... would you like to play that we die?

Until midnight, until three in the morning, until nine in the morning seven minutes count down. So, so many grains of sand.

Two things are essential for creation.
One is time, the other is a name.

“Memento,” Mori called out timidly, as one would recall a dawning memory.
“Mori!” Memento nodded, their eyes shining.

Notes:

This work is an English translation of the story I originally wrote in Hungarian. If you happen to understand that hell of a language, you can find that version here.

I can never thank @A_Leny enough for their help with the translation. But I'll try: thank you. (Especially for the biblical reference. I really didn't notice it at first, but it's a must.)

The title of this story (and other references through the fic) is from a Hungarian poem: Akarsz-e játszani?/Would You Like To Play? by Dezső Kosztolányi.

Lastly, I have a really good playlist for this one.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Tempus narrabo.

ⴵ ⴵ

Hey

██████

I'm afraid

ⴵ ⴵ

Until midnight, until three in the morning, until nine in the morning seven minutes count down. So, so many grains of sand.

Once upon a time these two were lying in the desert. (And they are also in other places in other ways at the same time together. This is not important yet, and it won’t really be important anymore.)

They are lying in the desert, where the stars most brilliantly show their artificially drawn patterns and the nothingness between them, and where bones can lie hidden in peace in the depths for centuries (just a few heartbeats, just a few ticks of the clock).

They lie in the desert and it is exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds.

“And a little cliché. It's not quite what I imagined,” Mori remarks matter of factly, though here and now they are no longer called that. They hold a worn silver coin in front of one eye and squint at the sky above them. (They don’t even remember where they got it.)

“But what's wrong with clichés? I like clichés,” says Memento, who here and now is also called something else. They sift the cold sand between their fingers, waiting for every grain to fall evenly as gravity pulls them down; they try to shake off the residue stuck to their palm. They fail.

As they turn their heads toward each other, Mori sees the sky and the darkness reflected in Memento’s eyes, and if they watch more closely, they see themself as well. They would call this reassurance.

“You see,” Memento continues, “they exist because everyone knows them and everyone knows what to expect from them. And that's good! But then there are times when it's not! You never know when they'll become something completely different. With the little details that you pay more attention to now.”

Mori adds a meaningful ehhh and then suddenly places their coin on top of their clenched fist.

“Heads or tails?”

“Heads.”

The coin flies into the air for a moment as if a new star was being inaugurated up there then bounces back with a metallic clang onto Mori's hand. They squint to see the result.

“Okay, you may be right after all. And it's about time this happened. I mean, for you to be right.” They watch the curve of Memento's lips as they smile and they slip the coin back into the pocket of their white suit jacket, where neither the future nor the past can reach it. “I'll tell you a cliché too, you'll love it.”

“Go on!” Memento turns to him eagerly.

“Before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes. That's what they say.”

Memento frowns.

“You know that's not a cliché, right?”

“If you say so.” Mori's gaze returns to the sky, so the question they ask in the next moment seems quite poetic. “What do you remember?”

Memento manages to hum while chuckling and nodding their head.

“Everything, silly, everything that ever happened!” They think for a moment (the heartbeats: thump-thump). They shake their head, because that's not quite right. “At least the important things, maybe those. You. So... After all, yes. Everything.”

“Tell me everything,” Mori whispers mostly to Memento. “Please.”

But they incidentally ask this big round world as well.

ⴵ ⴵ

Let it roll, let it fall.

ⴵ ⴵ

Two things are essential for creation.

One is time, the other is a name.

In the beginning Mori had only one but it was abundant: the boundless, finite-infinite now.

One moment.

Another.

And another.

That much is certain. The rest is a little blurry like the first blink of the eye after waking up.

ⴵ ⴵ

The sounds come first, and they are clearer than the images—like the clattering of pebbles. (Under the heavy footsteps and heavier breathing of creatures that they will later find difficult to imagine. Although with some digging it is possible that Memento will remember them one day.)

The rustling of the lush reeds as the wind whistles through their slender blades.

The branches of the gigantic trees creak.

The discreet murmur of the lake.

The rustling of a dragonfly's wings in the meantime. This falls silent later as it lands on the trunk of a tree.

This silence remains as it tries to free itself from the drying, sticky sap, the golden amber, but it cannot, it could not, it will never be able to.

