'Obsidian, even someone of my background knows it's a piece of glass. I thought a specialist like you would have a more advanced or rare collection.' Aion looked at the obsidian, flipping it back and forth in his hands. There was nothing special about it apart from the fact that it itself was a rare find.

'Geological activities on Luna have nearly halted eons ago. It took me great effort to find even a sample like this! Pray do not take it lightly.'

Aion had a feeling that the gesture was not dissimilar to that of a kid sharing their favourite toy with another, maybe out of pure kindness or innate altruism. He could not make sense of why Nars did it, or why they did pretty much anything. It however aligned with his impression of this person -- an overgrown child who somehow had some professional background that they were appointed an important role. Why would anyone trust Nars with such a task? No one should ask a child to take on crucial responsibilities like this.

'Although the star has only a lifespan of a few tens of thousands of years, Luna has already cooled down. Back in my days there were colleagues studying its origin...I don't know if they had ever found an answer.'

'Is it about Luna being a wandering planet? It must have been ejected out of orbit and survived the death of the previous generation of stars. Then someday it was grabbed by our star -- an uncommon one with a gigantic mass similar to its ancestors.' Nars paused a little for no apparent reason, 'I wonder if Luna would look at its adventure and think it feels like a dream!'

'What do you mean?'

'To Luna it is a replay of the astronomically distant past as if not a single day has elapsed. But the same amount of time has cooled its very core down to a fraction of how hot it once was. If, if it has memories, would Luna think all its days wandering among the starless void much like a dream? Would it dream about its previous sun?'

'Then I would highly suggest Luna just stay a piece of cold solid rock as it is now.' Aion replied immediately as if he had been holding the sentence back for quite a while.

Isn't it just like me? Aion thought, unsure if he actually wanted to hear this sentence from anybody else. But Nars' expected lack of reaction was just giving him a sense of assured disappointment, as if the hope of being disappointed fell through. He could not be sure. There was nothing he could not guess from his tour guide in the future world. Nars was almost crystal clear and unmoving like a piece of brainless sponge to a point that there was a lack of sincerity. It almost annoyed Aion that in comparison he was trying to pour his sentiments all on them.

'By the way, don't you want to go up the surface again? It must have been a long time since you were last there. To see where you once have made the greatest contribution to our civilisation...' Nars cleared their voice 'I have the lone-working permission up on the surface! I can accompany you if you wish for a minimal crew.' They blinked toward Aion as a kid would. Here it is again, the annoying undeniable attitude sugar-coated in their smile. If punching on that face would make them stop acting that way Aion would have done it long ago.

'No, thanks. I have had enough of that place. There is nothing to see about ruins anyway.'

Aion did not like Nars' attempt at reviving his memory via such an unwanted and unwelcome gift, to begin with. But he found protesting against Nars' personal actions rewardless -- it almost felt like punching a bunch of sponges. If only they had been a real piece of sponge! Nothing changed the annoying innocent smile on Nars' face as if they never felt they had done anything wrong. There was no merit in objecting to Nars' suggestion either, they were probably just here for their duty of keeping Aion accompanied anyway, Aion knew Nars did not take responsibility spontaneously. But what else could Aion do? He needed to make use of every possible opportunity for gathering information about this world, perhaps there would come a chance when he could actually escape from his unwanted fate of being and rest in peace once and for all. And in the meanwhile, he could have something to do to pass his time.

But he did not want to simply give in either.

Aion realised he had been staring before long. His piercing gaze of rage could as well be viewed as a sign of interest in the eyes of Nars, who would know? He looked elsewhere swiftly and prayed Nars did not capture the awkwardness.

'Then! You are happy to come with me? Maybe a visit to the old Sophia, you must have missed the sight there.' Nars did not wait for Aion's response. They were never the kind of person who would take no for an answer as it seemed. 'Come on, we shall see the sights together,' Nars continued.

'I am not going.'

'Why? We haven't even set off yet.'

