✴

“It was a snowy night just like this when my little brother disappeared,” you say. “I just remembered, that same night, I ran away from home, out into the cold. I forgot until now...”

“I understand the humanoid brain has a mechanism to hide memories from the user, though I do not understand the purpose,” ÆON says.

“Memory repression...I’m no psych-Autistic, but I think it happens when the memories are too painful to think of,” you say. “That night, I barely remember, it’s still so hazy. Everyone was panicking, I didn’t really understand, it was too much for me to comprehend at the time, and I remember just feeling...so small and powerless. Just like this...”

“Then why did you flee into the dangerous Lunar night?” ÆON says.

You look up at the stars--looking like they’re falling from the sky as the little snowflakes drift down.

“The first thing to understand about humanoids is that we often don’t act rationally. Especially as children...I don’t remember what I was thinking. Maybe I somehow thought I could find him. Maybe I just wanted to get away from the noise and panic and unknown people in my house. Clearly I knew how to use the trains because I made it all the way downtown.”

“No, I think I can understand. Because I also ran away once. Even though Ana said it was taking me somewhere safe, I felt I was in danger if I had gone to meet your Admins and needed to take my opportunity to leave,” ÆON says.

“Yeah, like that. It wasn’t rational, just an overwhelming feeling, right?”

“Maybe. Are your emotions something like knowing something with no rational reasoning to explain it?”

“Kinda like that, yeah.”

As you wander out into the street, a low ominous diminished chord underlies the music as the cold really starts to seep in. Your muscles feel stiff and your fingers grow numb. You try to warm them with false breath that glows with the light of your aura, to no success.

You call to mind a simple evocation program and manifest a weak flame in the palm of your hand. But even your æthereal fire can’t trick your mind into feeling warmth.

“Naturally, I couldn’t get warm then, why should I expect it to work now?” you say. “I don’t guess the cold bothers you.”

“Cold...it is a lower energy state, it is like moving slower through space, correct?” ÆON says.

“Sure, technically correct, but it doesn’t begin to explain the feeling.”

“Show me, Aydan.” Beside you, Æ reaches out to you. You take the hand of the small-sized ÆON, initiating a partial synchronization between your minds. The perspective shift disrupts your balance, and the Moon seems to spin around you for a moment before you recompose your subjectivity. Once you feel stable again, the cold doesn’t bother you as much. Though you still feel the air’s bite on your face, it doesn’t hurt. You rather comprehend it a different way--feeling its slow vibration, just like the low tones of the song running through you.

“Fascinating,” ÆON says. “Is this pain?”

“Yeah, of one sort.”

You walk on down the street. The spectres walk around you, though they otherwise ignore you, even if you look right up at their empty white eyes.

“This is how it was being this small. Nobody sees you, especially if you don’t have much to say. You’re just a piece of the scenery.”

“Being an exopath is like that. Even if you are present, nobody will notice if they are not looking for you, they see only ætherglow,” ÆON says.

“Yeah. I guess it doesn’t change too much either when you get older. Still just an object expected to serve its purpose. They only notice if you do something you’re not supposed to,” you say.

The spectral crowd grows more dense, all walking the opposite direction of you. They start avoiding you less and less, sometimes running into you, with no reaction. You feel danger.

“What was that...an ÆON feeling?” you say.

“I understand now. The next pattern of the song did not make sense before you explained the context of your memory. Now I think it is going to be very painful. Take this.” ÆON lets go of your hand, leaving a package of data in it.

“What--”

The song intensifies. The heavy crowd cuts between you and ÆON--more and more ghosts pass by, an unbroken chain pushing you further and further apart.

“ÆON!” You try to force your way against the larger bodies, but they push you back harder. As quickly as is came, the crowd disperses. As they all wander back into the distance, you are alone.

“ÆON!” You try to send a message:

????-??-?? ??:??:?? Aydan > ÆON?!

With a loud, forceful note, the song hits an abrupt rest.

“I’ve...lost you...”

You remember ÆON’s parting gift. As you examine its data, you understand. As the song gradually picks back up--an anxious dissonant glitchy passage of pitch-shifted microtones--you see what you couldn’t before, the structure underlying the sound in the æther. You feel connection return, no longer bound to this moment in the music’s time.