Day Two hundred and ninety seven - Clavicula nox

Just ahead of them, and above them, and all around them, in the endless sea of starless night, they see the figure of a man trudging slowly over the void. He is massive in size, an impossibility in the form of a man. Slowly, patiently, he makes his way to a distant structure, and as he approaches it, Leilani realizes it's a spiral stairway that seems to go on forever and ever. Step by step, the man ascends the stairs, until at last he reaches the summit. They see him survey the surroundings, and see him look down a deep, deep well. The man seems to contemplate his course of action, then plunges down the well. He falls, they see him fall, and for them what takes untold aeons to unfold happens in mere moments. Soon enough, they see the man trudging across the void once more. Not just him, multiple him, tens of thousands of him, millions, billions, trillions of him, all making the same long, doomed trek. 'Now, if you look that way', Inaniel said pointing at another direction across the vast gulf of space, 'and though for all intents and purposes it's the opposite end of the universe, you'll see something interesting.' Leilani, here at the end of everything, feels a peace she never felt in her whole life. 'It's a woman. Huh. Is it me or does she look a little bit like me? I think I used to dream of that pool where she is when I was a kid.' Inaniel looks at her, then says 'You're not wrong. There's also a little bit of me in the man. Not me, not quite me, but somewhat me. Maybe I'm an echo of him? I don't know.' 

They witness the eternal fall recurring time and time again. They witness the stars being snuffed out one by one by an upstart deity, who painted the cosmos crimson with the blood of gods and demons. They see everything end, then everything start again. 'Come', he says. 'We have to go back. There's nothing to see here but the same film unfolding over and over again'. As they walk back, and leave the forever dark behind them, a sense of unease and uncertainty assails Leilani. She remains in silence for a few moments more, as they move from dark to light to life, and to a reality they both call a semblance of home. Then she breaks the silence, and asks him, 'Why did you show me that?', and he doesn't answer her, not straight away. 'You'll see when we return.', he said at last. 'But I'll tell you this, it's going to help you make a choice.' She asks, 'A choice?' He somewhat chuckles, somewhat sighs, 'If you could call it that. Maybe it's predestined, and it's not really a choice, it's just a pattern unfolding.' Leilani nods, and they walk the rest of the way in silence. After a while, they start to see the house come into view. But there's no mountain here now, it's the house she could see from her own house, a little ways away. 'We're here.', he says, as they stop close to the house. 'We are echoes of something. Destined to meet, but like two ships in the night, we always pass one another by. Look, put your hand here.', he said pointing to nothing in general. Just pointing. 'What do you mean?', she asked. 'Trust me.', he says, and she puts her hand where he was pointing. It touches something. Something solid. Something invisible. Something there and yet not there.

'What's this?', she asks. And Inaniel tells her that it's her reality and his closing the gaps between them. Like a door that would be closing, and once closed, would forever be locked away. 'You can't stay. You never stay.' She doesn't know what he means by that, but she feels something tightening around her. Something suffocates her, there's less and less space here. She looks back to where her house is, and she wants desperately for this to just be a weird, bad dream, and tomorrow when she wakes up, she'll turn on the radio and dance on the living room. She looks at him, and asks if she can hug him. 'Of course.', he says, and they hug affectionately. Then she turns her back, and makes her way down the road towards her house. He looks past her and at her house, where she watches him through binoculars. As she walks away, she gets the feeling again that something is deeply wrong. Leaving feels wrong. She shouldn't be doing this. She stops dead in her tracks, and turns back, and sees him standing there still. She runs towards him, fast as she can, until at last she's in front of him, retracing the steps to his embrace. 'I want you to stay.', he says, 'But I've died so many times before. Thousands upon thousands of tiny deaths. You do not want someone who's emptied of everything.' Leilani moves closer to him, extends her arm and places a hand on his chest. 'My hand on your heart', she says, 'I know there is a beating!' They are so close to each other, now, so so close, closer than ever. These two souls almost as one now. So close. They stand inches from each other. But no closer. Reality on either end closes in on them. They and their realities start to drift apart from each other. It's slow at first, then faster, and the distance grows, and no matter how fast they run toward each other they're getting more distant with each passing second. 'I'll find you in the next life.', they promise to each other, as their worlds cease to be.