Chapter 80 – Spark

"I still think it's weird." Letty tells me.

"And you're still doing it." I grin as she lengthens the bike so it fits the little girl staring at her work with big round eyes.

The other me. The main me? Nah, neither is less me in this case. I actually don't think there's a proper single word that encapsulates the concept. We're basically... we're one soul, one mind, but two people in two bodies. Does that even make sense? I think it does.

Kinda similar to how dissociative identity disorder works, but that one obviously doesn't entail having two bodies, so it's hard to properly compare. A closer comparison would probably be my mom. As far as I understand, she's one massive network of intricately connected minds, something a little more focused than a classic hivemind.

Still not exactly it though.

Once Letty is done, all three of us sit down, with the little me squished between us two so she doesn't fly off - Letty's words - and we head out.

Out being back onto the mesh of lanes in Acrology Elysium, steadily up and up until we're close to the top of the Middle Level, so about half a kilometer above ground, and near the edge of the dome. Once there, I drive us across a huge circular lane going around the whole acrology for a long while as the little me describes the sights around us, until we cross about a third of its circumference and arrive at the Park.

That's how it's called as the largest green area in the acrology, and the only one that actually has a meaningful surface area. At almost a kilometer squared, some random trivia I remember, it's certainly not large by any means, but it's the only actual park in the dome, which does make it a little special.

Why it's called the Park in the first place, not a park.

We're here for a slightly different reason though. Some greenery is nice, but if I just wanted to show Letty nature, we would have been on the other side of the planet where it's abundant.

My girlfriend seems to have a similar concern, but the little me swiftly disintegrates any of her worries and suspicions by enthusiastically dragging her off the bike, grabbing by hand, and rushing up from the underground parking lot as fast as her little legs allow.

I catch up to them with a laugh and grin when Letty turns to me with a cute glare. It soon melts down and she shakes her head, then extends her arm to me with a soft smile.

I happily take it, and moments later we're emerging from an underground passage into the park proper.

It looks distinctly artificial, similar to how it was on Tau Ceti f, but it's still much different. Small, lean trees thick with vivid green leaves arranged in smoothly curving lines block out most of the sunlight above our heads. There are only some gaps five or so meters above the ground in the thickest parts of the walkways lined with artificial wood shaped into benches and railings.

"There's a lot of people here." Letty mutters as we pause for a moment to take the sight in.

"Mmm, quite." I nod. It's not bad though, as there's about six thousand people in the park. I see three more pairs in our vicinity, which is about average with its surface area. It's not like there can be much more though, not with just three million people living in the acrology. They need to work and all, and today's Monday within traditional working hours.

Plus, it's not exactly a popular place. Among middle class, yes, but not so much among the wealthy who have private gardens - as small as they generally are - and neither among the lower class, who mostly don't have time or just don't want to come here.

"You've got a route, or do we just wander around?" Letty asks, and the little me points in the exact opposite direction to my destination. My girlfriend doesn't know that though, so we set out energetically without complaints, both with smiles on our faces.

The little me runs around and looks at everything curiously, pointing out things to us one after another. A pecuiliar branch that winds around itself. A pair of trees leaning towards each other. Another that's almost glued to a building at the edge of the park. A piece of decorative bark laid under the trees, one that looks like a human outline. Sun shining through the leaves and creating a wavering shadow on the ground.

We follow her, amusement clear on our faces, as we make a round to one end of the park and along the edge to the other, then head back inside.

Then, we arrive at a long walkway without trees - a single exception in the whole park, leaving a massive drop on both sides of the path. The only thing preventing from falling is a fairly tall metal net on both sides, adorned with a dizzying number of padlocks.

They are varied; some are tiny, some the size of my hands, some plain, some intricate as if carved from gold and gems, some distinctly new and some so old there's more rust in them than intact metal. They stretch all the way from one end of the path to the other over fifty meters away, on both sides of it.

A conservative estimate would be hundreds of thousands of padlocks, and that number might even be approaching a million now, after almost five hundred years of the tradition.

"Helia... are those what I think they are?" Letty asks me with a squint, and with a corner of her lips twitching upwards.

"Probably." I squeeze her hand a little with a soft smile, and even the little me calms down, recognizing it's a moment that shouldn't be interrupted.