'I've already said I'm not going. I don't care if you're inviting me or not, so stop repeating yourself.'

'If you feel like this, then we shall go with no other person but you. How about that?' Nars replied.

The invitation came as no surprise to Aion, though Nars probably knew all along that Aion would refuse their offer. Aion did not want to go anywhere with them. How long had it been since Aion first met Nars? Was it worth tolerating Nars for another while?

'I will go with you under one condition.'

'What is it?' Nars asked.

'Whatever I will say there, whatever I will act there, they will all be kept between us. Do not speak of them to anyone else even if they do ask.'

'That's fine if that's what you want to tell me. No problem at all! You have my promise. I will never make fun of you, should you prefer a lonely trip to the surface.'

'Sure,' Aion answered.

'Then, it's settled!' Nars concluded the conversation, smiling cheerfully.

Aion would go on this trip with Nars since it was the only way to avoid Nars' insistence. Of course, Aion did not know how dangerous it might be to go to the surface at this point in time.

Nars seemed to not worry about it. They were confident about their own creation -- Aion's body, or its material to be exact. At first Aion did not like his appearance, it was too old for his taste for some reason. After they realised how stubborn Aion was, Nars entertained his request without any objection. They spent several weeks experimenting with it and turned it into a glass mannequin, one that truly displayed his youthful beauty faithfully. The Archimedeans could barely hide their curiosity for Aion's rejection of his own appearance, but they withheld that in the end out of respect. The experience of getting used to his new appearance did not go smoothly. He got used to the sight of himself in the reflection of a mirror, but when he met people face-to-face, they seemed surprised by his appearance. They must have known that other face of his, Aion thought. He was recorded to be some kind of a middle-aged fatherly figure, not at all close to his younger self, at least that was what he thought. But judging by his lack of interest in fine tunning his appearances an acquaintance from his past would probably struggle to tell the difference.

As far as Aion was concerned, going to the surface was like living through a war -- a simple errand where one had no choice but to stay on the same battlefield. Of course he would not find a way to escape.

'The stellar activities have calmed down over the years.' There went Nars' voice again. It felt like almost they knew mind reading sometimes, but given how ignorant they were to others' emotional states that was certainly a wasted talent.

I can't be the only one thinking that way, have they not annoyed anyone else before? Aion whispered to himself in his head.

'It is certainly not a terrible task as much as it sounds as it was during your time. Plus you have a state-of-the-art vessel! Resilient to extreme environmental conditions as if they are a piece of cake! Expect nothing more than a walk in the park!' Nars continued cheerfully. They truly enjoyed being stupid.

'But as a matter of creating a sense of inclusion for you, you will still have to wear the same outdoor gear as I will.' Said Nars again. They magically obtained a set of outfits on their hand out of nowhere, weird future technology. 'It sustains life. Such that, you will still feel like you are organic.'

I don't need this kind of inclusion, Aion thought. There were always some new details every day signaling him that he was no longer alive in flesh and bones, but a mere malformed monster brought back from his slumber by some shiny magical technologies. A simple gesture like that was not enough to dissipate this sense of dissonance, it never was. But he did not bother to talk back nonetheless, it was simply a waste of time.

After a brief preparation, they set off to the surface through direct teleportation, much to Aion's relief. Nars called it their new transportation system, a means of fast and secure transport for moving large amounts of things instantly across Luna at nearly the speed of light. Aion had already had a taste of it, Styx, he remembered its name. It could easily transport pretty much anyone and anything to its destination in no time. His so-called tour guide once introduced its mechanism, so simple that someone of his background could vaguely recollect it from his time as a student. It was quantum entanglement -- subjects were destroyed at one end of the transportation terminal and reassembled at the other. Technically speaking nothing was ever the same after teleportation, Aion thought, pretty much like how he one day awoke to find himself no longer contained in flesh but a glass vessel. The people here seemed not to care about that fact at all, but Aion found it a little uneasy to swallow.

