you go break into a library and imagine me poking around and knocking stuff over while I nod approvingly and it’ll be like I’m  there with you!”

“I’ll see what I can do.”  I grin back.  “Goodbye, Ellin.  For now!”  And then we kiss one last time, before Ellin squares her shoulders, and steps through a door that vanishes behind and around her, consumed by the between as she heads off to explore the endless and chaotic expanse of this broken non-life.

And then I’m alone, with my thoughts and an open bar and a couple hours of false life left.

I stand there, exposed to the between, and just breathe.  Alone, but not really.  The lingering presence of everyone I care about in the universe is still here.  Mementos and souvenirs, memories and marks, stories and scars.  I’m by myself, but I’m not alone or lonely.

Every time I make it back here, I start the experience with silence.  Saving my first words for people I don’t truly expect to see.  And I’ll add to the list of people I keep quiet for this next life, too, in all likelihood.  But I’m not afraid this time.

I’m going out into life like I’m stepping out to head to work.  A quick jaunt to the corner store to pick up milk and nuts and a book and twenty thousand days of memories.  Just a short little excursion, really; not something to write home about.  Except I will write home about it, when I come back and share stories with everyone.

I wander the space, running my hand across the rough stone of the hallway and it’s cool wrought iron lanterns.  Feeling the small holes in the metal steps poke into my feet as I ascend to the library.  Smelling the mix of sand and alcohol and old paper as the whole place warms my unreal blood.

Old friends and new.  Mark and Ellin, loves I’m still learning how to love.  Six and Jules, teachers and students all of us to each of us.  Molly, a compact package of joyous chaos.  Shavoy and the lady elf who still hasn’t named herself, new to us but not new to themselves and growing old before our eyes.  And others, too.  Small friends who stop by sometimes, who add flavor and color to life.

It’s life.  That’s all it is.  Life that doesn’t end, but life all the same.  Even dead in the between, I don’t really stop living.  And I think, finally, I have become  okay with that.

And then I see the future. The shape of things to be, laid out in the geometry of the cosmos.  For a brief, terrible moment, I know a fragment of the truth; not just with my thoughts but with my entire being, and with something beyond that too that I could never hope to explain but in this instant can see the vectors of as well.

A clarified moment. The other way out of the between, aside from running out of heartbeats.  The way that doesn’t have a return.

It doesn’t feel fair.  I finally want to be here, and that yearning has brought me to knowing myself so strongly it is taking me away. But I don’t know how to stop thinking and I am locked onto the singular thought of the conceptual shape of eons and my place within the pattern and I know the terrible truth that my next step forward will be my last one here. Forever.

And then the sound of a door shakes me, and I look down from where I’m leaning on the library’s railing, a simple noise distracting me from the picture of all reality.  Lifetimes of reflex causing me to curiously shift my thoughts to wonder what’s just happened, and just like that, I can no longer see the true nature of things.

A boy steps into sight, looking around with an exhausted stance.  A white cloak covers most of his body and face, but I can see a familiar fox muzzle sticking out.  He’s missing a dozen little pieces of gear, along with his swords and his right arm.  And when he looks up at me, I see the most important change of all; eyes that are his own.

“Tenebral!  Hi!”  I call down with a confident smile.  The moment is gone, my understanding no longer properly aligned with truth and my brain on its own too mortal to recreate it even intentionally.  “Thank you!”  I feel compelled to add as the clarified moment slips further and further from me.

Maybe next time.  Maybe later.  I’ll get there eventually, but I’m in no rush.  I still don’t all the way know who Luri is, but I’ve avoided being an optimizer so far; a few extra years not strategizing for enlightenment should be easy.

The fox samurai stares up at me with the kind of deep shame and terror that only comes from knowing  you are going to be rejected.  “I have… learned.”  He gets the words out painfully.  “I return… seeking wisdom.”

“I’d give it away if I could. Sounds like you’ve got a good story to tell.”  I say, settling forward just enough that I don’t scrape my breasts on the wood of the railing like I’ve stupidly done before.  I know he won’t know exactly what I mean, but that’s part of the fun. I need to keep up my air of mystery for the new kids, especially if I’m going to be seeing more of them.  “And I’d love to hear it, but I gotta go.  Hey, keep the lights on for us, would you?  Just don’t deplete anything behind the bar.  Oh, and don’t mess with the weird bottle of mystery poison!  I keep forgetting to do something with that!  And if anyone comes in being a jerk, you have permission to kick them out!”  I try to think of what else to tell my conscripted bartender.  “You look like you’re on the right track!”  I yell down.  “Just remember, there’s no clean endings, and life just keeps going, and that’s okay!”

“I only just got here!”  The fox samurai yips back at me.  “I do not know how to run a bar!  I don’t even know what I am doing, or what you are saying!”

And I have a thousand things I could try to say.  A hundred wisdoms I have picked up from my friends, an equal number of stories that each tell us something about ourselves and each other.  I could tell him I look forward to seeing him again and learning who he really is.  I could tell him I hope he will be a good friend until the end of time itself.  I could tell him any of the myriad secrets to being happy I have learned, used, mastered, and then sold off because it was more important to replenish Bastion’s stockpile of bar snacks at the time.  I could try to fit in one last little moment of connection and truth and comfort so I could close out this loop with something that felt like a real ending .  I could tell him that I didn’t really want to go, and that I’m going to owe him for every life I have forever.

But I’m out of time.  And real endings are a luxury for the dead.

So I just smile, and wave, and trust this fumbling newcomer to take care of my home for a little bit.  My last moments dead aren’t particularly peaceful and quiet as I’d intended, nor are they suitably dramatic, or personally meaningful.  It’s just like that sometimes.   Most times, I guess.

I go next.

But I’ll be back before I know it.

“Baby wherever you are, baby whatever you do.  Faster than you think, time staggers on.”   -Metric, Dreams So Real-