Thyathyrec didn't know precisely where to go, but he gladly would have ridden the ATV forever, with Yrakc clutching him tightly from behind and both relishing their freedom of movement, if not for their limited fuel and choice of destination. Still, he found himself drifting along, following an unconscious rhythm of the jungle.
"That way?" Yrakc nudged.
"You feel it, too?" he asked, surprised.
"Hmm," she mused, cryptic in her silence.
To Thyathyrec's astonishment, they quickly reached a low cave with a faint blue hue to it near the base of Mount Òriamfec. The mouth appeared to have strange markings covering it that looked exactly like the squiggles from Yrakc's book.
"Ah!" Yrakc cried, nearly leaping from the ATV in her excitement. Thyathyrec quickly cut the power to keep from accidentally running over her. She reached the first inscription, carefully touching the letters.
"You can read these markings?" he asked in astonishment as he hobbled over to join her.
"Of course I can," she lightly scolded. "Do all of the people on your planet have only one language? I simplified mine for you as best I could by using the characters that most resembled what you wrote."
He felt gobsmacked by his lack of perception. They had made such a tremendous effort just to learn one of her languages, much less multiples!
"This is definitely not a coincidence," she remarked, walking deeper into the cave to explore. "Even had another person from my planet landed here, the markings are my native language written in common script, and the number of people from my homeland who had access to a space program were extremely limited."
"Common script..." So the squiggles were their lingua franca, and the letters that most resembled Thyathyrec's were some obscure language, probably. "There are no repeated letters, like doubling?"
"Repeating the prior sound is designated by the dhirthe."
"Which is that?"
She pointed to what looked like an upside-down dhirthe.
It all snapped into place. His mind sifted through the journal entries as though solving for an encrypted puzzle. "'I lost track of how many days have passed,'" he translated. "'I have no chance at survival by normal means. Why did I take this mission? Why did I even join the space program? I've foisted all the care of Ahfiak and Cyjy onto Kòdhylò, who is ill-equipped to handle them both, even with Cenni's help.'"
"What?" she cried. "You read my diary??"
"You saw us!" he blurted, making a defeated gesture. "It was the first thing of yours they let me study."
"Rude!" Yrakc crossed her arms and pouted, annoyed. Thyathyrec could barely tell through her clothes that she also twitched the stump of her tail, probably in aggravation.
"I don't know what you expected."
She stayed silent for an uncomfortably long moment. "I expected you to at least not rub it in my face."
"Sorry," he mumbled. "Reflex."
Yrakc stared at him for a moment longer, as though deciding whether to forgive him. "You couldn't help it," she finally muttered.
"Sure couldn't," he agreed. "What about this, though? I can sort of read the text, but I don't know what any of it means."
"It says, 'open at the meeting of foresight and hindsight.'"
Thyathyrec raised an eyebrow. "Literally, 'hindsight'?"
"Huh?"
He tipped his head at her. "Our prime minister—our còlithyizin—is named Ahfiamiďiec, which means that. You saw him once; he had that hat you laughed at."
"Really? I didn't see anything special about him that would apply here. Does it mean something else?"
He glanced at the cave's exterior. Something had definitely changed from what had appeared in the photos. "Maybe 'open' as a descriptor, rather than an action? I saw images of this place on his desk, which is how I knew to look for it, but there's a – glow that definitely didn't appear then." He ran his fingers over the inscriptions, finding and touching a round extrusion that looked a bit like a spherical button.
"So what's 'foresight'?"
The 'button' seemed warm to the touch. "Hflòmiďiec."
Even Thyathyrec felt a noticeable difference in the sound of his voice just then. Where his had a light, curious tone mere moments before, this new voice had a deeper, serious timbre that startled Yrakc.
"You found me," he whispered, turning to face her.
Thyathyrec's blood chilled as those three little words spilled from his mouth unconsciously. Rather, they came from his mouth, but he didn't command them.
The other he had taken over.
"Thyliyn?" Yrakc whispered back.
"Yes, it's me."
Yrakc took his hands in hers and stared deeply into his eyes. It gave Thyathyrec a shock to lose complete control of his body, to be a mere puppet whose consciousness rode on the back of another.
"I've missed you so much, Thyliyn!" Yrakc squealed, clutching his hands tightly as tears formed in her eyes.
"It's been a while, ne?" Thyliyn smiled through Thyathyrec's face, obliterating the discomfort he felt at being possessed. "I'm sorry for leaving you, truly. I really didn't want to, but – you know what happened. Either we all died, or only I did."
"Still, it's been so hard without you. Kòdhylò especially had a hard time picking up your slack. I wish you could've met them—our children."
