Violacase is a rapidly approaching ball of blurry purple orbiting a much larger greenish ringed planet outside the main viewing deck. I'm back in my proper place as property next to Mistress as She pilots us the rest of the way there. It's a silent ride, surely a bit tense with what the arrival means to our journey. 

 

We'll first land and get everything readied up, then we'll do a preliminary walk around the planet's surface to explore for a little while and find a proper burial place, then we'll bring her here and let her be. Mistress says she has something special to give her before we bury her completely.

 

I'm not entirely sure what it is yet but I suppose I'll see when we get there. For now it's just a waiting game.

…

…

…

The atmosphere parts with a quiet whoosh as we breach the upper layers and make our way down to the surface. My eyes are glued to the windows as I watch the dark crust of the planet come into finer view. Strange plantlife and black marble mountains fill my non-existent heart with a fuzzy feeling. Do I feel morose, or giddy? Goddess only knows, I suppose. 

 

I hit the button to extend the landing gears before we're above a suitable location, scanning the area for an open place to land. But before I pull my hand away, a soft, warm vine dotted with tiny black flowers wraps won't around it.

 

My eyes land on Mistress'. "Are you ready?" She asks me.

 

I try to give her a smile, but I know it comes off as pained. "Oh, I was built for this." 

 

She looks away from me for a moment with her coalescent red eyes before looking back. "Yeah, in some ways I suppose you were." 

 

…

 

"See anywhere good?" I ask her when I look back towards the large open viewport. 

 

She shakes Her head. "I was thinking of letting you find a spot."

 

"Mmnh.." I draw my hazy eyes over the landscape. "There's a vista towards the north there. A flatter patch after that group of… trees?" 

 

"I believe the pamphlet said they're mushrooms. In fact, I think most of the vegetation on the planet's crust is some different variation of fungus." My Goddess tells me, guiding the ship towards the location I pointed out.

 

"How strange. I don't really remember how they looked in… well…you know."

 

"Probably because you weren't really there. But hey, we're here now. Want to explore?" Mistress asks before taking my much smaller hand in Her rigid, strong, powerful but soothing, warm, and somehow still soft hand. The cracks between the wood that makes up the structure of Her hand slowly widen, melting the inner plant life across mine. She pulls my hand over to the main upward thrust and gently pulls us down.

 

There's a nearly imperceptible rumble as the ship touches down. Only being noticed because of my precisely attuned systems of weight and direction. 

 

My unneeded breath catches in my unneeded lungs and I'm up and walking the moment Mistress lets me go. 

 

I pass by the doors to the outside and enter our mini cabin room, wandering to the garden behind it and retrieving Ortet's coffin box. I can't set foot on the planet first without her. It would feel wrong. The plants graciously hand her over to me. I whisper a thanks while steadying the box across my back and wings. 

 

It's much easier the second time. 

 

I'm greeted by my… our goddess watching us as we enter the main boarding room across from the dining hall. She doesn't say anything, clearly understanding my need to have Ortet here with me. 

 

The doors slide cleanly open, parting the flesh of the larger plant that makes up this ship smoothly. Purple tinted light floods into the room and I'm barely containing myself. Dreaded excitement burns away at my metal bones. Mortality meets morose curiosity. 

 

I'm simultaneously as happy to be here as I am dreading even taking the first step. I can't even begin to rationalize how much this meant to me. To us. To Ortet while she was still alive. And how much this means to me now? Finally arriving here at the place we have been dreaming of since the first time we wanted to die? Sitting, rotting away in our own personal hell, locked away in a box inside our own mind, filled with nothing but the want to kill. This represented so much to us back then. A means to an end, something to look forward to, something to long. 

 

A darkness disguised as a light at the end of the tunnel. And oh Goddess how it feels to stand here now. What it means to finally reach this darkness in my soul of ones and zeros… to look out into the sky of the planet and see….

 

That no, it really was a light.

 

The black, marble like surface of the planet is smooth as my bare feet slap across it. My eyes are blown wide and the servos in my cheeks struggle to maintain the level of pull they're having to produce with the sheer intensity of the smile plastered across. 

 

The air is sweet but it burns slightly like powdered cinnamon dancing across my sensors. 

 

"Wow…" I say. "It's so beautiful here." Getting to see the 'trees' up close for the first time allows me to see that they really are just tall, multilayered mushroom-like things. A dark dark brown almost black bulbous sort of tree-like shape. There's a dusting of spores slowly snowing off from its small arms, outreaching from the trunk. Huh, that must be what the smell in the air is. 

 

"Yeah… it really is…" Mistress comments quietly, clearly taken aback by the beauty of the landscape around us. Large mountain ranges of black shiny rock. Smatterings of mushroom trees and forests everywhere. Patches of softer material which gives way to fields of the almost-wheat and… from so far away… they look almost like patches of mold.

