Aleph was amazed.

She had never heard Quarti be so coherent for so long before, not even during her last story.

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“So it was I lived my second life. I grew, I loved and I had children. We lived simple lives. Many of us struggled and perished. But we strived on anyway. I admit with remorse I know not their names now, my lost children and family. Only that they were once mine and that they were loved and mourned for their loss when I lived.”

The words flowed and there was in her tone a different person. In her bearing and even in her thoughts it was like another floated there before them. Young and then old. Bright and then worn down by trials and pain and loss. Hopeful though still at the end even as the light seemed to grow stale in her eyes.

Sight going vacant and blind, body twisting with old injuries. Voice cracking a bit with age in a way she rarely heard amongst any but the oldest of elders.

“I spoke and lived and prayed to Obbie all that time as a grew, and although I did not know it at first Obbie grew close and treasuring of me as more than mere meat for the slaughter”

Then the storyteller laughed and then her voice was light and flowing, timeless and echoing strangely and also half unreal. Like air currents or rain.

“It was a strange thing for my dear Obbie to grow attached and to live so rooted as e’ was to I. To thrive as I thrived and seek my safety. To seek out my success and teach me the meaning as e’ understood of my memories. Awkwardness and strangeness for us both. But it enriched I and e’”

There was a sway forward then and then sparking blue and even faintly green and yellow resonance light between Quarti’s fingers and nestling in whorls and flashes over her palms.

“I was the firemaker then. My parents of my second life had lived off a slurry heated by Terra then Gaia’s own deep heat. A soup used to dispose of our dead and enrich our bellies. They had not known of fire except in legends. There was no means to make it known to them. A magic of the ancient past. But with Obbie’s help I returned the secret of it. I showed my children and family. A guttering flame kindled by my hand and spirit, entrusted to my kin to shelter and nurture into the future.”

There was a breath, a slight rattle in her throat. The exhalation was long and deeply disturbing.

Then she grew still.

There was a slackening of her body into its natural curl of dead weight.

Stillness fell and Aleph realized she was not breathing. She could feel a kind of hint of something growing deeply disturbing. Something that tickled at her that Quarti must have just perished.

“And then I died!”

The voice came back as a relief and a shock. A seeming miracle as the once corpse was limbre and alive all at once.

“I shucked my body old and worn and sickly and was cast back into the raw tumult of the soul and spirit once more. But with eyes and feelings and knowledge preserved and long reinforced by my guardian Obbie.”

She spun and danced and weaved about as if made of wind or cloth. A lilt of humor and a glint of eye for Aleph and Omega at her side, even a glance over their shoulders up to Pylo.

Mischievousness was rampant over face and body.

“But oh I hear that you say that what of the cruel collector who greedily hungered for my soul-flesh in past? How could such trust ever be sure? Well I can say as simply, one does not cut down the tree that grows sweetest fruit”

She rocked back and splayed out. Hands going up and back arching, threads of hair sweeping out in waves.

“And that was the sum of our trust and bond, As I lived before I poured happy prayer and thought and story upon my childhood friend and guardian and then later guide and partner in spirit until the old blobby monster was so fat e’ could scarcely conceive of ever cutting off the tap of my attention. Oh how e’ complained when I died”

She picked up the breathy and eerie tone, the echoing hollowness the faint whisper of winds and leaves.

“ ‘O Fourthdottir dearest friend! Please shuck your memories and leap blind into the living again! Become the sweet teat of an embodied soul once more, so I Obbie might suckle and grow rich and fat upon your blind and infantile hospitality again!’ ”

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She made a face, a scowling disgust and then laughed rich and deep and somehow from slightly more everywhere then before.

“I told Obbie to stuff it as matter o’ course. I had been peeled almost totally new by birth. There was near nothing of myself that was before Forthdottir. Vaguest memories latched to a mesh of spirit eyes and viscera. A whole life nearly gone and lost to me. But worst of all it was a life that I so deeply needed to hold every scrap of”

She lowered her head, tilted against the light of the strange not-forest so that her eyes shadowed, her face’s lines growing deep. Another face emerging from the light, a haggard one gaunt and wasting from hunger and loss and horror.

“Yes remember as I have told afore, I was one of the last living witness of the end of everything... Of all that stood human undone.”

She straightened up a bit but still seemed to be hollowed by the light and shadow.

“So I was burdened to carry the memory of a people gone. And though I tried to impart my words and stories to my children and friends in my time as a living being the words were merely more legend and myth upon them”

She drew back and her face shone again in the light, her eyes fierce and deep. A fire there Aleph had never seen.

Or perhaps that she had only ever seen through the lens of joy and delight and wonder. The fire behind the wildness that had seemed like madness before.

It was like looking at a sun behind her eyes. A light shining from inside! The experience chilling and like every other time that Quarti decided to pull up the depths of her experience it made Aleph very uneasy.

How had she?

Oh wait, Quarti had tilted her head so the reflection of the light from behind pylo was just right.

Okay still impressive but not quite as discomforting.

Quarti smiled knowingly before continuing, words flowing smoothly and clearly as they had barely ever done so before.

“So I held back from rebirth so I might be a preserver in spirit. My family, daughters and sons prayed my name and fed me and Obbie both. They held a place for my soul to be enriched in their days. As I had told them too while living. And in their souls though clumsier than even our youthful and fresh Aleph here I was able to whisper and remind them of myself and what wisdoms I knew”

There was a warmth to her expression there. A comforting presence to her. It was like Quarti was speaking of her own village.

“It was going well and fine! Some of my children and grandchildren and great-great grandchildren would join me in gently floating among our descendants. We would whisper and converse and gossip and pass on what wisdom we could to the younger. But they would all return to life and shed bits of themselves in the passing. Some held on and I tried to instruct as best I could when they passed through death again and again.”

A sad smile and eyes gazing past them all, into a deep time, hair somehow curling and furling about almost like clouds. Aleph had no idea how she managed that one. A feint shine of resonance light highlighting details, the blue mingling to suggest somehow dawn light breaking over her.

“But it was sparse success, we were all amateurs to this. Even I the eldest soul of mankind was a beginner.”

Hair tossed in sparkling light seeming to flow with her words.

“Still it was going well. My family and children grew, they learned to shape tree and stone, we spirits and guiding dead kept the secret of fire strong in their minds.”

”It was progress, I started to think maybe I could stand to let go of my vigil and give into Obbie’s incessant complaints to once more feel my sucor as a living soul upon e’ ”

Then the expression dropped to total slackness. The eyes staring through Aleph like she was not even there, or worse like she was the one who had become a corpse. It made her skin prickle and hairs raise along her arms and back. It made her spine and symbiotes cry out to tell that she still lived!

The words were hollow and yet so wracked with anguish that Aleph wondered if perhaps Quarti might be tearing something in her throat speaking like that.

“Then everyone died again”