Elias Secan Eternity

There is no getting rid of grief. No removing the weight, no removing the memories of the people you once knew. Loss does not mean forgetting. We don’t move on, we move with it. We learn how to carry our people with us. They aren’t ghosts, never ghosts, not as long as we keep them alive, we carry them. We honour them.

What else is there to do?

The Underground is heavy with the dead. In the tunnels there is no escaping the memories, the floor of the archives still feel tinged with the blood of a beaten Glamour; the choking, desperate shape of a poisoned Brianna still almost tangible in Terminus station. Those memories aren’t overwritten. Even when the Archives fill with new people, new voices, new concerns; even when Terminus floods with the light of the above.

The Underground is a place buried in the dead.

For a time, it’s overwhelming. Knowing: knowing the lost, knowing the pain. Elias sees it in the refuge, the children left orphaned amongst the books of the Archives, the grief they barely yet grasp is staggering. Yet, we learn to move with grief: to Elias, that means picking it up, choosing to carry its weight, rather than letting it greet him unexpected.

It starts with the Archives. An archive is a place to preserve history. It is a record, it is sedentary. The Archives are not a clerical, academic office any longer; it is overrun by blankets, mementos, people stacked on every surface. It is crowded by history, just as it was before, but the history is living now. It is memories, not records.

It’s stories.

The stories that Elias gathers the kids to read them each night, with the occasional guest appearance of Amandine (their favourite protagonist, the magical mushroom hero). The stories of the Underground, painstakingly collected by Luna, shared out, no memory neglected. The stories that are told so nothing, no one is forgotten, so we never return to how it was.

Elias remembers every story the children share. Every little fragment of their parents, their family, their friends: the way one used to visit Ludere with their mother, another sharing how their sister would braid their hair; Elias makes a note of them all. As the children age and their memories fade into the faint glow of youth, Elias returns their stories to them, he ensures they remember their mother lit by the LED sunlight shine of Ludere, that they remember the soft touch of skilled hands weaving through their hair.

We cannot get rid of grief, so Elias gives the grieving something beautiful to remember the lost by. It is not just pain, the empty ache of absence, but the nostalgic affection of a love once held.

Elias becomes The Storyteller. Of the Underground and, as time goes on, of Principality, bringing those same stories into the sun.

The Archives are not dead to Elias any longer. They are living stories. Living people. They aren’t archives any longer, nor are they a refugee camp (a refuge, perhaps, but for those who need to be cared for, not those without another choice). Elias renames The Archives.

The Poets’ Society fits much better.

A place for stories to be shared. Those in the dark and those in the light.

The Underground isn’t a place buried in the dead, it is a place of memories for us to cherish. We carry our people with us, we share, we live, we flourish, we grow. We do not grow past them, they are part of us, the history, the lost, but we do grow. We nurture new life. A gentle life.

- Written by Jasper H.

Some decades have passed since the Emergence; little of the Underground remains as it once was, and the last of its true inhabitants have begun to grow frail with age. One thing shall never be lost, though. One thing shall never fall to the clouding smoke of time. Memories may falter, records may corrupt, but stories-

In stories, one can live a life eternal.

The children still wake with nightmares, sobbing incomprehensible anxieties of a closing darkness, of a roaring, unstoppable train. Families still fracture, stricken with grief and loss. That decision, all those years ago now, that story of ‘Disaster’, of decay and of death, all that followed… that can never be undone.

But each crying babe, each trembling silhouette, every frightened figure, lost, astray, afraid… they know that they are not alone, now. Not truly. For in their moment of greatest terror, of deepest sadness, every child alike can recall the story of the Storyteller. The curious tale, passed from parent to child, from generation to generation, of the kindly stranger and his archives. The Poet, and the unending love he offered. The Archivist, and his place of safety. The generations of children he raised. The people he cared for, the people he knew so, so deeply. Those he held, and those who held him. Those he left behind.

The true nature of the place, of the person, has long since been lost to time, the details falling away to chittering speculation. But the story remains. The story will forever remain.

And with that story, comes life.