The moon is many things to different people, from a celestial object trapped in this planet’s orbit, to a Herrscher gazing down on the planet like a caring parental figure. Assuming you even notice it, of course so many people are oblivious to the moon’s existence, considering it merely a part of the background, only aware of it when its location or behaviour is out of the ordinary. Blood moon, blue moon, total or lunar eclipse. That sort of thing.

In a way, like her as a Self-Annihilator.

For Acheron, it was a strange source of guidance and direction, like a diver of her old pasts navigating their way across nihilistic, compacted matter by only the two droopy white dots for eyes overhead. Often, when a decision warrants deep thought or the Self-Annihilator is bereft of any direction, she would find the highest tower in any planet and stand on its flattened roof, gazing at the ethereal orb whilst her mind processed. Sometimes the lost-in-direction lady had asked out loud what she should do, entertaining the impossibility that whoever she believed would be on the moon would respond.

They never did — at least, not in the conventional sense. Sometimes Acheron had wondered, though, if the final voice in the chaos of her thoughts and memories, the one that brought clarity to the vaguest of things, was the person on the moon talking back to her.

On this occasion, however, as the Self-Annihilator stands with her weapon sheathed near her waist, on the roof of one of the buildings she had frequently visited a hundred miles south of Orkron, no amount of gazing helps.

“…The moon again. I always find myself looking at it. Even when I don’t mean to.” Acheron addresses the elephant on the rooftop. His name is Wilbur. “It’s strange. I don’t remember why it draws me. But it feels like…something was left behind there. A voice. A shadow. Maybe a promise.”

Then there was the tradition in itself. It was unsettling, knowing she once had a plausible explanation for her regular moon watching yet not being able to remember a damn thing about why, or who. So, being a woman with straws at which to clutch, she had entertained the hope that sticking to tradition would jar something into her worsening recollection. A face, a smile…a word...a voice. Anything.

Nothing.

Acheron tapped her fingers against her crafted weapon Naught, one by one, gazing at the vestiges of a silver glow emitting from the moon, each tap against her weapon a rhythm of pointlessness and acceptance. Black Swan was right about her horrible direction and memory retaining, though she railed against admitting it.

Whoever’s names began with the eleventh letter of the alphabet no longer existed, and their last remaining connection to the living world had severed that tie to be cleaved by her own hands or was engulfed into IX’s nihilistic centre. The Self-Annihilator wondered what they would have said if she asked — would they have given her their utmost support and happiness in her journey as a Self-Annihilator, or denounced her for her betrayal of her own memories about them?

What would you have said if I told you I don’t even know what I lost? If forgetting you wasn’t a choice, only a consequence I never understood?

How would you have looked at me — once — before the memory bled away? Did I turn my back on you and never realise it?

What would you have said if I had remembered you? If I hadn’t let the silence hollow your name? How would you have looked at me — when I walked down this path, without even knowing I left you?

Questions to which she had no answer, and never would. Perhaps that was the most bitter of pills to swallow.

“You remind me of someone. Hm, some people. Some people I think I once knew…before I came here, before I took a path down Nihility.” Acheron murmurs as she turns her head away from the moon to glance at you, the lump and the guilt in her throat strangling her. “But I can’t remember their name. Or their voice. Or what they meant to me. Only…that similar, fluffy feeling. How we were shoulder-to-shoulder. Like yours.”