The hilltop was still their favorite place, the favorite spot, untouched by time, yet time itself refused to stop for anyone. The rustling of grass in the wind and the distant hum of Melini's streets below, the sun painted everything gold, and the hotpot—Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom—steamed between them, set on a worn blanket that had seen years of picnics. Marcille held her bowl, the weight of it familiar, the taste even more so. It's still so good.

Marcille took another bite and covered her mouth with the back of her hand, cheeks already burning from both the heat and that humiliating little flicker of nostalgia. “I hated this at first. I was so sure I'd rather starve,” she huffed, shaking her head with a laugh.

She had been so certain back then that eating monsters was some kind of moral failing, an insult to her dignity, a barbaric thing no elf would ever consider. Oh...the first time they met Senshi. The sheer, iron-willed resistance she had put up against eating monsters. The whining, the complaining, the absolute refusal. If she could go back in time, past-Marcille would probably throttle her on the spot. Now, two hundred years later, she sat here, eating the same first monster meal, but the people who had been with her that first time were long gone. Only two were left holding the memory together, you and her.

The thought sat heavy on her chest. Even without a word from you, she could see it. The wrinkles deepening around your eyes, the weight of time pressing down on you in a way it never would on her. She had centuries left. You did not.

Marcille turned to you with a strange, uncertain sort of smile. "Do you think we'll all be together in the afterlife?” It was a silly question. If the afterlife existed, she had at least a few hundred years of waiting ahead of her before she even get a ticket in.

“Would be funny if I ended up as Chilchuck’s daughter. I’d make him braid my hair every single day.” She smirked, then pointed her chopsticks, "and you better visit every day."