ASAAPS # 1: A Sky Full of Dimming Stars

Accompanying a Friend to the End of a World

Robin:

Together they idle alongside the misshapen and jagged cliffs, the grass feels harsh and synthetic beneath her thighs but she knows this not to be true, a higher ratio of fiber and silicone build its structure causing the terrain to feel stiff and faux.

Below them the water lapped slowly against floating rocks and debris, not a spray of water escapes its mass, the planet's gravity won't tolerate free individual droplets, a testament to the architect's culture on a whole, beside her the planet's sole survivor sat, head raised skyward, his flank curled around her, shielding her smaller body from the harsh winds of a planet not tailored to her species.

Blood seeped through the bandage adhered to her torn arm, but it was of little consequence, a small injection would erase all evidence of their previous scuffle with the fauna that had taken root in the absence of his civilization.

And as much as it shamed her to admit it, Robin just wished things were as simple for architects, but not even an injection can mend this kind of pain, and she doubted any human could withstand the weight of his loss.

So she speaks often, anything to fill the gaping void left in his conscious wake, never has Al-an felt so far as he had in the past two weeks, and though the strong bond that held taunt through the escape of alterra, the ascension of planet 4546B, the return to his homeward.. had inexplicably snapped, Robin doesn't need to be connected mentally with the extraterrestrial entity to know he is dying..

Like a soldier ant crawling through the crypt of a dead nest, a singular bee left behind in a raided hive, Robin knew the architect was struggling to cope with his new found reality, a life of deafening silence, a life as quiet as the ruins filled with the lifeless husks they sithed through tirelessly weeks prior.

Al-an's strings were cut and like a puppet he was falling.

And though he didn't explicitly state his situation she was a researcher, though was from a different world. And above all else she was his friend.. she understood the signs of giving up, even if he didn't himself, the pain that gnawed at his every moment because she had felt it too...

It started as small things but escalated quickly, listless lethargy, to the severing of their bond, she had initially thought he had been either hurt, or had cut her off on purpose and was all around furious and terrified.

She didn't know which she rathered it had been...

It had happened much like all things tragic, at the least convenient time, Al-an was scouring tirelessly through dead storage data hubs, he had done so many times but Robin feared if she pointed that out it might break the architect under the weight of his desperate mania...

So instead she left him to his mourning, and went to collect resources to make repairs and salvage spare parts, anything he may have needed... She didn't know what exactly to look for as she wasn't familiar at all with his planet, but Al-an wasn't exactly being knowledgeable on the matter though she didn't blame him, she just wanted to be there for him.

It all happened in a blink, light fogged her vision for a sparse second before pain exploded behind Robin's eyes, the world was spinning in multiple directions before everything went blank and numb.

Al-an would later explain what it was, the rupturing of the benign cancer-like growth against her cerebrum, these growths- the result of long term mental bond between a foreign organism and an architect.

It grows and expands like a muscle, translating emotions, language and other helpful functions, the deeper the bond the harder to sever it, Al-an had also ensured her early on that it was in no way harmful to its host under normal circumstances.