I guide my girlfriend slowly along the bridge, and I notice as her eyes flow over all the locks, widening a little in the process. They are not some random padlocks put there as a gimmick by an overeager architect.

They are so much more than that; they are stories preserved in time, representations of the past and future, each one special for a single pair of people. Like marriage rings, they are symbols of relationships; and granted, their meaning is nowhere near that grand, but still special.

"This is a really old tradition." I start quietly, and Letty turns to me with somehow both excited and serene expression, as if she long knew what I wanted to say and yet still waited expectantly. "It started about five hundred years ago, with a pair that decided to put one padlock here for their marriage. It's changed a lot since then. Many young couples come here and place a padlock once they start living together. We didn't exactly have the chance, but we don't need to stick to tradition that much."

I smile lightly at my girlfriend, who tilted her head ever so slightly at me, as I stop in place around the center of the bridge. "A padlock serves to lock or restrain. But, closed around just a single wire," I touch the net lightly, pointing at one large, metallic padlock where it's particularly visible. "It has nothing to hold. It's just there, like a relationship around two people close enough with each other they might as well be a single thread."

"...It's beautiful." Letty mutters, leaning into me, and glances up with that sort of uncertainty and hesitance one has when they expect a person to do something and want them to do something, but don't exactly want to bring it up.

I raise my hand at that and pull at my Flame, taking a spark of it into my metaphysical hands. Bringing it into the physical world, I shape it into a small simple padlock made entirely out of fire that does not burn.

With a smile that I don't know the meaning of, if it's happiness, acceptance, ecstasy, contentment, or everything at once, I present it to my girlfriend as I relax into her shoulder.

"Do you want to engrave it?" I ask quietly, and she glances at me with an unreadable, yet so soft expression. She nods slowly, and reaches out for the lock with her hands as strings of Nihility extend from her fingers. It doesn't take her more than ten seconds to finish, and when she's done, intricate letters H and V are intertwined with each other on one side of the padlock.

Pitch black on the flaming background, they are as striking as the contrast between us, and as close as our souls.

Together, we take the padlock, and look at it for a long while in silence. No words are needed in this timeless moment as we lean forward and extend our hands together, then softly click the padlock onto the net.

Our hands linger for a moment longer, but we pull away soon, together with our fingers interlocked, only for Letty to lean to me and touch our lips lightly, briefly. When I glance at her, I see a soft smile and tiny drops in the corners her eyes, before she leans to me and wraps her arms around my waist, burying her face in the crane of my neck with almost a shudder.

She exhales shakily and giggles as I mirror her gesture, and we stay like this for good few minutes, in the relative silence of the park. The little me does not disturb it. In fact, she touches me lightly and dissolves into motes or starlight that swirl and flow into me.

The people around us see nothing, but Letty does and leans back ever so slightly as she looks up at me questioningly.

"It feels a little weird." She mutters. "I know it's still you and you're still here, but feels like a part disappeared."

"Mmm. Well, I think it would be weirder if you didn't feel this way." I reply with a tiny shrug, light enough it doesn't jostle her but strong enough to be noticeable. "I have it different because I can feel it intimately, but you don't see my mind, do you?"

"No... sometimes I wish I could though." She narrows her eyes.

"Hm?"

She pokes my chest at that. "Don't think I haven't noticed how silent you were."

I stay silent at that with a little pang in my chest. "...Well." I mutter. "Sometimes words aren't good."

This time it's her turn to raise her eyebrows, and she tilts her head. "Then, actions?"

I nuzzle into her neck, suddenly feeling tightness in my chest. "Maybe. It doesn't clear my doubts though." I pause, and I distinctly see the shift in Letty's posture as she leans her head slightly on mine.

"What's bothering you?"

I consider the question carefully. "...If it was up to me, I'd just be... lazing around. Doing nothing, thinking. I don't know what I can do for you, and you are... giving so much to me." I squeeze out.

"Well I want to give you everything." She says decisively. "So you won't be sitting and moping around, but you'll be taking it whether you want it or not. I'd be happy if you do, but I don't mind if takes you more time."

I, I don't know. I choke down a quiet sob as Letty hugs me, and I stay like that for a long while, quietly comforted by my girlfriend. It's just... unfair, in a way. All that I have now are things I received from others. My body from Shiva, and all the rest from Letty, while all I did for either was existing and being a cute little pain in the ass.