The nameless Mori could not utter a word. Even their sighs, if there were any, were silent.

They were all alone.

They weren't even there.

ⴵ ⴵ

“That's how far I was able to agree with you. I mean, I have some questions. What would I have been even doing there?”

“Ssssshhh-sssh-sh,” Memento would press their index finger to Mori's lips, but since they weren’t looking at them while doing so and Mori instinctively pulled away, the energetic silencing gesture ended up as an energetic slap in the face. Just a gentle one. “Everything doesn’t have to make sense. We can't go back to check, so what can we do? Trust our memories!”

“If my memory serves me right at this very moment, you just broke my nose,” Mori blinks rapidly in pain. “Don't touch me again” he grumbles without weight.

Memento cheerfully, learning nothing from the previous incident waves their hand in the dark air. They don't touch anything now, but they have no intention of taking Mori's words seriously anyway, and haven't for a long time. (This reminds them of the fresh, tart green scent of a dried-up riverbank. They smile at it lightly, but we're not there yet.)

“Sure, sure, don't be so serious, admit that it could have hurt more, but now listen, here comes the best part!”

“I refuse... Wait, here, at the beginning?” Mori massages the bridge of their nose, sniffs a few times and decides they feel better (it really didn't hurt that much). “No way.”

“I told you to listen!”

ⴵ ⴵ

The nameless Mori was not alone.

Deep in the mountainside, in the twilight-mist and the cool smell of rain, there and then they may have thought but perhaps not, that this creature who would one day name everything, was an indescribably strange being.

Under the long-extinguished fire the embers crackled their last words, their light flickering on the uneven surface of the cave and on the disheveled, shivering figure of the human ancestor.

(His story: he lived. He was strong, then he grew old, he was young, then he became ill. He was left behind in the cold. And now it seems he believes, he senses the end of his story is - what else could it be – death.)

Mori's head tilted as they stared at him and listened to his wheeze somehow louder than the stormy wind whistling outside.

Long exhalations. Sharp, increasingly difficult inhalations. His chest rose and fell to this rhythm, up and down.

Up. Down.

And then through the dissipating smoke of the fire, their eyes met.

The nameless one froze in horror. The human's gaze however remained unchanged: he stared ahead.

Ahead.

Finally, Mori realized that the human could not see them. (The aftertaste of the relief that came with this realization was bitter.)

His gaze was lost in a distance which seemed to transcend frost and pain and it was as if the opalescent light of that place which existed only for him was reflected back from his pupils instead of the glowing embers back in here.

He must have liked what she saw over there: his mouth curved gently upward, and he was no longer shivering as much.

His chest rose. It sank again.

Fingers twitched toward the cave wall opposite to him; a feeble attempt to raise his hand the movement had not even begun and was already over.

Mori stepped closer, leaned in and found themself curious.

They found themself looking ahead and back over their shoulder in vain: they could not see.

And yet.

They also wanted to see what it was, they wanted to know where this strange glow in the eyes of this strange creature came from, they wanted to talk about it, they wanted to ask what exactly the trembling, calm smile on his face meant.

Then they found themself resting their fingertips gently on closed eyelids. They could still feel the warm heat of human skin, but he did not smile and did not move anymore.

Then he cooled down completely.

He never moved.

He never lived.

Outside the wind howled so loudly that it seemed to fall silent, and the nameless Mori's shoulders slumped as if the mountain itself had collapsed on them.

(Later they explain that they felt a maddening disappointment at that moment. Then they explain again that they felt a paralyzing terror. Then again and again, an all-encompassing emptiness.)

Here comes the stillness.

They wanted to move. To get away from here, to leave it behind and go forward and on. They couldn't.

They were stuck in this moment of maybe. It really could have been just a moment. Nothing more. It couldn't have been more.

A moment. And another. And another. Until the end of time.

A circular promise of passing that never comes.

Never.

And never.

(This is called present.)

At that moment, the nameless Mori was cruelly alone.

Until a voice whispered in their ear like a cry reaching the stars:

“Hi!”

Mori pulled back their hand and recoiled as if there was no tomorrow, their breath caught in panic as they stumbled over the lifeless human, pressed themself against the wall and came face to face with the other nameless being.

They glared at each other in stunned silence.

Then the other nameless being made an innocent smile.

