"It tastes like..."
"Music. Yes."
"That's impossible."
"Most things are, yet they exist anyway."
She takes another sip, rolls it on her tongue. "How old is this?"
"Four hundred years, give or take a decade. I was younger then. Barely two thousand. Still learning what it meant to be what I am."
"Two thousand." She shakes her head. "I can't imagine that much time."
"Most of it blurs together. Centuries of hunting, searching, failing." I pour myself a glass, though I barely need sustenance anymore. The wine helps me remember sensation. "But some moments stay sharp. Like the day I learned to laugh."
She looks up from her wine, eyebrows rising. "You had to learn?"
"Void Walkers aren't born knowing joy. We emerge from nothing into something, consciousness taking shape through will alone. Laughter is something we acquire. If we're lucky."
"What made you laugh?"
I haven't thought about this in decades. "A creature on Penthos, no bigger than my hand, covered in feathers that changed color with its mood: purple for happy, silver for scared, gold for angry. It decided I was its mother."
"You're joking."
"For three months, it followed me between worlds. Through void spaces that should have killed any living thing. It would curl up in my shadow and make these tiny chirping songs. Completely tone-deaf, but enthusiastic." I find the memory warming something I didn't know could be warmed. "One day, it tried to feed me a worm. Kept bringing them, getting increasingly offended when I didn't eat them. Its feathers went from gold to red to a color I'd never seen before. Pure indignation. The absurdity of this tiny thing trying to parent anancient shadow broke something in me. I laughed until my form wouldn't hold, just scattered into delighted darkness for hours."
"What happened to it?"
"She lived for forty years. I learned to make her toys from shadow. Little puzzles that changed shape when she sang to them. She taught me that small things could matter more than large ones." I pause, surprised by the tightness in my throat. "When she died, I buried her in a garden that exists outside time. Sometimes I visit. The flowers there grow backward, from bloom to seed, so she's always surrounded by beginnings."
Yorika is studying me with an expression I can't read. Her chair has moved closer. Three feet now.
"What?" I ask.
"I didn't think you'd have stories like that. Sweet ones."
"I have all kinds of stories. Two thousand years of them."
"Tell me another."
The request surprises me. In all my attempts at finding anchors, none ever asked about my past beyond its relevance to our situation. They saw me as function, not person. Tool or monster, never just someone with memories.
"What kind would you like?"
"Something beautiful."
I think for a moment. "There's a world where the rain falls upward. Lytharia. Water rises from the ground in drops like reverse tears, gathering into lakes that float in the sky. The people there build their cities on clouds, connected by bridges of concentrated moisture."
"How do they not fall?"
"The same force that pulls the rain up holds them. It's not gravity but something else. Desire, maybe. The planet wants its people close to its heart, which beats in the sky rather than the core."
"You've been there?"
"Many times. There's a festival when seven of their floating lakes align. They sing the water into shapes. Dragons, flowers, entire stories told in liquid sculpture. I watched a woman shape the entire history of her family in rain. Generation by generation rising toward the stars, each life a different shade of blue."
Yorika sets down her empty glass. I refill it without asking. Her chair scrapes closer when she leans forward to take it. Two feet between us.