My relationship with her... What did I do to get it? Logically, I know. There was a whole lot of things that led to the current state of things, immortalized in the padlock we put onto the bridge. Emotionally? I feel... I don't know. But I know I didn't give her much, didn't offer her much, at least from the tangible things.

And that's... somehow bad for the mind of a human, advanced enough to know selflessness, selfishness, what it means to owe someone and what it means to give without expecting anything back, and yet so small and so stupid to still be conflicted because of that.

I take a deep once I calm down a little, and I push my mind for a moment.

I feel the torrent of emotions rolling through me, I separate them like threads of a fabric my mind and my thoughts are laid over; the love, the happiness, the guilt, the unworthiness, and more; all split into finer and finer strands that no human language has names nor definitions for, the causes and effects, the backgrounds and facets of what my mind is made of.

I know it rising higher and higher, unfolding like an unending fractal as more and little things are revealed, more and more insight and understanding pulled out from the recess of my mind that has always existed and is only now awoken for the first time, and I see what I am, I understand it; it's a wordless knowledge that cannot be conveyed with words, but can be felt, like a term you have heard so many times you know what it means having never received an explanation of it, a picture that makes sense only when you view it through time, not through the moment.

It's beautiful; from the moment I first saw Letty, through everything that brought us together - the pain and anguish that felt justified and was such a foolish notion that did not matter in the grander picture, the large decisions that did not even need to be weighed from my point of view, the little trifles and frivolities that were everything I ever wanted - to the end and the new beginning, that one little thing that seemed so important at the time and was, in actuality, no more than a passing moment that only sped up the inevitable.

Looking at all those, I start picking them out from the ribbon of my life; first I push aside those that are not related to the issue the little me seems to be having, then rid of those that only have any logical basis in the misunderstandings and trivialities that should not have been clung onto. That leaves me with a set that I start looking through one by one.

They are so... simple. This one is an old, pointless hang-up, this is a wish that has long come true, this is a belief that was never true. There's a thought that developed more than it should have and rooted a doubt, a little situation that was thought forgotten but kept its influence, an idea that refused to stay an idea, a worry that stems from thought, not fact.

When all those are cleared, when the rest, the true feelings and emotions, are bundled together, what they create... it is beautiful; not in the same way that it was at first. What was a human life, a short time that holds no meaning, was cleared of all that is of no meaning to me and, more importantly, to the person it relates to; it is is a spark of joy stretched to eternity, an endless feeling experienced each passing moment, stripped of all that makes it percieved and left only with what makes it true - it is not what the little me thinks it means to love, it is not named and can not be perceived outside, for what it is - is me.

And yet, said so, what can the little me believe to comprehend of this grand yet simple idea, with her curious mind that finds it troublesome to identify the problem itself? Very little. How can I make her understand then? I don't need to ponder, I have an answer to that; She needs a sentiment, an idea that allows a glimpse of the real scale of the feeling, of the truth.

So I shape it - I take the bundle of emotions, separate them all again, and weave them back with the rest, but I arrange them in such a way they become connected and form a net that would not crumble even under the strongest blow; I build them, strengthen them, all to create a foundation that would stand firm for a long time... long enough for her to understand how to rebuild it herself.

When I'm done, I smile lightly, happy with the work and already anticipating the results. Turning my attention to the outside, I meet the eyes observing me, radiating amusement and care as they do. They are terrifying, incomprehensible, warped and twisted in a way that refuses to let me peer into their complexity and yet otherworldly beautiful. I have nothing to fear, however, for they belong to my mother. How caring she is, in the way that no human could possibly comprehend - at most believe they could understand, but never truly.

With a wave of my hand - metaphysical - I focus on my being and I pull it back, fold it as all the understanding I have acquired slips into the folds of my mind that I can not even perceive anymore, disappears not unlike a dream that was once seen and forgotten along with the information one has heard; and all that remains as I open my eyes to the sight of the setting sun is that feeling, that sentiment, that truth.

Looking at Letty, at my girlfriend... I break down crying, smiling all the while as she looks at me in surprise and rushes to hold me tight, and my tears don't stop at all when I bury my face in her shoulder. Because why would they stop?

Her soft touch, her gentle concern, her warmth under my fingers, her soul connected to mine.

A spark of joy stretched to eternity, an endless feeling experienced each passing moment.

What else could I ever want?