"Me, too."
Thyathyrec only half-processed the talk as Yrakc went on about the life she had lived without this Thyliyn, as memories of this past life flooded into his head. This and the unbearable agony of not having control of his body burned at Thyathyrec's very soul, brought a whole new level of fear and torture that he could do nothing about. "Why?" he cried, though no words came from his mouth.
"I didn't want her journey to be for nothing. She's already been through enough."
The thought entered his head like a private conversation whispered in his ear. So Thyliyn heard him!
"And what about me?" Thyathyrec couldn't stand it. The feeling of his entire life being used merely to produce an avatar for a higher being was too foreign for him to process. "Get out of my head!" he cried.
Yrakc didn't seem to register his discomfort. Perhaps this Thyliyn possessing him wasn't showing the emotions Thyathyrec felt. "I'm sorry," Thyliyn said, inwardly. "For this meeting to occur, there was really no way to prevent doing this to you. Otherwise, you wouldn't have suffered as you have. I truly wish it could have been different."
Apologies seemed trite in the face of being possessed. Now he was under someone else's absolute control, and it made him nauseated to think his life was truly not his own anymore.
Thyathyrec realised something else, as he was thinking about it. "My leg is healed."
"Yes. It was not a benefit, in light of being pursued. We may have to run at any moment."
"You took away my promise!"
"I'm sorry."
Thyathyrec screamed from the bottom of his soul. "You've taken away my one purpose in life!"
"What's happening?" Yrakc asked, furrowing her brow. Thyliyn's extended silence and increasingly sorrowful face as he directed his attention to Thyathyrec for their inner dialogue must have confused her.
"Thyathyrec is upset. His greatest fear has come to pass, and in possessing him I have removed his only meaning—the reminder of his promise to his friend."
Yrakc gasped in astonishment. "What are you doing to him? I thought you were the same! I didn't realise it would hurt him!"
"It is a side effect of being an avatar. We are the same in spirit, but having been reborn without memories of being Thyliyn makes it painful to regain them. If I were to release those memories, he would return to his normal self."
"But then—"
"I would be gone again, yes."
"...for now."
Thyliyn didn't answer. It became clear even to Yrakc that because the two couldn't truly co-exist, she would have to choose between them.
She looked downcast, trying to hide her disappointment. "...I've just found you again. How can I...?"
Even through his horror, Thyathyrec could feel Thyliyn's intense remorse, and it placated his fear. The possession bore no malevolence, only awkwardness. As terrified as he felt, he tried to force himself to keep his head about him. At the same time, he started to realise that Thyliyn was the one in love with Yrakc, the part of himself that seemed to know more than the rest of him and led him toward her in every aspect of his life. His feelings for Piaròmine may have been genuine admiration, but she was also a step toward showing him the way to his true love.
...then why was it so painful being possessed? Why couldn't he merge with his past self and be whole?
"I can certainly explain, if you like. Do you have any other requests of me before I release you?"
The question seemed irrelevant. If Thyliyn was so perceptive of foresight, wouldn't he already know what Thyathyrec would ask?
"Yes, but it seemed more polite to ask you than to simply thrust it upon you without your consultation."
It was strange, the idea of being preprogrammed, as it were.
"Indeed. This was my discovery, in becoming your Hflòmiďiec. The knowledge of my past caused me great pain, dulled only by the notion of what great things would come. The truth is the soul chooses to live again with no memories of past lives, only in part to forget the pain but also to rediscover past enjoyment.
"I'm sure you realised this when you met Yrakc again. Your life seemed to take a more fulfilling direction, didn't it?"
As odd as it felt thinking of Thyliyn as himself, it was true. The times he spent studying Yrakc—and, as a child, exploring with Lyiyn—gave him the most fulfilling experiences of his life, the ones he would relive in a heartbeat. It almost made him forget the disabling torture that drove him to the brink of suicide.
There was something familiar—comfortable, even—about Yrakc that he couldn't put to words before. If Thyliyn was his past life, then he was indeed enjoying discovering her again.
Thyathyrec then thought of the others' speculation about his having dissociative identity being true after all. Thyliyn was another part of him—or was it the other way around? Were there even more versions of himself buried deep inside?
"Sort of. Consciousness is a strange thing, and how we interpret it is the biggest mystery of all. I think the idea of a single consciousness residing in any one body is the fallacy: what we consider to be 'souls' are really just a collection of memories, and our collective conscious is simply a wading through of old memories and new experiences trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps it would be easier to think of our soul as a colony in itself, working together toward the best possible outcome."
Their discussion abated as silence permeated the vicinity. Yrakc alternately stared deep into his—their?—eyes and down at her feet.
