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She awakens on a miniscule island in a sea of void and stars, where comets of all colors and sizes dance across a canvas of black.
Grass beneath her, a vast expanse above.
A familiar place at an unfamiliar time.
"I'm... here again?"
There's a sort of intrinsic understanding; the last time she'd seen this, she'd given her life to save the world she loved. Now though, her mind tries and fails to scrape together a cause for her presence here.
And then, a voice:
"How was your life?"
It's the increasingly familiar voice of the Guardian, taking the shape of a cat. It brushes against her leg, a knowing smile on its feline face.
The numbing realization sets in all too quickly.
"My what? Did I... actually die?"
The Guardian nods.
She sits up in the grass, arms encircling her knees. "But... how? It came and went so quickly, I-I hardly got to live."
"You mortals come and go so fast, I'm afraid. But you lived longer than many of your kind, and learned much. You should all be so lucky."
She sighs, scratching her head. "I guess it wasn't all bad, when you put it that way. This must be the part where you ask me to take your place, huh."
It nods once again.
"The choice is yours. I won't force you—like I said, I'm not a jerk—but I'd be grateful to you."
She shrugs. "Well, if it's between that and being dead for eternity, I guess I'd rather take a crack at being a deity."
"Oh, nothing stays dead for long. All that cosmic stuff eventually slips back into the fold of the universe, and life is born from it anew."
"Reincarnation, huh? Score one for Buddhism. Mom and Dad would be thrilled."
The Guardian raises an eyebrow, studying her. "So, are you certain you wish to take on my mantle, and free me from my duties as the Cosmic Guardian?"
She frowns, deep in thought. An eternity must pass in the silence that follows, broken only by the whooshing of stars streaking through the empty. But what's an eternity to someone who's already waited this long to pass on?
She's made a lot of hard choices in this life. There's just one more to make.
She snaps finger guns at the Guardian, a smile on her face. "You bet, dude. How hard could it be?"
AN INNUMERABLE PERIOD OF TIME LATER...
It's the hardest thing, letting something go.
The Guardian watches stars collapse in a thousand realities, taking with them trillions of lives. Entire galaxies flicker and fade, with no one around but her to observe their slow death.
Every last life snuffed out, every planet ground to dust, breaks her a little inside.
She is Heart, and she is a Watcher. For all her boundless empathy and love, all she can do is witness time and space move on without her.
Sure, nothing is truly gone. Everything returns to existence in a new, beautiful form, and then that new beauty is pulverized by time.
Repeat ad nauseum. Years become centuries, centuries become millennia, millennia become eons, and eons become meaningless. Birth and life and death and rebirth blur together, until there's no point in bothering to delineate one from another. Space and time are nothing at all, and yet the only things that truly exist to the Guardian.
She would call her persistent dedication "moving forward", except for the fact that direction, whether through space or time, is in itself a construct to someone with omnipotence. The Guardian simply exists.
But her existence, like time and space, is not immutable.
She changes, shifts.
The Guardian becomes less of a person and more of a concept. Its former life, both long past and yet still to come, is forgotten and discarded.
The shedding of its skin is not without note, however.
Its old self clings to existence, railing against infinite universes, begging not to be ousted from being.
In a fit of emotion uncharacteristic of its new form, this remnant of the past takes everything with it.
Space and time are lost.
The Guardian remains.
It is all that is, all that was, all that will ever be.
It is also shaken to its very core.
It has failed.
It is fallible.
It is wholly unworthy of its title.
It seeks to correct its mistake.
It seeks to redeem itself.
More than this, however, it seeks rest.
It wishes to be rid of this sacred duty once and for all.
'Reincarnation, huh?' says someone else's voice, once upon a time in the far future of the past.
Existence begins again, starting from the very beginning.
It is wiser now, calmer.
It waits, watches, for a suitable life to take its place.
However, it soon discovers that such a concept as worthiness is hard to gauge in the absence of power. Thus, it concocts a test of sorts:
How will a mortal handle infinite power?
It creates three gems representing the characteristics it desires in its potential replacement. Something about these gems strike it as familiar, reminding it of simpler days once thought to be forgotten.
It scatters the gems across a planet, and it waits.
And waits.
The potential is abused, of course. Mortals are so keen on satisfying their basest urges: control, greed, anger.
For ten thousand years, it waits, hoping against hope that one will rise above their kind and show it the selflessness it has been waiting for.
Enter Anne Boonchuy, the perfect candidate.
Anne Boonchuy, who sacrifices that infinite potential and even gives her own life to save a world she does not belong to.
Anne Boonchuy, the only one worthy of the title of Guardian.
It is, was, and will always be her.
But Anne refuses it.
She says she isn't perfect, that people are constantly changing and growing.
The Guardian realizes she isn't ready.
One day, though, she will be, and that is enough for it.
It's waited thousands of years to retire. What's seventy-eight years more?
SEVENTY-EIGHT YEARS LATER...
She awakens on a miniscule island in a sea of void and stars, where comets of all colors and sizes dance across a canvas of black.
Grass beneath her, a vast expanse above.
A familiar place at an unfamiliar time.
"I'm... here again?"