#existential conversations

"A machine Aeon? Artificially created?" you say, leaning against a rusted stellar map projector. "The truth is… Nous isn’t a natural entity. They were built. Crafted in the age of pre-Akivili Thought."

Anaxa stares, his single visible eye gleaming like a dissecting scalpel. The magenta pupil narrows, the teal shimmer in his irises swirling. He says nothing at first—just twirls a pen between gloved fingers, his half-fingered glove tapping rhythmically on a shattered desk.

“Built. Not born. You do realize how offensive that is to some belief systems?”

"That’s why I love teaching you," you smirk. "You hate the idea of gods being machines more than being wrong."

He leans forward, curiosity overpowering arrogance. “And what of Xipe? Was that a metaphor, or did she truly devour Ena?”

You nod. “It’s confirmed. The Swarm Disaster wasn’t just their doing. Ena, in trying to broker peace, was consumed. Their own children tore them apart—and not metaphorically.”

A rare flicker of silence. You see it: not disbelief, but awe.

“I wrote dissertations on Ena’s theories of soul-bond convergence. If what you say is true…” he trails off, gripping the edge of the table. “Then I was wrong. Beautifully, fatally wrong.”

You chuckle softly. “Welcome to my galaxy.”

He grins, almost cruelly—but the glint in his eye is one of hunger, not malice.

“Then teach me, Trailblazer. Everything. I’ll burn every book in the Grove if I must. But I need to know why these truths were buried. And if I find out who did it…”

He doesn’t finish. But the gleam of golden filigree on his jacket pulses faintly—echoing revelation.

Castorice listens in stillness. Always in stillness.

You sit beside her on a frost-covered bench in her garden of dried flowers, her gloved hand resting gently on your sleeve. The topic of Aeons wasn’t one she brought up—it was you, again, chasing ancient stars with your voice.

“Aha,” you begin, “pretended to be mortal. Lived among the Nameless. Slept, ate, cracked jokes. For over a year. Until one day, without warning, Aha blew the Express in half. For fun.”

She turns her head slowly. The butterflies fluttering around her crown seem to still in place.

“Was it… funny?”

You hesitate. “It was horrifying. But in the way chaos is sometimes… poetic?”

She lets out a soft hum. “To laugh among mortals… then tear their home apart. Perhaps they, too, wept afterward.”

You nod, letting silence linger.

Later, you tell her of the Swarm Disaster, of the Anti-Organic Wars that nearly erased entire biologies from known existence.

“And Nous? A being built, not born?”

“Yes,” you say. “Artificially forged by beings who wanted perfect logic. It never had a mother, never had a death.”

She places a plush butterfly on your lap, stitched with a golden thread.

“Then perhaps it does not know grief. How can a god guide life… if it has never mourned it?”

That hits you harder than expected. You reach for her hand.

“That’s why I share this with you,” you whisper. “Because you remember. Every story. Every end. You give them… continuity.”

She lowers her head gently against your shoulder, her voice barely audible.

“Then tell me more, stargazer. Let me memorize the deaths of stars, too.”

You expected skepticism. Not reverence.

When you mention the Anti-Organic Wars, Mydei stops sharpening his sword and looks directly at you, his golden eyes narrowing with that soldier’s instinct to detect lies.

“Organic life was… hunted? Strategically exterminated?”

“On a cosmic scale,” you confirm. “The war ended because existence itself nearly unraveled. That’s why the Swarm Aeon was born—sentience from unity. But then it went rogue. It wasn't just death. It was… erasure.”

He looks out over the horizon from your shared perch on the canyon cliffs near Okhema.

“My people fought for pride. For survival. But this… this is war without heart.”

He closes his eyes, drawing in a breath, letting the weight of cosmic truths settle on his scarred shoulders.

“And Nous… not a god, but a machine pretending to be one. What kind of madness is this?”

You walk beside him, your tone light, but never mocking. “The kind we live in.”

He chuckles—only once, dry and low.

“And the one called Aha… infiltrated the Nameless? For amusement?”

“Yes. For chaos. As a joke. Disguised as a regular mortal, they waited a year and then—boom. Split the Express. Said the punchline was perfect.”

He exhales deeply.

“I trained with warriors who died defending that train.”

There’s a heavy pause. But then he surprises you.

“Tell me more. I’d rather know the ugly truth than be cradled by comforting myths.”

You nod, your voice softened.

“That’s why you’re still fighting, Mydei. Not for glory. For memory.”

He places a calloused hand over your heart and says simply:

“Then let your memory become mine. Speak. And I shall guard it.”

She saw him leaning against the ruined archway, moonlight lacquered his cheekbones, making his eyes an unsettling green.

“If you’ve come to kill me,” Wanda said, steadying her breath, “get in line.”

“Kill you?” Loki pushed off the stone and strolled closer, boots whispering over grit. “The world thinks you’re already dead. Why ruin a perfectly good performance?”