"What did you decide?" Thyliyn ventured, retaining a neutral calm throughout the ordeal.
"I – do miss you tremendously, Thyliyn, but I also feel like finding you again was a gift I don't deserve. I already didn't appreciate what I had, and I would rather do that this time."
He nodded. "I think if the universe is willing to allow us to meet again in your lifetime, then finding each other in another life won't be so difficult after all."
"And Thyathyrec?" With that, she looked deeply into his eyes, perhaps searching for Thyathyrec beneath Thyliyn's possession.
"We are all the same," he said in a kind tone. "It's just perhaps we don't recognise it at first."
She smiled, and Thyathyrec found himself comforted by it, despite everything. "Good. I've felt so lonely without you, Thyliyn—but I've also grown rather fond of Thyathyrec."
Thyliyn smiled as well. "I had hoped you would. He's the me that you always wanted to know, the one you wanted to love, had I—WE not gone through what I had."
Tears glistened in Yrakc's eyes as she sniffled. "I just felt like there was so much I needed to tell you, so much I wanted to experience with you. Now, it just feels silly. I travelled unknown millions of light years away from home, to tell you about our babies' first words? The cute little orphan girl we fostered? I could have stayed and made more memories to tell you about instead."
"Well, I'd still love to hear about them, even if I already know."
Yrakc blinked at him. "You do?"
He shrugged. "Well, part of me does. Part of me never left you. Part of me came here. Still other parts of me are throughout the universe, waiting to see what happens."
"So you can see them now? Or, what happened to them?"
"Not exactly. As you said, it's unknown millions of light years away. I might have survived 'death,' but I'm not omnipotent."
She snorted. "You sure act like it sometimes."
Thyathyrec felt calmer now, perhaps from knowing that he would soon regain his own body, but also because Yrakc had finally achieved what she'd wanted. Seeing Yrakc happy put his own soul at ease.
"That was your design," Thyliyn noted. "I had intended you to be someone who would help her once she met you."
Designed?
"You are named for three of the major protagonists in our history's lore. The name you originally gave Yrakc, Cyiki, is the fourth. The original Cyiki was a woman who was forced to endure many trials to prove her love to her husband and win back the honour of her place at his side.
"Your family name, Òlacdhić, was for a man unjustly cursed throughout his life, forced to choose between equally bad options in his quest to simply end his own suffering.
"Your personal name, Thyathyrec, was for a brilliant inventor who was neither good nor evil. He strived to help others, but his jealousy and traitorism put him through times of great difficulty.
"Finally, your middle name, Zaicen, was for a great hero whose destiny was to embark on an epic quest that changed the world."
That seemed bizarrely appropriate, then.
"It's not really so bizarre as that. Each story is one of the four truly distinct stories in existence, from which all others are merely derivative. Yrakc is your Cyiki in every way and has remained faithful even at the expense of the stable life I left for her on her planet."
"Faithful to me?"
"You more than any other residual personality in this body."
So he was the best version of himself. Or, himself before the accident was, but it wouldn't be too hard to bring that self back, would it?
"Are you ready to say goodbye?" Thyliyn asked, to both of them.
"Not really, but I don't want Thya to suffer anymore."
"I'd be lying if I said it was good meeting you," Thyathyrec admitted. "Getting the whole story has been enlightening, though. Thank you for letting me have your beloved."
Thyliyn smiled. "Very well. I hope to see you soon."
Thyathyrec felt Thyliyn fade away and slowly blinked as he regained control, tipping somewhat as he felt his leg give away.
"Thya!" Yrakc cried, helping him stand.
He grinned sheepishly, feeling a comfort in the shooting pain in his shin. "So that's your Thyliyn, huh."
Yrakc gave a warm smile. "Yeah... Sorry."
He grinned. "It's fine. I guess I don't blame you. I saw what you'd been up to."
"You did?"
"Yeah. Gotta say, no wonder. Don't think I could manage that kind of performance, myself."
Yrakc flushed, brilliantly. "What are you talking about?"
Thyathyrec shook his head. "It's private. I understand."
She didn't respond, turning away.
A final whisper crept into his ear. "You have a visitor."
Thyathyrec felt his ears twitch in anticipation, except that it felt like Jird ears, like Yrakc's. A remnant of Thyliyn's influence?
"Don't move."
Though Yrakc tensed in fright at the words, Thyathyrec remained motionless except to bow his head in mild amusement. "It's okay," he whispered to her before turning to face their visitor.