 

I mean, I knew this was a funeral planet, but I didn't expect it to look so much like one being going through the stages of decomposition. But it doesn't look gross. It doesn't look like a rotting corpse or some horrible thing, no. 

 

It looks like a planet made solely to symbolize the quiet, peaceful decay of life into death. 

 

It's slow here, not violent or hazardous. The wind is gentle and soft. The temperature is nearly at room. And the light is dimmer than it should be at full day. It's almost sleepy in the way that it is dying. Like the planet itself is closing its eyes goodnight. How beautiful…how somber.

 

I take as many quick steps as I need to make it to the base of the mushroom trees lining the forest. Mistress is just behind me as we silently enter the sacred lands together. 

 

Even through a forest with as many twists and turns and debris as any back on my original planet (after the Affini arrived, of course) it's still easy to carry the weight on my back. In fact, it feels almost easier than it was originally, like the gravity is weaker on this planet.

 

Must have helped those elderly Terrans traverse this place back when it was still in operation. 

 

The treeline breaks into a patch of wheat that stops me in my tracks the moment my feet sink into the soft dirt below them. I nearly trip with how sudden it is. They just… sink… into what used to be smooth, even crystalline rock straight into the softest dirt I've ever felt. Like an even finer sand, with a lot more air in between each grain, allowing me to sink to my ankles when not moving.

 

It's damp and cold but it brings me to my knees. The weight of the box being lifted gently off my back by a pair of stronger hands, allowing me to crumble even further onto my hands, my eyes watering the wheat below me. Hope they like purified water, at least. 

 

It feels strange to be both so happy and so sad at the same time here. I'm so elated to finally feel the dirt, but so dampened by the fact that Ortet didn't get to feel it too. It's inviting and cozy.

 

It will be so nice for her, being buried in a place like this. So comfy, like a bed for the whole body. I hope she likes it.

 

I groan with my face still toward the ground beneath me. I can't be like this all day. I have work to do. I have important things to set up for. 

 

I pull my hand out of the dirt, wiping some of it onto my cheeks as I clear my eyes of tears. Mistress helps me stand up, swiping all the dirt and mud off with careful petal dusters. 

 

"Thank you, Mistress." I tell Her as I look up into Her shimmering eyes. She smiles upon me and traces a few thin vines through my soft white hair. It's so calming.

 

"Of course, darling. Is this the spot you'd like her buried?" She asks me, picking me up into Her arms and holding me at eye level. 

 

"I'm not sure yet. There's still so much to explore. I want to find the perfect place first."

 

"Ah, I understand. Would you allow me to carry her for the remainder of the time we're exploring? Not that you can't carry her yourself, but I think you could do with some weight off your shoulders." Mistress asks me, setting me down gently back into the dirt after a sweet kiss on my forehead that makes my heart flutter.

 

"Okay. If you really want to." I say, twirling my feet in the dirt some more. It feels nice.

 

"Thank you sweetheart. Now, if I remember correctly, up past this hill should be a group of abandoned buildings from the old Terran Accord. The residential care facilities from a few decades ago. Turns out the episodes you remember watching were a lot older than you knew. They were reruns. All this stuff is totally defunct now." Mistress informs me, picking up Ortet's coffin like an owner would hold their cat. Gently, cradling it. 

 

“Oh weird. I kinda just assumed they were new episodes while I was watching them. But then again, I suppose I thought everything I saw on TV was new. I didn’t watch it very much in between combat simulations, augment surgeries, and RL testing.” 

 

“Whats RL?” Mistress asks me, guiding me back through the trees in the direction of the buildings. Crossing over the boundary of the forest, toward the edge of the hill, it's nearly a sheer dropoff. More cliff than hill, but I suppose those definitions change when your height can range from 10-15 feet tall.

“Real life. Pitted against… Well, I'm not entirely sure. I never could access the memory of them, so it was lost entirely in the transfer process. But I'm sure any guess could fit the answer at this point.” Absentmindedly I go to kick a small, shiny black stone, but I miss, slightly grazing the top before stepping down and crushing it into dust with a nice ‘Kchhk’. And although it was good stimmies, it still made me frown and whisper ‘aw..’

But my rock troubles are soon assuaged by the view over the top of the ‘hill’. Sure enough, down toward the bottom in a partially shaded spot, was a group of buildings. They looked strange from this far up, with this big holes in odd places…

So I did the Robot Thing To Do and zoomed in. The picture cleared to show me that… It wasn’t holes at all actually, it was stalks of mushrooms and other fauna growing out from places. And in other parts, the building was partially sunken into the ground, as if being consumed by one big Thing. It was wild. Wheat gathered all the way around all of the buildings, causing an almost ‘House In A Corn Maze’ type look.