'You must be thinking: is this really necessary? Your thinking process makes a certain noise, especially when you disagree.' Nars said.

Aion would rather think about the day ahead, but he could not deny what Nars said. 'What are you talking about?' He found it tiring to even talk back. It might be easier to treat Nars as an artificial intelligence than a person and ignore them accordingly.

'Where are we at?' Aion suddenly realised he never bothered to confirm where Nars was taking them after a while. It was an unwanted trip after all, he did not quite care where he would be dragged to. 'Are we going to somewhere nearby?'

The environment he had ignored for the past few seconds had quickly come to grab his attention. How long had he not seen this view? Aion tried to remember, it was three years ago that he led the migration, or maybe two, and he never returned to the surface ever since. No, wait, it was ten thousand years on top of that. He had been dead for that long. He had been dead. What a sweet word.

The star no longer looked the same as how he remembered it. The once glaring blue jewel had now turned into a gigantic red disc threatening to devour the entire sky and its twin. Aion had seen an earlier version of the view from their detectors but never in person. The stellar wind must have swept across the entire Luna surface over and over that even the most magnificent of their architecture could not stand a chance to survive. That was why they must leave. Once over ten thousand years ago he made that decision and never looked back.

It felt almost sarcastic that he could not bare the thought to visit the old Academy because of what once happened there -- to look at those materialised memories of his, but now he can shed his flesh to travel across vast distances as if he did not care at all. If he was no longer trapped in the exact vessel which once held those memories solid, would he have gained the right to visit Sophia one more time after such a long, long time?

'It's lovely isn't it?' Nars broke the silence. They did not know. Aion did not either. They must have mistaken Aion's action (or lack of one) as he was appreciating the view. It was better this way.

'Do you think,' Aion ignored Nars' question 'if we had built the Aegis earlier and conserved most of the Luna atmosphere, we could have heard the scream of the star when it imploded?' Aion did not know why he asked or why he bothered. He could be lying next to Nars, who would be no less interested to hear these questions than anyone else.

Nars rarely made sense, though. 'Why would you want to hear that?' They replied.

'I don't know, I was curious.' Aion found it a little embarrassing to tell the truth, especially to someone so clearly not as intelligent as him, if he had to phrase it some way.

'That would be a pointless effort.' Nars led the way and started to walk forward slowly, signaling him to follow. 'You have done what you could. For that we must thank you.'

The future Lunaar seemed to perceive things in an inorganic way however they loved and tried to conserve their organic nature, Aion thought, and in front of him was one of the finest examples of such a mindset. They did not spare the least amount of interest on something that was not their concern.

They proceeded along the road and turn into a wide gate (or at least something that vaguely resembled one) that led into the outskirts of the city of Sophia. There were some remnants of glass walls and marble pillars standing around, some shattered, some melted and warped but still there. Their choice of aesthetics had not changed over the unimaginable amount of time Aion had lain unconscious. It had always been the same white and gold and hints of blue -- the color of blood. Aion knew such a color as a resemblance of warmth, the same as how the star used to shine. But now the star had turned to something red, so red to a point that with the thinnest of atmosphere left it still dyed almost the entire sky and landscape red. And being exposed to its radiation just made him feel warm. To Aion, red was the opposite of life, of heat, it was a confusing sensation. They walked through it slowly, wondering where the city lay exactly and how their destination was found within all this confusion. It took forever for the white walls to be noticed at all, once they could finally see a clear glimpse of the place they were heading.

'Doesn't surprise you, does it?' Maybe Nars grew to be uncomfortable with the silent march so they spoke, with the unchanging cheerful voice. It had a singing tone in it, sometimes it hid the real intonation of their sentences. Aion did not quite understand why he agreed to come in the first place, that he knew where they would go to. Of course he actually knew why he came, but that did not make things any better. The answer was almost always painted on Nars' face.

