Author's Note: Happy 10th Birthday, Luka! This isn't much, but I felt like I had to post something in her honor.
If Elluka Clockworker could hold onto one piece of forever, what would it be?
Was that even possible, when everything turned to dust in her hands?
She had heard a story in a seedy Marlon pub, both paradox and riddle at once. A valued ship of old, having all its boards switched out one by one.
Was it still the ship, when everything was through?
Centuries of travel, having her mind and body and friends and family switched out again and again and again.
Was she still Elluka, when everything was through?
"It doesn't matter, because the ship still sank!" Marlon sailors would roar with drunken laughter, clinking their mugs together and forgetting all about philosophy.
The ship had already sunk a long time ago.
Now she was cut adrift in a rolling sea, unable to cling to even the smallest piece of flotsam because she wasn't even sure if one existed.
She had watched trees sprout from tiny saplings to massive pillars towering over the forest.
She had then watched them all fall, whether to ax or lightning or beetles or simple infection, leaving nothing but stumps in their wake.
And even those too, rotted away.
She had watched babies born to rejoicing parents, growing into adults who laughed and cried and loved and fought and sometimes even called her "friend".
She had then watched them all die, whether to accident or disease or Deadly Sin or even the simple passage of time, leaving graves with nothing but their names etched in stone.
And Elluka knew, she knew all too well, that even those would fade away.
Even the ones she thought she could count on to be there, even the ones she briefly, reluctantly, allowed herself to open up to, swearing herself to them; they eventually turned to dust, just like the rest.
One night, she looked up at the night sky and found that the constellations weren't the same as the ones she saw when she started her journey.
Elluka wondered why she even fucking bothered.
If Elluka Clockworker could hold onto one piece of forever, what would it be?
What would be the one thing that still held true after all these lonely years?
What would be the thing that would convince her that, despite everything, that the face staring back in the mirror was still her?
Until that was found, there was nothing to do but laugh at god and the devil, and Elluka Clockworker would walk alone.