Lost In Remnants

Two Deaths and a Wake

LizBeth:

"I give thanks to you, Ellody, and honour you in your brave, selfless death." I incanted, carefully crafting the memorial stone for them in a quiet part of my Garden's that had come to be the graveyard My favoured creatures that had passed came to buried here, some of the Mononokan Wolves, the Circean Lioness', they had graves here, same as Copper the Squirrel Fox my Brother had loved. Fallen friends had memorials. My Shiny Sister, Donna, then Peren, or Sarah Jane, then lastly, Fiery Sweet Scottish Wild Cat and Fy Annwyl had stones also, side by side. "May you rest in Orazia's Embrace, where Tomorrow Meets Today."

The memorial was simple, as they would have wanted, and mounted into the smallest corner of the wall. It's design was elegant and functional, the idea being that it filtered the water either down into the nearby pond or the plants that may need it, instead of over saturating those that did not.

Of course, the rain was not falling on me. With barely a thought I was creating a telekinetic bubble around myself that kept me as dry as paper, even my long skirt perfectly clean as it hung down into the blades of grass. "Beautiful eulogy."

"I deliberately did not tell you that I was doing this, Ms Oswald, and yet you knew exactly where I would be when you entered." I turned to face her, small, tired and very, very stubborn as she clutched the pendant Ellody had bequeathed her. I did not appreciate the gift, but I could not exactly take it from her. "Why would that be, as not even the Doctor is aware of where this place is within Harmonia?"

"Harmonia? Ellie called it either Elysium, or the Duat."

Because graveyards and the afterlife were a large part of Nataran culture. They thought there was something after, be it reincarnation, or Orazia's Embrace. "Ellody should also not have known of it's existence, for the Garden's are me, in every way that I am not. The weather in certain areas that do not require strict control reflect my mood, or lack thereof, and this entire place is a part of me. Including Idris, the TARDIS, herself."

"Is that right? Because apparently you don't feel, yet here you are in the rain. Doing a quite touching funeral for a girl who killed herself to bring you back. She gave up her life for you." I kept my red eyes on her deep brown, waiting for her to speak the grief that was welling up inside. This was why I wished to do this alone, people simply got in the way. "Could you have saved her?"

I tilted my head to the side, my long dark mass of hair casting a shadow over my face. "Saved Ellody? Well, would that be before or after I let her save you?" She stayed quiet, and I knew why she was asking. Curious as to whether or not they sacrificed their last chance at life to rescue her. "Once the Interface was broken and the crystal removed, there was no way to put her back in my body. I highly doubt an entity as... Complex as her would have survived being put within a synthetically made body. It is entirely possible that I could recreate them, if you are interested?"

Clara was not impressed by this suggestion. "A new one who wouldn't be my Ellie. All new memories, and they wouldn't have the same traits. It would be like you factory reset her."

"An apt analogy, yes. Ellody was simply a cleverly coded AI Interface designed to learn and become an alternative to me. Hence why the universe dubbed them as the Remnant, they were a half successor."

"They're not the Remnant." I raised an eyebrow at her, trying to gain access to her thoughts but of course there was now a nice blue wall around her prevented access to any of her internal monologue. "You and Professor Song named them Remnant, but she's chosen her own name. They're Endless."

An apt name, if a little fanciful. "I gather this is what they chose as they saved you from being scattered in my brothers time stream?"

Clara nodded, the picture of a tired girl who had been through a lot in only a short time. She lived lifetimes in only five minutes, I knew first hand how exhausting that could be. "I had never seen anything so beautiful, it was like they were made of that crystal and light, flecked with blue and utterly timeless. Endless."