[Ask about my muse’s memories]
💖- A memory that made them feel special
The Shape’s memories of their fellow Henchmaniacs are largely jumbled and blurred. Some were deliberately altered. Some were burned away so that only scraps remain. Some are faded from age. Most of them are simply so alike that they run together. 500 billion years is a very, very long time.
Some fragments are clear and tangible in the Shape’s long memory. Howls of laughter over forgotten jokes. Screaming like comets through the too-bright abyss. Pyronica’s hot, smoky touch and magma smile. Kryptos’s highly strung squeaking. Hectorgon’s crisp, calculating conversation. Every so often a wink and a nudge in the side from Teeth. Dim and hazy hours spent doing almost nothing at all, except being close to one another.
Every one of them had given everything up to be there. They were all each other had. So many millenia later, the Shape hesitated to think, ‘family’... ...but near every day, they felt it.
The Shape has long since forgotten the specifics of why, but they remember a time centuries ago they spent hiding in the dark. There they were, coiled in the bottom of a black hole, watching the warping surface and trying to ignore the bitterness inside. The bitterness was all that was left. They burned away the reason they felt so alone--there was no reason to hold onto it, not if they wanted to remain happy here--
Someone reached down to them.
The Shape felt themself be gently taken in a giant hand. Another came to cup around them, shielding them from the fire of the Realm.
Xanthar didn’t speak. He rarely needed to. The largest hench-creature fished the smallest out of the dark, and placed them on his shag-furred shoulder.
The Shape unfolded just enough to see the giant’s doughy, featureless face soften. They slumped against him. <<...I was gone for a long time.>> Their twin tendrils curled tightly into him. <<...Sorry...>>
They shrank further, allowing Xanthar to become their planet. The rumbling sound of the giant’s breathing rolled over them. <>
The two of them took the long way back, drifting through glittering nothing.