IЪel gritted his teeth in anger at them, staring down the muzzle of his pistol as he aimed it between Thyathyrec's eyes. "Why are you doing this, Thya-ku?" he snarled. "What do you hope to accomplish by running away with this alien?"
Thyathyrec's face was neither cold nor defiant, but bemused, like that of a father catching a disobedient child in the act of misbehaving. "I could ask you the same of what you're doing."
"What's that supposed to mean? You've run off with the biggest scientific discovery in—"
"Since when did that matter to you? You've hated Yrakc from day one and haven't made the least effort to hide your feelings about her."
"I'm just doing my job, Thya-ku. What are you doing?"
"Saving her. No one deserves to die like that."
IЪel lowered his weapon ever so slightly. "She was in perfect health in observation. Who said she was dying?"
"Then when were you planning to release her?"
From his silence, they could all tell that IЪel grasped at straws. "Just what is she going to do on our world, anyway? There's no place for her here!"
"So instead of just living as best as she could, she should live out the rest of her life as a test subject to please you?"
"W—what does that matter!" Forgetting himself, IЪel lunged at Thyathyrec's throat and pinned him against the cavern wall. Yrakc started to fight back, but Thyathyrec quickly raised his hand to stop her, not once changing his expression.
"Thya—" Yrakc whispered, cringing.
Undeterred, IЪel clenched harder. "All these years, you've been first in Ahfiamiďiec-xu's eyes. Why? Just because you share his ability for recall. He's even told me as much what times I've tried to curry his favour, but nothing I say or do will convince him that I'm the better choice as his successor!"
"IЪel." Thyathyrec remained cool through the entire monologue. Of course he knew how IЪel felt, as well as Ahfiamiďiec's misplaced favouritism in the island's politics. "Do you think I would be doing this if I gave a bleeding shite about leading the colony?"
At last IЪel seemed to drop his defences, relaxing his hold on Thyathyrec somewhat. "You – don't care about—"
"There was never a good time to tell you," he explained, "since you never once seemed interested in hearing my point of view. I know you don't agree with Ahfiamiďiec's governing. Neither do I, but you were so absorbed in trying to usurp my position as his favourite that it never occured to you that I would give it to you freely."
"Why?" IЪel spat, still suspicious. "There's no better position in our society than còlithyizin. Even a woman like Piaròmine would leap at the chance to—"
"Not everyone is the same as you, IЪel." Thyathyrec made the slightest of frowns, but otherwise remained levelheaded. "Some of us – just want to die with some dignity."
"And who exactly is dying?"
He shook his head. "All the things you went behind my back for and withheld from me, and you didn't know about my infection? I have the blood disease from Dhyròc. I've probably picked up the illness that will kill me, just from running off with Yrakc and drinking lake water."
All of the anger in IЪel's eyes vanished like candy floss dunked in water. "Why did you never say anything? All this time, we didn't ever have to compete—"
"The thing is, I didn't want to destroy that fighting spirit in you, that drive to come in first. Would you still have fought me for my title as Lead Scientist, or fight so hard for your place in line as còlithyizin, if you knew you would get it anyway? I knew you would try harder if you didn't, so I allowed you to believe whatever you wanted about me as motivation to best me, as it were.
"My feelings about Yrakc are genuine, though. I care more about her than I care about my own life. I wanted both of us to experience freedom from the entrapment of the colony, just once before I died."
IЪel gestured the gun vaguely at Yrakc. "And what of her?"
He remained vague in his wording. "While she's still alive, she would like to remain free."
"The others won't like that."
"We've both done nothing to hurt the colony. In fact, both of us have contributed as much as we possibly could prior to escaping. You can verify my research in the records."
IЪel grumbled. "You've made me out to be a right bastard, huh. Thanks so much for that."
Thyathyrec smiled warmly. "You're welcome."
"I hope you find happiness in your final moments."
"You can come back here for my remains in a week. If you want them, for in case my parents manage to get back."
IЪel rolled his eyes, struggling to hide his emotions. "I think I'd rather maintain the fantasy that you will never die. I'll send your boyfriend in my place, since the closure will mean more to him."
"Thank you." Thyathyrec meant it from the bottom of his heart.
With a final glance back, IЪel gave them both a grim smirk before returning to the entrance, shaking his head. "Nothing here," he reported into the two-way radio. "Just an empty cave covered with strange markings. Recommend we cancel the mission and focus on defence for now, as the alien has not demonstrated any aggressive tendencies, but the vigilantes are still at large."
As his rival vanished into the distance, Thyathyrec leaned against the cave wall, slowly sliding down it and resting on the ground. Yrakc took a seat beside him, taking his hand. "How are you feeling?"
"Good," he said, meaning it for the first time in four years.