'No.' Aion expected himself to feel something more violent seeing what Sophia had become now, but there was nothing. The white remains and ruins of the once greatest architecture were embraced in the eerie red light, lying still lifelessly. It almost felt like time had paused here to wait for an old friend to return. He remembered how Sophia looked when he last saw it before the migration -- a vibrant green forest underneath the arching white walls, beautiful obelisks towering high above, and an open meadow surrounding the entire city. It was meant to be a demonstration of the grandest engineering ability of the civilisation. The only other place that looked so majestic and imposing was the Academy itself, but that was too destroyed by the very star that breathed life into everything. All that was left of the city after the migration was the red glowing outline of the ground, the leftover of what once was.

'They really were pretty impressive at their age weren't they?'

They would not be coming back. 'They' being the people who built this. Aion could not bring himself to reply to Nars and ended up making no answer. He had insisted on not coming up to the surface again. Then and now. The only difference was that he would have just said 'no' rather than following through on it.

Aion took it as Nars still had no idea why he refused to come with them, but he did not bother clarifying it.

They walked forward in silence across the barren plains, littered with some few broken glass pieces and bits of marble pillars. There was no wind anymore, what little wind there once had been got swept away by the strong red glow. It was a suffocating sight almost, although Aion did not need to breathe. He wished this will end quickly, if not more quickly. He had been stuck with this slow walk for a while, a great wall of red sits behind him, hiding half of the horizon.

The heart of the city of Sophia lay in front of him, welcoming him back. Well, if not for Nars, Aion would never have returned here. Nars said he had had visited the city countless times but none of those memories were probably tangible. They were wrong in this case, unfortunately, Aion thought. He should have known before coming here, but he always thought it was his last time anyway. The city seemed small once he finally arrived, but it might be because of the lack of a clearly defined sky or because of how much taller the surrounding light pillars were now. Were they products of some kind of reflection of light? He could not remember. The moment he set foot on the ground he felt like he was already falling into the pit of hell. He recalled he even grimaced for a brief moment. His mood darkened with every step he took.

Not all things had changed. The building that used to house the Academy was still standing tall over everything else, as if to mock the forgotten dead who stood in the streets below it. From the outside it looked completely destroyed and nothing more than a burned wreckage but the interior was a different story. It must have survived most of the destruction from the star itself, as its walls were intact at least. The doors and windows were mostly gone, along with most of the furniture, but the furnishings seemed to have been scattered in different places, so there were a few pieces remaining. Aion walked through it slowly, remembering the days when he lived inside of it and teaching the young ones. The lights were brighter back then. Now only dust and stone filled the space.

It was the last thing that used to remind him of life.

There was some apparent merit in those particular choices of materials for this building. Aion recalled back in his days he heard from a teacher that the very Apostles who had founded the Academy had the vision that the building itself must serve as a monument for those who might come later, should the Lunaar civilisation be annihilated in history. That was why the buildings had been perpetually under some kind of refurbishment and reconstruction to reflect their highest engineering achievements. He never had much thought about it. It was only sensible for anyone to think that they would not witness the end of their own civilisation. And even if they did, were there no better things to worry about?

Those words and scenarios flooded his memory like a rising tide, only to soon disappear again, sweeping away what was left on shore. It was always the same feeling of watching one's own history, there was nothing new about it.

'What are we going to do about these?' Aion asked after looking at what Nars was carrying in their hands. He saw sharp shards of glass glittering under the sun's light. The shards had a blue tint, and some feeling of nostalgia bounced off them. Nars answered him without even turning around: 'We are going to melt them.'

'Can't we just destroy them?'

'We can. We are going to melt them.'

Fair enough. Aion wondered why they needed to melt the glass at all. Was it to get rid of the sharpness? There were hundreds of thousands of pieces out there, each of them could serve a purpose, or to be exact, Nars' purpose. Aion had the urge to simply break one, but he also could not help but thought that doing so would be a shameful waste. Maybe it was meant to be melted and discarded -- cast aside like everything else, if they were indeed left behind to be destroyed in any way possible, not caring for their value or function.