“Hi,” they repeated. “Did I interrupt you? I'm just looking around.”

“You... What... How?” Mori asked. Have we met before?

“Well” and using all the concentration of the universe that existed at that moment they started staring at the wall next to Mori. They scanned the muddy ground, then looked up to the top of the cave, taking in the entire space before returning to Mori and nodding at them. “This is how I look around.”

Mori's confusion vanished in an instant, and they felt like rolling their eyes.

“Impressive...ly misunderstanding me."

“Have you looked at all of these?” came the almost reverent question.

“What?”

“Come here I'll show you, take a look yourself.”

An awkwardly long time passed before Mori got up and walked uncertainly over to the other nameless being. But at least that time had passed, dragging heavily, and Mori was surprised to realize that they had felt this dragging, this passing.

Strange. They even shuddered.

The embers had gone out some time ago. The storm had also subsided, leaving only the faint sound of dripping and a bluish-gray damp light, and the other nameless being stood there with infinite patience swaying from toe to heel, their hands clasped behind their back.

“So,” they said again when Mori stood two steps away from them. “Look.”

Mori looked.

Black lines. White shapes. A warm, earthy jumble. It covered the cave wall above the human's body.

“I'm looking,” they whispered. “What is this?”

“Oh wait, let's play a guessing game. This one, for example...” They pointed to a figure made up of rough orange curves and dark lines running through the recesses with at least three similar ones next to it. “I think it's a bison.”

(They both agreed that Memento didn't specifically say bison here but something else that could have meant bison at the time. However, they didn't necessarily agree on what form their conversation took at the time—maybe they just grumbled at each other.)

“And these ones here if I'm not mistaken, are hunting them,” they added pointing to the numerous sticks surrounding the bison figures, rushing with their stick legs and aiming their stick arms straight at the images of the animals.

Mori looked back and forth between the human and the sticks.

“Those over there... That's him, right?” They pursed their lips. “They don’t resemble him:”

The other nameless being spread their arms in amusement.

“He made it and he thinks it resembles. But there's more!” They continued to explain it all animatedly, pointing to each painting as they rushed over to show everything as vividly as possible. “That one, for example, is a horse, that one is a bear, that one is a wolf, that one is the cutest, awh, it's snarling, and that one is...”

Mori heard them and didn't hear them as they turned around.

They found themself face to face with a multitude of handprints. Palms dipped in light-colored paint swarmed between, above, and below the scattered outlines of five fingers, and the raw stone was almost completely covered by the multitude of painted hands.

As their fingers touched the powdery paint and their palm touched a slightly larger palm painted in white, it flashed before them for one last time that the human's faint smile seemed to stretch this way once more, for the last time. Then they forgot. They never knew.

(What they may have known: the sparkle from that elsewhere. The tiniest ray in the darkest space.)

“Hm.”

“Hmm?”

Mori glanced at the other nameless being who had suddenly appeared beside them, their palm also pressed against a handprint on the wall, a coal-painted one, and those also didn't fit perfectly.

“A lot of people must have been here” Mori said for lack of anything better to say, the words barely coming out of their mouth.

“And everyone wanted to tell you they were here,” the other nameless being grinned at them. “By the way, this is my favorite.”

They crouched down, rolled a few pebbles aside and dusted off the wall a little. There was no paint here, just a line carved into the stone, which started in a circle, went around, led into itself and stopped there.

“A snail. It's a snail.” At Mori’s raised eyebrows they lifted a broken little snail shell triumphantly from the mud. “It's here because one of them saw that there was a snail here and left this snail on the wall, which resembles it because when they were here there was also a snail here.” Their eyes sparkled with happiness. “It's nice, isn't it?”

Mori crouched down next to them on the ground. When the nameless Memento offered the snail shell to them they did not accept it. They glanced once more around the cave, at the pictures, then nodded.

“It is nice.”

ⴵ ⴵ

“That's how we met” Mori interjects, who knows whether they are stating or asking. They clasped their fingers together on top of their chest.

“Uh-huh,” Memento agrees, propping themself up on one elbow and tucking their oblivion-black suit jacket under their head. “I would really like it if that's how we would have met.” With that, they flopped back down. “Do you think that snail… That spiral line is there? Is it still going round and round?” A strange question, not even a question. Then a moment's pause.

