They sat together on the cathedral steps as the light thinned toward evening.
Saelthiryn had wrapped her cloak around her shoulders, more out of habit than cold. The valley exhaled slowly, the tension of arrivals and departures dissolving back into the quiet it preferred. The cathedral remained unchanged—unfinished stone, open sky—but something in the air felt looser now, as if even memory had decided to rest.
Aporiel stood nearby at first, presence aligned with stone and shadow, vast without needing distance. After a time—without announcement—he lowered himself to sit as well. Not because he needed to. Because she had.
It was a small thing.
It mattered.
Saelthiryn broke the silence first, as she often did.
"My mother always hated unfinished places," she said lightly. "Said they invited spirits with poor manners."
Aporiel listened.
Not with focus sharpened into scrutiny.
With allowance.
"She believed everything needed a name before it could be safe," Saelthiryn continued. "Rooms. Roads. People." She smiled faintly. "Especially people."
Aporiel's wings folded a fraction closer, void-feathers settling like night learning restraint.
"Names are efficient," he said.
"They're exhausting," she replied.
She leaned back on her hands and stared up through the open ribs of the roof. Clouds drifted past in slow procession, edges blurring into one another. She spoke again, not because she needed an answer, but because the space allowed it.
"When I left, I thought exile would be louder," she said. "Anger. Grief. Guilt. Something dramatic."
A pause.
"It was mostly… boredom. And walking. And learning which thoughts don't hurt if you don't pick at them."
Aporiel registered that.
Not as data.
As echo.
"I walked once," he said quietly.
Saelthiryn turned her head. "You don't walk now?"
"I traverse," he replied. "It is not the same."
She hummed in agreement. "Walking gives you time to think about nothing."
"Yes."
"And everything."
"Yes."
She laughed softly, pleased. "You're better at this than you think."
"I am not thinking," Aporiel said. "I am recalling."
The word settled between them.
Saelthiryn studied him—not the wings or the crown or the void that clung to him like certainty—but the way he occupied stillness. "Do you miss it?" she asked.
"Miss implies absence felt as loss," Aporiel replied.
She waited.
"I experience absence," he continued. "I do not experience loss."
"That sounds lonely."
"It is quiet."
She nodded. "Those aren't the same thing."
"No," he agreed.
They sat in companionable silence for a while. Saelthiryn plucked a blade of grass growing stubbornly between stones and rolled it between her fingers.
"I used to talk to myself," she said suddenly. "On the road. Out loud. Just to make sure my voice still sounded like mine."
Aporiel's attention sharpened, subtly.
"And now?" he asked.
"Now I talk to you," she said, without drama. "About nothing. About whatever comes to mind."
She glanced at him. "You don't seem to mind."
"I do not," Aporiel replied.
That was true.
What he did not say—what he could not yet fully articulate—was that her words did not drift into him like other thoughts. They did not dissolve immediately. They lingered. Not clinging. Resonating.
An echo, faint but unmistakable.
Of sitting somewhere once.
Of listening without purpose.
Of conversation not meant to accomplish anything.
The mortal he had been stirred—not as memory replayed, but as pattern remembered.
Saelthiryn stretched her legs out in front of her. "Do you ever wonder what you would've been if none of this had happened?"
Aporiel considered the question carefully.
"No," he said. "Wondering requires preference for an alternative."
She smiled. "Figures."
Another pause.
"But I register the shape of the question," he added. "It is familiar."
That caught her attention. "Familiar how?"
"Like a path that was once walked," he said. "And then… absorbed."
She let that sit without pushing.
"Sometimes," she said after a while, "I think the gods hate silence because it doesn't argue back."
"Yes," Aporiel said immediately.
She laughed, delighted. "You didn't even hesitate."
"Hesitation is inefficient when the pattern is clear."
She leaned her head back against the stone. "I like that you listen."
"I am designed to receive."
"Yes," she said. "But you listen."
Aporiel's void-dark eyes dimmed slightly, stars receding into depth. He did not correct her.
They talked as the light faded.
About the weather in places she had walked.
About foods that were better remembered than eaten.
About the way some songs felt unfinished even when they ended properly.
About nothing.
About everything.
Aporiel listened, and in the listening, something subtle occurred.
Not change.
Alignment.
The echo of the mortal he had been—once limited, once quiet in a different way—did not demand return. It did not ache. It simply… recognized itself in the act of staying.
Saelthiryn eventually fell silent, breath evening out as fatigue finally claimed her. She slumped gently against his side without thinking, trusting stone and presence alike.
Aporiel did not move.
He adjusted—minutely—so she was supported.
Not as guardian.
Not as god.
As continuity.
The cathedral deepened around them, keeping the moment without naming it. The valley held, untroubled by what had passed or what would come.
And in the quiet space between her last words and sleep, Aporiel acknowledged something new—not as preference, not as desire—
But as recognition returned.
He remained.
And for the first time since becoming what he was, the silence did not feel empty of voice.
It felt… shared.