They climbed up the stairs until they reached the broken glass doors and proceeded further into the white hallway with sunlight pouring through the broken glass and slanting downwards from above. A supposedly serene scene if not for the eerie color of the sunlight. The corridor had no floor, but rather the remains of the streets underneath the Academy, which had since crumbled away. These were the ruins of the city. They walked forward, reaching the outside air, and continued towards the large door that once led to the courtyard. It was still there, weathered but intact. But there was something missing. The symbolic decorative obelisks once towering hundreds of metres above the ground had completely fallen into disrepair with a huge gap between where they had been once standing. Aion stared at this strange sight for a while before Nars finally noticed him.

'Here.' Nars motioned towards some piles of sand just across the remains of one such obelisk. The Academy grew to be one and the same with the city itself at some later point, and Sophia had become synonymous with the Academy, but it was still too small for Aion's taste. The city had been filled with architecture of their chosen style, even now that they had had mostly fallen into bits and pieces, Sophia probably still looked different from any other place. It was a strange sense of belonging to Aion, in life and in death. He suddenly did not feel like objecting to lingering around a little longer. They sat side by side, watching the red sky and its constant show of glittering stars.

Aion was about to say that he had never seen something like that. In all of his time he had never witnessed such a sight. The cold, red glow of the star screamed its death, casting its tenderest of light on an evanescent world that would soon be no more. It was the colour of absurdity and madness, mocking his fate while calmly taking him in its embrace. For a fleeting second Aion even felt a character in it -- it was his nemesis, his brother, his lover. And now the star was finally saying its goodbye to him.

How unforgiving.

'Am I really so important that I should be here, being spared a chance to watch the sky ten thousand years after my time has expired?' He whispered out loud. He was not sure who that was for.

'When these pieces of glass were cast back in your era, certain memory of what they used to be was frozen into them.' Nars circled a shard of glass between their fingers to make a toy lens, through it they looked at the sky, then at Aion. They seemingly purposefully reflected the blinding light from the star into Aion's eyes. Aion cringed and blinked and dodged, Nars looked positively satisfied with his reactions.

'Time and heat will eventually rip those memories off. But with the environmental conditions they have been left in, the amount of time that has elapsed is nothing but a fraction of what would be required for that to happen.'

'They still remember the same things as when you were here, I dare say!'

Nars finally took the lens off their eye, to Aion's relief. They gazed at it intensely, slowly wiping it clean as if they were caressing a small animal or a person. Were they even capable of doing that...?

'But I will melt them, so they will forget. It's way more poetic that way. A long journey is waiting ahead, it might as well be better to know something new for a change!' Nars quickly adopted back their cheerful singing tone. They sounded almost way too serious before. Aion detected a certain element of cruelty underneath, but he preferred to believe he was just being overly sensitive.

The glass shards, the obsidian, and his body, they all remembered how the star had shaped them. They embodied a small segment of the history of Luna together with the star, albeit infinitesimal.

'Like how an old lover would have left imprints on one!' Nars suddenly said without context. Aion looked up at them in slight shock only to catch their smiling gaze. Were they reading his mind? Where did they learn that from? What did a child like them understand about that -- he quickly remembered that Nars was in fact a few dozen of folds of his own age. But that piece of information did not get rid of the discordance. What do they understand!

'So I guess this is the last stop of our expedition! We can stay here as long as you wish, and if you don't object, we will return after it. My colleagues will start to worry about you if you are gone for too long!'

Then they shouldn't have let you do whatever you wanted to do to me in the first place! Aion did not voice it out in the end. He had outgrown the age of childish arguments. Nars lay down next to him and turned to the other side so as to not face him, leaving him alone in his thoughts again. There was no more wind on the surface. Everything had been perfectly still if not for their little disturbance. He had once imagined what a religious afterlife could possibly look like, and this was not dissimilar to his conclusion.

