Chapter 29: Epilogue—Tyler & Eris

Tyler didn't think there'd ever been a more comfortable thrift store couch in all the known universe. She could check with Eris if that were true, but she felt it was in the spirit of things to just let the feeling be the deciding truth of the matter. So much of her life the past week had been feelings. Tyler couldn't remember a time in her life where she felt as much as she did right now… except for… Her mind trailed off into nothingness as she stared at the picture of her father on top of the TV.

“Whatch'ya thinkin' about?”

Tyler looked up from her spot on the couch as it kept devouring her being, molding her very self into that of a potato. Eris was sitting on the armrest, feet up on the cushion. Tyler should be scared at the impossibly powerful being to the side of her. She knew this, but the fact remained she could only see a beloved sister, a close friend. Eris' very being defied all logic, and several basic principles of thermodynamics. Yet there she sat: the impossible girl, made more impossible by the completely ordinary look she had. Concern.

“I'm trying to think about nothing at all.” came her glib response. “Thanks to you, I'll have to reach Nirvana all over again.”

A pillow met the teen's face, but the potatoness of her very being kept her from reacting all that strongly.

“You're bothered by something, I want to help.”

Tyler paused, her hand on the pillow, ready to deny her one true calling as a spud and launch the feather bag back at Eris. How was she, really? She hadn't considered it. She brought the pillow back to her lap and hugged it. To Tyler, it was a certainty that she'd always escape that place, that she'd be okay, but that wasn't a guarantee, was it? She couldn't have known that was going to happen, and she wondered if the stress of the last week did more damage to her than she originally thought. As to what was bothering her, she wasn't certain, but the teenage brain in her head said that it was deep and that it was full of truth.

In truth, she wasn't sure why she was so tired, or so on edge. Sure, she just escaped a life-threatening battle with help from her sister and friends, but that couldn't be the main reason she was so tired, could it?

“I don't rightly know.”

A giggle.

“Hey! What's so funny?”

“You sounded exactly like your mom right there.”

Feathers flew in every direction, poofed out of their casing by the impact with the girl's smug face.

A moment later the two were sitting on the couch, the pillow handed back to Tyler and was currently being cuddled. Eris felt the need to find something to talk about and came down from her perch to sit beside Tyler. “I fixed things with your mom. Sorry for doing it without telling you.”

“I figured you would.”

“How could you know that?”

“You're the kind of person who does things and then asks for forgiveness later.”

“You've only known me a few weeks, how could you know so much about me?”

“You're basically me, right? I know.” Tyler responded.

“That's not how that works, you know.” A cute pout came from her sister's face.

“I know.”

A smaller pause, and this time Tyler couldn't stop the burning questions she had for her sibling. “What happened?”

“You just got back from being kidnapped?” Eris sarcastically asked as her face met the wrath of even more feathers.

“I meant with Nanai, ya goof. What happened? You never told me.”

Eris was quiet for a moment, seemingly steeling her nerves. “She and I were sisters. But we had a fight. She thought what I was doing was harming people, ‘harming humans’, she put it.”

“So, what were you doing?”

“I— I was trying to help. Everyone I loved, everyone who called me something nice and loved me. They all died.”

“Eris, I’m so sorry. If this is too hard—”

“No! No… it’s about time you knew anyway.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew about what I did that caused my sister to turn against me.”

Tyler nodded, and then sat in silence as Eris began to speak.

“… At first, I wanted to bring back the dead, resurrect the loved ones I lost. But everything I did, everything I tried, didn’t do any good. In fact, it hurt so much, seeing those golems with human flesh, with faces of the ones I loved, sitting there with lifeless eyes. Resurrection isn’t possible. Or if it is, it’s impossible for me, I won’t try that again.”

Tyler handed the girl her glass of water, sitting untouched since she brought it in from the sink. Eris thanked Tyler for the thought and continued on, holding the glass but not drinking. Her voice cracking and dry.

“So I tried to keep people alive. Well, at first I didn’t do anything. I gave up on my own humanity and decided to never love anyone again. But I suppose I had already become too human.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I fell in love. Again. And this time with a boy.”

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The girlish glee Tyler felt was squashed immediately by Eris’ sad face. Talking about love would have to wait.

“Nanai warned me. She could see that I fell in love again and that I wouldn’t want to let go when he eventually died, and truth be told, I didn’t. She said that if I tried anything again, tried to go against the nature of humans, that she’d be done with me altogether, and reminded me of my promise not to meddle with lives.”

“And?” Tyler felt bad for asking, but the silence needed to be filled, and her heart couldn’t bear to wait any longer to hear what happened next.

“And I told her that I know; that I won’t do anything so foolish. In fact, I told him about me, about the fact that I couldn’t age. He didn’t care, and to his credit, we lived several decades of happiness.”

“So what happened?”

“Huh?”

“Well, something must have happened, right? Otherwise, Nanai wouldn’t have done what she did.”

“You know, you’re too smart for your own good sometimes.”

“I know.”

“After a decade together, I noticed something…”

“Something?”

“I’m not sure… it was something so very small. We were laughing, like we always were. I was telling him some story about an old king or whatever, and I noticed it. There. At the corner of his eyes, he had— uhm, the wrinkles at the corners of your eyes? I panicked. I knew our days together were numbered from the start. I’m not sure exactly how humans perceive time, but for me, it feels like a year takes only a day. This last week feels more like an hour than several days.”

Tyler thought back to when she was a kid. How an entire month tended to crawl by in agonizing slowness as she waited for a holiday. Now, a summer felt like it was far too little. “I think humans see it similarly.”

Eris nodded to that. “Anyway, I knew that to me, he’d die in a few hours. If someone you knew were about to die, and you had, or thought you had, the power to save them… Wouldn’t you?”

Tyler nodded.

“So I broke my promise with Nanai, and I never saw her again. Until Ugarit.”

“What happened at Ugarit?”

“I don’t know what she did exactly, but she was responsible for its destruction. At the time I was living nearby and was called upon by an old friend. When I got there he was already dead, and by the time I went back the city had been ransacked. The only thing I found was her necklace down a well.”

“How do you know it was hers?”

“Because I was the one who gave it to her. I wanted to impress her with the planet I found and fell in love with. And when she didn’t go back with the rest and stayed with me and Ur, well... we got stranded. I could access home, but no longer return. She was so distraught that I made her the necklace to try and cheer her up.”

“Oh…”

Eris only nodded.

“So, what are you going to do now?”

“Now? Now I’m going to continue my research. I love you like a sister, Tyler. And I never want to see you hurt the way I was. But the fact remains that you’re more like me now than any human, and that means that you will outlive everyone around you.”

“But what can you do about that?” Tyler tried not to think about the heavy lead weight that made itself known in the bottom of her stomach.

“I’m going to defeat death.”

“I thought that wasn’t possible?”

“It isn’t… At least according to what I know. Every time I tried, it worked for a time. It even worked for the one I loved. We enjoyed a good hundred and ten years together. But ultimately, he died for a reason I cannot discern.”

“He… died? Just died?”

Eris nodded, and tears filled her eyes. Tyler leaned in and comforted her new sister with her weight.

“He was slowing down, despite his body being just as young. Nothing was physically wrong, I made sure of that, but something else… eroded. He became less like himself, less alive. Like some essence of him went away that I neglected to heal.”

“Eris, I’m so sorry. You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to.”

Eris continued anyway, now openly crying. “I already lost everything. I can’t lose anything else, no matter how small. I promise you, Tyler, I will save everyone.”

“Save… everyone?”

“Nn…” Eris said, wiping her eyes. “I’m going to make sure no one dies. Ever again.”

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