As the Last
It had been a long time—months and years and days and decades—since anything meaningful had been said. Since words had been more than words, and songs had been more than songs—since the earth had spoken in its wonderful, confusing way. The world was dying, but it was such a slow, drawn out death—centuries of a persistent, unstoppable decay—that people blurred and disappeared from history before they ever knew anything was happening at all.
And the ruins of the world spoke in soft, shy voices, willing their thoughts to become a reality. When she was little, she heard those dreams. She sat for hours, breathing them in and making them her own. Their dreams were her dreams. Their wants were her wants. Before she'd lost her true body, she had found her niche in this dilapidated world.
But that was a long, long time ago... The voices of the world were no longer speaking to her. They babbled aimlessly without audience, hoping to catch someone's attention. Look look look! The voices were tired. They were growing quieter and quieter with every passing moment...
And Nekkar had the smallest voice of all. It had always been that way.
They landed on the Quietlands in their golden ship. She took Sagi by the hand, lead Guillo with an uncharacteristic softness, hoping (needing, praying) that they would understand. She took them by the pile of her little stones at the entrance, hoping the voices encased in their shells were just as loud and powerful as when she was a little girl.
They were fading, a small trickle of wordless sounds that still meant more than anything any person could ever say. But they were dying. And Sagi, Guillo couldn't hear them, couldn't understand. Not yet.
Milly was devastated.
But she knew who had the loudest voice of them all. She dragged Sagi and Guillo to the waterfall.
"I used to pretend white was a good day," Milly said firmly, carefully, as Sagi and Guillo watched in fascination as the waterfall danced, alive in its vicariously inundating way. This voice shouted. This voice roared. Somewhere inside her, Milly shouted and roared, too.
And now they were close to understanding. Their faces began to dawn with enlightenment—but Milly knew, oh she knew from the bottom of her metal, synthetic heart, the one thing they had to see before they'dknow, too.
It wasn't supposed to be easy. "No!" she growled angrily, when she dragged her partners to the top of the hill and saw the bereft stretch where her people-rocks once stood tall and proud. "No! Where are they?"
"Where are what, Milly?" Sagi asked in his old-soul voice, the same voice the world shared, quiet and understanding and accommodating.
"My rock people!" Her family. Hers.
Sagi leveled a long look at her, puzzling her out. "... Don't worry. We'll find them. We'll put them back." Because he didn't understand, he didn't hear—but he was going to. He didn't know what he was reaching for, Milly knew, but he was still groping for it. And that was enough for now.
"Okay."
And the three of them got to work, battling the garden-variety monsters that littered the paths (once, a long time ago, the Nekkar Quietlands were devoid of such life, kept at bay as it was by the soft, old voices of Nekkar—how the world was changing...), pushing the humanoid boulders through rotting paths that fell in and fell through, and finally defeating the wicked bird who had scattered her rock-family in the first place.
And then they were lined up, looking out into the (decaying, dying, beautiful) world. The voices of these rocks were the most human of all. Milly could hear the child's laughter weaved playfully through the wind, could feel the mother's happiness and see the father's grin. The world hugged them close.
"Do you see?" whispered Milly, a secret world for the three of them to share, "Can you hear?"
"Yes," said Sagi, just as quiet.
"... Yes," said Guillo, just as powerful. Milly was almost surprised—Guillo was not human, how could he hear? But, then, Milly wasn't fully human. And Sagi—Sagi wasn't purely human. Maybe the presence of humanity was an abstraction all along—for the most vicious of the monsters she had met in her short life were humans—animals conscious and willful in their darkest deeds. And so the voices weren't speaking to humans, the voices simply spoke.
And the triad stood there for a moment—maybe not one with the world, but at least in harmony with it. Listening to the cacophony, the symphony, of silent, fading words that the world deemed necessary to speak in a language that no one and everyone understood. In that moment, Milly was a part of them and they were a part of her and the world was only theirs. Only theirs.
And the ruins of the world spoke in soft, shy voices, willing their thoughts to become a reality. And for Sagi, Guillo, and most of all Milly—the world was in truth.
Their voices would never disappear.
And in every step, they learned to listen.