The city below seemed to get further away, and closer to the horizon the star seemed to shrink. There were no real clouds in sight. As the flood of red retreats, the silhouette of Sophia floated like a mirage above, almost mocking them for being so far away from home. If a piece of glass had been cast at this very exact moment, would it remember this sight too? At some time eons apart from now, would it miss its home?

Aion decided to take off his helmet. If Nars was truly justified in their confidence about the technology he would feel perfectly no difference with or without it. He made a little noise along the way, but it went smoothly. He sensed Nars turned around in the dark, maybe just to check the source of the noise, but they did not speak, so he ignored them. There was no air, but he had no need to breathe either. He felt Luna and he finally coexisted in a bizarre reconciliation, in a world long desolated, maybe some ten thousand years too late. They were both scathed, deformed, and full of scars, but that was alright. Tomorrow old memories would be no longer, and they would have their own new dawn awaiting.

---

Aion found Nars in their office the other day, the other night, to be exact. He was unsure what they were doing there at that kind of time. It was a rare occurrence anyway. Nars usually opened up their office for anyone interested to look around since they were almost never in it, so it had become Aion's arguably favourite place to escape from the others. It was the embodiment of chaos, a bit of everything was littered around it. It was simply visually too noisy but nevertheless serves as a good distraction from everything else for a day.

But that day was not the day.

Aion developed a strange feeling about Nars since the expedition, as if they were no longer the annoying kid, as if he had peeked through their shell, as if they were someone who can be communicated with equally. He was actually not sure which way he preferred them to be. Would he feel more comfortable if Nars had been an old wise person hiding behind the innocent decoy to manipulate his feelings about the future world? He cringed at his own thought.

'There you are!' Nars always seemed to speak only after he was done with an episode of thinking. He must have been thinking out loud again. 'Just managed to finish it, you are in right on time for another masterpiece of mine!' They passed a small item to him, wrapped a little too carelessly in a white silky fabric. It was heavy for its size. Before Aion could ask what they meant Nars made a swift excuse about what they were up to next and disappeared.

'...'

Aion unwrapped the package. It was a piece of golden jewellery, maybe meant to be used as a necklace or a brooch. Countless small faceted stones were set around three main stones arranged as an inverted triangle, and there was an even larger stone at the centre of the triangle. Around them were golden filigrees in an ancient style depicting an almost sacred geometrical pattern. Way too glistering for his taste, they must not have bothered to know his style, Aion whispered a small complaint in his head. But that was the only complaint as the jewellery was clearly crafted to suit the fashion of his time. It was crafted for him. He could not imagine how much time had gone into this piece that he would feel almost guilty to be thankless to Nars. He recognised one of the stones being obsidian, one being a piece of the blue glass from the old Sophia, but what about the third one and the centre? The third vertex shone an emerald light, like his own earrings, and the centerpiece was crystal clear -- so exquisitely cut yet so ordinary that he could not tell at all where it was from.

Aion ran his hand along the long filigree, every tiny detail on them seemed to be perfect and exquisite. He had seen many pieces of jewellery before, but none were so precious, no matter how good they look. He did not care about appearances after all, and he kept everything only because it held some sentimental value. This piece lying in his hand was radiating a feeling, a good sense of nostalgia, a hollowness, as if he was saying goodbye to it before casting it into the ocean.

'I see.'

The emerald stone must be the same type of glass as his vessel, and the centre stone must have been cast by Nars during the sunset at Sophia. Nars was so easy to guess, it was not worth spending too much effort dissecting their motives. They must have known what he was thinking via whatever magic they possessed anyway. If he had to find an answer from them, the answer might as well have been with him all along. After all, who would be there to object to him?

Yet he had questions still. How did they manage to do it? Why did they do it? But Aion shook off those thoughts. There would always be more things to worry about tomorrow, but today would be the day to accept a certain toy gifted by another child.