Something about this place wrought a melancholic feeling on Celeste. Or rather, a feeling that had been ruminating in his heart for some time was gnawing its way out.
He began to hum, then to sing.
It was an old lullaby about renewal. Traditionally sung in Xerneas’ name, though his mother had to him as a thanks for the sacred ash that had given him a chance at life.
As he sang, he imbued the notes with a power new to him. The power of understanding, the will to make others feel as he felt.
Images took shape in his head. New green sprouting after the spring snowmelt, eggs hatching, youths determining their names, the passing of knowledge and responsibility from parent to child. Displaced souls in their new bodies congregating in Cibus, steeling themselves for the task at hand.
He found the song shifting. Celeste himself had little knowledge of how to alter songs, but this one still changed, as if it were its own organic thing and he just its channeller.
The second verse manifested as pieces of song about the tenacity of those making the most of the in-between of the beginning and end of their lives.
It made him think of old human ruins, like shrines to their civilization’s tenacity, outliving their bodies. Of the Moonlight Feast, held on the winter solstice as a testament to their defiance of the longest night of the biting cold season.
Then, there of the old heroes of Cibus, standing against higher beings and corrupt entities to buy the world more time. Of Spectrum, living as best they could with the end ever more pressing than usual. Spending quiet nights with his friends between days fighting to extend Cibus’ life.
The final verse was a requiem for endings. The most inevitable element of all things. His voice carried a finality to it, for this verse most of all seemed quite fitting for this battle.
The mindless voice of a dead world, the souls of those lost bound in chains. Imagery wasn’t even necessarily needed to feel the weight carried in the verse of finality.
The power of the song flowing through him compelled him to envision it anyways. The last moment of a hunt, the knowledge that the same could just as well happen to him if he wasn’t careful. His mother’s weak smile before the life faded from her eyes.
The knowledge he, too, would inevitably face the same, in Cibus, then a second time in his home world. And further, one day that was hopefully far beyond his own passing, his world would one day follow, for nothing truly lasts forever. Cibus, too, was no exception. One day, there would be a crisis no heroes could solve, and it would follow Telus into oblivion. For a world to live happily forever after was but a comfortable lie.
Perhaps someone not himself, someone like Maple would be wounded by the understanding wrought by the song.
Celeste, however, accepted his transience. There was nothing else could he do, after all, but to accept the inevitable truth, and to make as best he could of the time he had.
He felt something about himself
shift. He couldn’t see the change, but he still knew in his heart what had changed. The fragment of Ho-Oh’s power he bore within had manifested.
Xerneas could have the beginning, Yveltal could have the end. That precious time in-between, though, belonged to
him.
