The forest had outgrown the sidewalks of the city, and blown-up shells from old cars were a slow graze for the tree roots that stretched along the road. There were electric signs barely holding on over the decay of department store buildings, and old clothes collected mold while floating out over the streams that now filled the streets.
There were rotted out canoes marooned and stuck like glue to the sides of the nearby buildings, leftover from survivors who sought safe passage out of the city by forging river tracks. Not many canoes made it out of the city, though, and there were planks and ripped travel sacks along the the banks of the forest that grew out between the department buildings.
The further one followed the streams out of the city and away from the forest, the more one could see of the world that used to be. The bodies of machines and humans alike were adrift on the shallow waters, looking for land as they petered out. There was oil that had poured out from the veins of hunched over machines and tanks and it sat atop of the water the farther it went along, and the fish that had trickled in from the forest stayed far away.
On dry land, the roads didn't go for long before reaching rows of trenches, filled with much of the same that floated along the streams. The ground was soft, a nice parting gift from mother earth to the children that slept in this part of the world.
Radio signals occasionally played out over the city corridors, emanating from a tank that hadn't been submerged under water or earth. The radio would play, but whatever life was left didn't care to hear it.
There was humanity out in the world somewhere, but it had abandoned this city. The air felt clean, but out over the trenches that stretched on for miles, there were clouds of shame that refused to dissipate.
Resting under the shade of a tree somewhere deep in that forest was what remained of a robot not unlike those floating in the water of the city. He was rusted, and moss grew over the latches on his compartments. A single lens flickered like an old movie projector, and his view of the world decayed the lower his charge dropped. What remained of his legs were trapped under roots that had grown over them, and his right arm had been chewed up in some battle he fought before retiring to this spot in the forest.
He held his left hand up, though, when the sun was out. Sometimes he could catch birds on the ends of his fingers, but for the most part he was content to trap the rays of the peering sun through the edges of his hand. He swore the sun was still warm. When he first got to the tree, he could play music for the birds that stopped by. He could no longer play music in his final hours, but he could occasionally hear the sound of the radio from the city. As much as he knew there could be no life out among the building walls, the sound of the radio gave him hope.
He passed the days under this tree, hoping to somehow breathe in the feelings of the forest that grew around him. He had let roots grow over him, hoping to learn the secrets of the life that grew out over the outside world. Somewhere between the trenches he still remembered and his spot under the tree, this robot had become afraid of dying. The more his light flickered, the more he hoped the forest would prove to be a friend for him at the end.
The forest was no friend, and the birds always flew off before long, but he swore he could feel the soil on the ends of his fingertips.
A rain came down through the trees, and it sprinkled over his head. On his last day, it seemed the sun had up and gone away. He wanted to chuckle, but there wasn't enough energy left for that. The time had come for this little robot, the last bastion that remained of the life that had once filled this city, to say his goodbyes.
Then he heard a voice.
At first he thought it was one of the radios from the city, a farewell from the places he had loved, but the voice kept coming closer. There weren't any real words, just sounds that drew nearer, and eventually he realized he was listening to the voice of a child. His body had long since lost the power to move, and the colors of the forest around him were beginning to fade out.
He made a few sounds, and hoped that the child would hear. She did.
The dirt on his fingers, the sunlight that shone through, never had he been more sure that he could feel things than now, when this little girl pressed her small hand on his chest. He felt the familiar warmth of a person there for a few seconds, and she began to wipe away the roots and dirt that had collected on him.
"Bastion? What a lovely name, my fair robot," the girl said.
This dying robot sat across from a little girl in the rain, and for the first time since he found himself under a rather large tree, he wasn't afraid to die.
"We're all alone in here, Bastion. Everyone has gone away," the girl said, "But I'm glad I've found you."
The girl was still young, but she was strong for her age. She lifted the robot up from his spot on the ground, though his legs didn't come with him. They were part of the forest now, and though she begged his forgiveness, he wasn't really sad to lose them. He sat in a little wooden wagon the girl pulled along the forest floor. The handle had rotted away, but she tied ropes to the ends of it and pulled it along her back. She must have been living here for a while
The robot wondered how many times she had nearly crossed his path.
Though the colors of the forest had begun to fade, the robot could still make out the beauty of the world around him. The forest had left them a path, happy to send them on one last adventure. Rain trickled through, but the air seemed a lovely shade of blue, not the grey he expected, and the girl hummed ahead of his cart. Until now, the robot had been happy to be under his tree. He thought it the last safe place left in the world. But he was glad to be with the girl.
He was happy to not die alone.
When the girl was tired, she took the wagon to the edge of a bank alongside a river that led into the city. She rested her feet in the clean water, and the robot watched the fish that swam from his wagon next to her.
"You know I haven't had anyone to talk to in a while Bastion," the girl said.
There were big, orange fish that came near the bank.
"The good thing is, though, I used to play pretend when I lived in the city. I'm quite good at it," the girl said, "when mom and dad went out for work, I pretended I was on a ship out in the sky."
The girl looked up in the rain for a while, then. The robot could see her, too, out on her ship, streaking from star to star. A galactic adventure.
"What a boring thing to do," the girl said.
She didn't need the robot to reply. He sat watching the fish while she cried, though she didn't try to hide it. He was glad he was a robot then; she didn't feel any shame crying alongside him. He realized, staring at the fish that passed by and listening to the girl cry, that he had accepted his place lying under the tree. This girl hadn't done the same. He was hearing the words she'd kept inside for as long as she had been here.
"I imagine a huge koi fish rushing down this river. There are two boys on the bank, one on either side, racing alongside him. They want to see how far he'll go," the girl says. The robot watches them too, and he can sees the joy on their faces when the fish comes near the bank. He sees them grow sad when he dives too deep, and he sees them laugh when he comes up again. They run out into the distance.
"I imagine there are lanterns on the trees overhead, and there are children huddled around grandmas who tell stories. There are little lanterns out over the water, too. I see us, the people who will come back to this place and honor all the people who died," the girl says, and the robot can see it too. The rain that stops, and the lanterns that glide over the water. He sees the kids listening to stories, and he hears those stories. He learns about the people who come back to this forest, who bury all the dead sitting out in those trenches. He hears about the love that used to flow through the city like air. He remembers it himself now. He wants to see his friends again, and he wants to see people laugh at a good joke.
"Oh Bastion, I can imagine what was, I can imagine what will be. I can play pretend all I want, but I can't bring myself to imagine them, can I?" the girl starts, her words trickling off as the robot that sits next to her begins to power down. He didn't need to hear her next words, though, because robots know that all humans are searching for their parents. He imagined this girl, happy like those boys running along the river, smiling next to her parents.
He wished he had longer, but the space in front of him begins to dim. It was his time, and he began to fade as he watched the girl wade out into the river. She splashed her fists against the water in anger, and he felt a warmth in his chest. He didn't know if it was happiness or sadness, or if he could even feel either of those, but he let them go as the forest went black around him.
A bird came down, wet from the drizzling rain, and rested on his finger. He couldn't see or hear it, but the familiar feeling of that bird made him smile.
Bastion drifted away there, in a wooden wagon by the water. Fish passed by, and the little girl, no older than 12 or 13 watched the sky through a clearing in the trees. A light had come out of Bastion's chest, and video played over the clouds. She could make out the blonde of her mother's hair, the black of her gloves, and even the pale glow of her skin under the dirt. The girl wondered where her mother had been.
"Bastion, I need you to take a message for me," the girl's mother said.
The video played on, and the girl didn't have to pretend any longer.