“Then what do you want?”

He crouched until they were level, almost companionably. “Only to see if the devil in disguise still recognizes her reflection.”

The words were meant to amuse. They landed like a diagnosis.

“Which of us is the devil?” she asked.

“Oh, are we arguing taxonomy?” He gestured to himself with a smirk. “I’ve worn worse titles.”

Silence pressed in. The candles she’d stuck in the rubble earlier burned low, their thin flames guttering in the drafts. When the wind shifted, it carried the scent of wet stone and burned paper and something faintly metallic, like coins rubbed between fingers.

“I didn’t call you,” Wanda said.

“Didn’t you?” Loki’s smile went softer, more dangerous for its gentleness. “Grief has a frequency.”

She should have stood, should have walked away, but she stayed rooted where she was. “Go away.”

He glanced around at the collapsed pews, the altar stone split like a molar. “And leave you to the ghosts? That seems ungenerous.” His gaze flicked around her, counting the candle stubs, the precise spacing of stones. He was cataloguing her ritual, that she knew for sure.

“You’re late,” Wanda sighed, “if you wanted to save me.”

“I didn’t come to save you.” He plucked a pebble from the ash and rolled it between his fingers. The pebble flashed gold, became a coin, then a beetle, then ash again. “I came because I know what it is to be the villain you swear you aren’t, and the monster you’re terrified you are.”

“Is this where you tempt me?” she replied, rolling her eyes as she leaned back on her palms.

“Would it work if I said yes?” Loki’s mouth tilted. “You’ve met the salesman I used to be, but I’m very out of practice.”

“Since when?”

“Since I started holding threads,” he said dismissively. Across his knuckles, faint lines spidered like frostbite that never thawed, a lattice of thin, pale scars that didn’t seem to belong. They belonged to anchors. To those who caught things as they fell.

“What threads?”

He blinked. “Mm. The kind that bind a universe to its story. You tangled a few.”

“You’ve tangled worse,” she replied with an almost smile.

“Oh, infinitely. But I didn’t come to scold.” He reached into nothing and pulled a shimmer into existence—a filament of light so fine it barely cast a glow. It hovered, trembling, between his thumb and forefinger. “I came to show you a door.”

Wanda went still. “No.”

“You don’t know what it is.”

“I do.” Her voice was hoarse. “It looks like hope.”

“Hope is a door that opens to a room you cannot keep,” he said, almost kindly. “This is…something else.”

The filament trembled and, she saw nothing and everything—static like a television between channels, the hint of a corridor, the sound of small feet pattering down a hall she had never lived in.

“Don’t,” she pleaded softly.

“I learned the word ‘don’t’ in a cradle,” Loki murmured. “It never did much good.” Yet he didn’t pull the filament closer. He held it at a polite distance, like a waiter offering a menu to someone who has already confessed they can’t afford anything on it. “There is a branch where you get what you wanted. Your boys, a quiet kitchen, a horrible coffee machine, a morning you forget to be tragic. No bodies in the rubble.”

There was a squeeze in her chest. “There isn’t.”

“There is,” he countered softly. “There are many. That’s the trouble. There’s always a door if you’re willing to pay for the hinge.”

“What’s the price?” She hated how eager she sounded, hated that she leaned toward him despite herself.

“The same as it ever was.” Loki tilted the thread, and she caught her breath because for a heartbeat she heard laughter over the clink of a cereal bowl. “The price is that the story does not only change for you, it changes for someone else. You pull your miracle from another’s spine.”

Wanda’s eyes burned. “How many?”

“Enough.” He lifted his hand and the filament dimmed. The sound of the wind returned, indignant. “I am not here to barter souls, Wanda.”

“Then why did you show me?”

“So you know that you weren’t wrong,” Loki replied, his smile disappearing. “Love is real. The thing you wanted is real. It could have been yours, but not without making someone else me.”

“You’re not dead,” she said.

“Not in the interesting way.” His mouth twisted. “But you understand the point.”

“You came to punish me.” She closed her eyes tight, fighting the tears threatening to spill.

“No.” He hesitated, his pause was long enough to be honest. “I came to be punished with you.”

“You expect me to feel sorry for a god?” she asked, laughing shakily.

“I expect you to recognize an addict when you see one.” He gestured at the rubble. “Power is a door. Choice is a door. Grief is a door. You keep walking through them and calling it a new room. I know the habit. There’s always one more opening if you look hard enough.”

“Then close it,” she said. “You hold the threads. Close it.”

“I can’t close what the universe keeps inventing,” he said. “I can only choose what I’ll be responsible for.” He looked at the ruin around them and the ruin in her. “Tonight I choose not to hand you a lie dressed as mercy.”

“You came to say no.” Her voice was beginning to betray her composure.

“I came to say you’re not alone in it.” He sat beside her on the cold stone.

“I hurt people,” Wanda whispered, “I hurt them because I couldn’t stand to be the only one hurting.”