{Ooh! Maybe we should do crop circles, Sera!} My Goddess spoke directly into my consciousness. It caused me to do the air-from-nostrils snort when I figured out what she meant. May or may not have had to quickly interface with the Overnet (holy shit they get service out here?!?) and do a search on what that actually was. But once I got it, it made me laugh.

Plopping down on the edge and dangling my feet over, I kept my mouth shut and messaged Her back. [But wouldn’t you be the only ‘alien’ here since there were groups of humans living here previously? (´._.`) ]

Mistress coils around me, supporting Ortet’s coffin with a soft bed of Her flowers behind me. It's warm and makes the cold ground beneath me more tolerable.

{Well think about it, sweetheart. Were the humans native to this planet? Furthermore, are you even human? I don't remember any records of your kind living here. (,,-`_●-) }

[Oh yeah, and what's my kind? (*>ω<*) ]

{ My darling little angel~ ♥( ˆ⌣ ˆԅ) }

[ °₊·ˈ∗♡( ˃̶᷇ ‧̫ ˂̶᷆ )♡∗ˈ‧₊°] I blush over her text like a terran on their data pad, the blue of my cheeks contrasting strangely against the black and purple surroundings.

To recover I put my hands on my face and rub my cheeks until the blush goes away before raising my arms and wings in triumph and going [I’m a Teleporting Battle Angel Robo Assassin!!!!!]

{You’re my sweet little floret is what you are, love.} A vine trails up between my wings and into my hair. It makes me giggle for a moment before she adds a few others, holding my body upright completely against a comforting support.

A little while passes and the star illuminating this side of the world changes position towards the horizon, casting us in an alien sunset. I still wanna go down and search the buildings down there, and my calculations say we should have at least an hour or two before it gets genuinely dark out but… oh… how am I gonna get down there? This chassis doesn’t have thrusters or anything to lift me. Oh but I do have-

“Girl, that is a terrible idea.” Mistress says, cutting off my thought. “Think of the computations you would have to be doing in real time to make jumps like that. Do you know your limits well enough to believe you well and truly can?”

“Ab-so-Fucking-lutely.” Mistress laughs, trusting my judgment on my rash decision making. She knows the ins and outs of my body, my capabilities, and my mind to know that I'm dead serious. Plus, in that mind of Her’s, She’s running all the math Herself just to make sure it’s possible. The fact that She released me and even provided a perfectly angled platform to push off of, right over the edge shows that She thinks i can do it too.

I ready myself and SLAM my pistons as hard as I can forward, being provided with an extra push boost from the platform. I go flying. I mean it. My wings extended, my mind clear and ready, the air flows through my hair and feathers fucking beautifully and… Its one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Flying. Though, as you may be thinking, I’m a heavy robot with no thrusters. This is basically a glorified fall. But, I thought of that.

Painting an… honestly very complex 3D equation of a real life pinpoint and angle in the air around me, I warp. But, the angle at which I exit is different than the one in which I entered. And because of the speed at which my being displaces from one place to another, the (lower) gravity has no time to act on me and therefore slow me down. Instantly, I’m rocketing off at an upward arch. Forward and Fast. It may not technically be flying but it sure as hell is close enough for me. I can't contain my noise as my vocal speakers blare as loud as I can make them go, hollering and cheering, completely enjoying myself. Bouncing up and across in the air over and over like I was on an invisible bouncy balloon. So completely liberating, so completely free.

I leave swirls of purple at every exit and entry point, marking my path through the air with each and every thundersnap.

Coming here was absolutely worth it.

To descend my fall, I just make my angle of exit be straight up and warp again and again before the planets gravity lessens my speed. Sudden stops are what causes an ‘impact’ but since I am not actually stopping, merely connecting two points of space together and ending up on the other side, all of my momentum is carried, and I end up just falling… upwards.

One final thunderous boom and I know for sure I can stick the landing. There's a big crash into the dirt and wheat, causing a little explosion of particles everywhere. But I landed on my hands and knees like a fucking superhero or something. It was incredible! 

 

If I had a biological heart it would be thundering out of my fucking chest right now, but instead, I’m practically fucking radiating. The rhythm coming from the chunk of My Goddess’ Core, projecting itself outward in an influential signal and never ending song pours out of me like oil. It completely bathes everything in my surroundings 

 

I just sit there for a minute, my face lost in a crazy ass smile, gently shaking against the subtle breeze that carries me and the wheat around me. My artificial vacuum lungs, there only to provide me with the feeling of breathing work in overtime as I pant relentlessly. It feels good! It feels good!!!!!! 

 

There's a stampede from behind me, crushing thumps that soften as they approach. Im tumbled forward in a rolling grab into a big pile of soft flowers and vines and comfort and love. Im pulled straight up into the air, falling back into my Goddess’ arms before being twirled as I giggle incessantly. I'm finally positioned in front of Mistress' joyous face, eyes glowing brightly in beautiful shimmering colours. “You fucking did it! Look at you!”

My mouth goes open in my excitement. “I DID IT YEAH!! Hahaha!! Ahh!!” I feel my body squeezed all over in a comfortingly soft embrace of both vines and an orchestra of a signal that perfectly pulls my own back down into solid synchronicity. My jaw hangs open for a minute as I just relish this amazing moment.

Mistress slowly lets me back down onto the soft dirt surface, parting open to reveal Ortet’s coffin inside. Perfectly protected and perfectly safe.

“So, how did You get down here anyway? You can't grow wings can you?” I ask Her, staring like I have the biggest crush in the world (which I do, to be fair.) She beams down at me.

“No silly! I just climbed down!” She takes momentary control of my body to make me turn around towards the buildings. “Now let's get a move on, dolly, it will be dark soon.”

“You’re right! Lets go!’ I begin to march my way over with Mistress soon overtaking me, pulling me along with tugs of an invisible leash.

We make it to the buildings quickly after that. From the outside, they look like… Post apple optic houses being consumed into the planet's surface slowly. Being eaten up by the surrounding fauna. Structures of mushroom and other fungus grow beautifully around everything. Windows peek out, and parts of the original structure are visible, but its clear to me that this building will be totally gone in the next few hundred years. The circle of… Life?

Entering through a sealed door ( easy to break open :3 ) light streams in through holes in the roof and walls so it's not too dark. Not that I can't see in the dark or anything anyways. But the scenery, with machines and hallways and doorways flowing with plantlife all over them and all through them everywhere…. It was like a shrine to the planet's nature. It was beautiful, it was serene, it was somber. It was breathtaking. I knew right now, that one of these buildings is where I would choose for Sera The Angel to be buried. They’re just perfect. She would love this. 

 

My Goddess and I wander the halls through the parts that are still structurally sound until we find a large windowed open space, like a courtyard. It seems that the humans previously occupying these buildings and facilities of care brought some of their home planet's fauna here with them. Different species from various different planets growing all in the same place. 

 

Now I’m sure that this facility center was here to mostly pull upon the large wallets of elderly business people (yay capitalism /j) but… Wow, the garden in here was beautiful. It had grown so healthily, clearly feasting upon whatever nutrients left in the ground from the mushrooms all around. I knew in this moment, that this is where she would be buried.

…

…

…

After a trip here and back to the ship on the back of Mistress, riding Her like a… I dunno, really big cat or something. (She could climb up the steep edge of the hill! It was awesome!!) We got all the tools necessary to dig a big hole, collecting up pretty little pieces of fauna on the way back. It didn't take us far too long to dig a good enough resting spot. After a little while of worrying whether or not the coffin would be able to grow properly under all that dirt, I watched as Mistress retrieved something small from a pouch in Her bindings.

“What's that, Miss?” I ask as She drops it down into the freshly dug coffin bed.

“A seed, sweetheart.” She says back to me, pushing in some dirt to cover it up.

“Oh I didn't know they made Terran generals so small.” That got a giggle out of Her as we both squiggle out onto the lush forest earth, enjoying the atmosphere of the room for a little while.

Eventually we know we have to get up and do the inevitable. Actually placing Ortet into her proper spot. It's almost happy, like a celebration. A celebration of life and death, as I stand here and accept the fragility inherent to mortality. I appreciate the life that was given so I could be created. I still weep gently over it all, but here in my imitation of a soul, I feel so much release. She’s finally getting the peaceful rest we dreamed of for so long. I'm so happy for her. I hope to never forget the sacrifice she made so I could be in heaven. I will forever be grateful.

Seraphim Versalice First Floret Ortet is gently placed into the base of the coffin bed. The walls of soft dirt protecting her from all sides, and the seed beneath her to hopefully send her soul through its eventual roots and trunk, carrying her energy onward forever. 

I drop the little bits of fauna I collected on the way. Pretty little mushroom stalks, the best wheat I could find, and a variety of different offerings. 

The nurturing dirt is then slowly piled up atop the box, filling in the indent of the hole all the way up. It’s gently patted down by a thousand tiny flowering tools, flattening everything out perfectly.

It looks so good. Everything is perfect for her.

I can't wait to return later on and watch as the eventual tree grows up from around her and out to drink up the dwindling starlight in the sky each day. A pilgrimage completed as often as possible.

I could come back here and tell her of all the adventures I and our Goddess have been going on together. I could tell her my troubles and ask for advice when I need it. I could lay down offerings and create a shrine of her memory here over the years. 

“I'm guessing you like the spot huh, Floret?” Mistress says to me, washing gently over my whole being with Her beautiful voice. So soothing. So soft.

“It’s everything we could have ever asked for.” I take a deep breath in and out. “And I think I know where I want us to have our wedding.”