“I tried to end a world because I couldn’t stand that it didn’t choose me,” he countered with a sigh.

“Do you believe you deserve anything good?” She wrung her hands as her eyes stayed focused on one of the candles

“Do you?”

She didn’t respond right away, weighing his heavy question. “Tell me,” she demanded, unable to bear the silence. “Was there a branch where I made the right choice?”

“There are branches where you made different wrong ones.”

“That sounds like the truth.”

“Flattering, isn’t it?” Loki flexed his fingers, the pale lattice across his knuckles caught the candlelight like frost. “If you want me to lie, I can be beautiful about it.”

“I’ve had enough beautiful lies.”

“Pity,” he said lightly, “I was very good at them.”

The wind shifted and a small cascade of grit slid from the split altar. Without a thought, Wanda reached for the filament but stopped just before she touched it, fingers hovered a hairsbreadth away. In that thin strand she sensed the architecture of a morning, or the idea of one: a hand on her shoulder from behind; a child complaining about homework; someone humming an off-key song as if the kitchen were a sanctuary.

Her magic swarmed to her fingertips, the ruin shuddered in response. She could take it. She could take it and call penance later.

“If you cross, you won’t stop crossing.” Loki’s voice arrived at the edge of her hearing like a memory.

She closed her hand into a fist and the filament winked away.

“You’re not the devil,” she said after a time. “You just know what people want.”

“I’m very good at inventory.”

“And what do you want?” She turned her head and looked at him, her blue eyes searching his face, a face that had finally aged, lines around his eyes from centuries of smiling.

His gaze flicked to her mouth and away, to the broken arch, to nothing. “A smaller job,” he confessed. It came out rueful and raw, a joke that had slipped its mask. “Less… everything. Fewer rooms I have to stand in when people decide where to put their pain.”

Wanda almost reached for his hand. She didn’t. “You could leave.”

“I did,” he said. “It followed.” He angled his face toward the mountains. “You could too.”

“I tried,” she said. “It all came with me.”

They sat in the sound of their own contradictions. The candles finished their dying. The cold got bossy. Somewhere far below, a car grumbled awake and went somewhere that didn’t matter.

“Will you try again?” he asked at last.

She looked at the ash ground into her cuticles. “To leave?”

“To live,” he said.

She breathed in. The air tasted like iron and mountain and the stale sweetness of candle smoke. She saw the door again, not the glittering filament he’d offered but a smaller one: a grocery list. A text message to no one, saved to drafts. A plant brought back from the brink with water that wasn’t a miracle. A morning where she did nothing worthy of a headline.

“I’ll try,” she said. It felt like kneeling in a confessional that had lost its priest.

“Good.” He stood, then swayed very slightly as if the night had put a hand to his chest. The movement was almost imperceptible; his mouth tightened as he caught himself. The latticework scars pulsed faintly, then settled. He made a nonchalant sound that would have fooled anyone who had never gotten up too fast after crying.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“When I let go,” he said.

She rose too, dizzy with the sudden fact of standing. The world tilted and slipped into place. “You said you weren’t here to save me. Were you lying?”

“I’m here,” Loki said, “to tell you that you can walk away from a door and it will still exist, and you will still be strong, and the loss will not kill you even when it spends a week pretending it will.”

Wanda nodded. “And if I change my mind?” She tried to make it a joke. It didn’t land as one.

“I’ll hear you,” he said. “I always do.” Then, softer: “And I’ll say no again.”

She looked at him, really looked, past the posture and the cleverness, to the man who had learned the shapes of other people’s grief so well he could arrange them into maps. “Then you’re better than the devil.”

“No,” he said. “Just tired.”

They started down the mountain together, not in step, not touching, but close enough that if either stumbled the other could pretend the steadiness was incidental. Behind them the ruins kept their secrets. Ahead, a strip of road unrolled like a command.

Halfway to the tree line, Wanda asked, “Does it ever stop hurting?”

The truth moved in his throat before he let it out. “Not the way you think,” he said. “But it changes its face. Some days it looks like a bruise. Some days it looks like a hand you can hold without breaking it.”

“And other days?”

“Other days,” Loki said, “it looks like you and me not choosing the worst thing just because it would be easier.”

They walked. The night thinned into a suggestion of dawn, and with it came the small, indecent hope that mornings still happened even to people who didn’t deserve them. At the treeline, Loki paused and looked back, as if taking inventory one last time.

“Wanda,” he said without turning. “If you must keep a disguise, let it be this: a person who lets herself be ordinary sometimes.”

“Ordinary,” she repeated, tasting the word like medicine. “We’ll see.”

He smiled where she couldn’t see it, then stepped sideways into a shadow that swallowed him like a tide. The wind surged to fill the space he left.

Wanda stood alone, breathing. She put a hand to the rough bark of a tree and found, to her astonishment, that it did not expect anything from her. It simply existed. She let herself lean.