The only thing at motion is the chain of a silver pocket watch they twist around their wrist, between their fingers. (They received it not long ago as a gift, as a memento.)

Even when they look at it they don't realize the time.

“I could imagine we were naked at that time,” Mori says casually and cheerfully as they cross their legs.

“Yeah, me too,” Memento replies. “People were like that back then, so... we could have been.”

Mori nods seriously.

“Details like that are important.”

A dramatic sigh lifts Memento's chest; their eyes are closed so they have no idea what an inscrutable look Mori gives them when they speak next.

“It's a shame we can't go back and check.”

ⴵ ⴵ

Looking back the truth is (whether they realize it or not) it would be an exaggeration to say that they ever met. That there could have been a moment of emptiness where the two of them didn't know each other.

Although it's also true that there have been very few moments of emptiness from this point on or ever, because things by their very nature move forward unstoppably (going round and round and so on).

Meanwhile these things are given names because people like to believe that this is how they create the universe for themselves.

Time became time and because everything became complicated with time, there came years and months and days, hours and minutes and seconds and of course always and forever and never, never, ever.

Memento and Mori, who did not yet have names at that time; they were, so to speak, always there. And within that always for a long time they were there for each other.

ⴵ ⴵ

“Don't be afraid, I'll just sit on your neck!” shouted the one who would soon be called Memento.

Two things happened at once to the nameless Mori: one of course was that they were scared to death.

They crowded together on a cloudless day under the scorching sun, in the midst of what seemed to be a cloudless celebration and tried to stay on their feet. The crowd, dressed in their finery cut through the city's flourishing streets, squares and grandstands in a disorderly line; a colorful, fragrant, incredibly noisy, exuberantly joyful company and among them marched the returning victorious armies with their glittering iron armor, their triumphant footsteps leaving clouds of dust behind them.

Crowded together more and more of them, there were so many of these stick people.

The nameless Mori squinted suspiciously at everything strange that was happening around them: fleeting movements and hasty life functions flashed past them as every image and sound fragmented into confusion, each one independent and separate, a scattered second.

Here was the stillness.

And then Mori gathered all their strength and turned their full attention to the future Memento.

(The other thing they felt at that moment would have been difficult to put into words, in retrospect it is simpler: it was a tingling déjà vu.)

Memento's expectant gaze was clear and sharp, and in that moment, everything else became like that too.

Mori should have asked: have we met before? Instead, they said, sophistically articulated:

“For what?”

“I need to see what's happening over there!” They pointed ahead between the two heads in front of them while the owner of one of the heads was wiping sweat from their forehead.

“And you don't have a better idea than this?”

“I don't want a better idea, I want this idea!”

The nameless Mori panted tensely, then for lack of anything better to do awkwardly bent down. They let out a squeak as the other nameless being settled comfortably on their shoulder, then Mori swallowed the next squeak as the other hooked their ankles together in front of their chest.

(During the stunt, they pushed aside about three or four people but of course, no one noticed.)

“There! That's better, thanks!” The future Memento patted Mori's head with sincere gratitude when they were about to be straightened up, and paid no further attention to anything else, scanning the parade from above the gathered crowd.

(These individuals were also pushed aside by the rest of the crowd, until with a few carelessly rough movements they ended up on the ground, where they were trampled on.)

Mori suddenly swayed under the weight, took a step back, then a step forward. Their vision began to narrow and fragment again. They jerked their head, positioning themself between the fragmented moments, trying to peer through the dense crowd.

They wanted to see.

“What's happening?” they gasped.

(More people on the ground who were no longer moving.)

The palm on their temple was neither cool nor warm as they gently turned their head, peering through the gaps toward the events and the view.

When the nameless being perched on their neck started talking to them, drowning out the cacophony of existence, Mori listened and found the ground beneath them.

“There. There's the triumphal procession. Now the flute players are marching and the bulls, you can hear them.” Memento was referring to the music. Only the shrill breaths reached Mori's ears, in and out, in and out. “There may be elephants too, although I think we would hear them by now, so...” Mori felt them jiggle slightly to their right, and they jiggled along with the movement to keep them steady. A figure stood out on the periphery, sitting on the steps, hunched over a wax tablet. “Yeah, there won't be any, damn it, maybe next time. Yes, yes, yes! Here comes the big man, look!”

They watched this too.

He arrived in the most ornate carriage, surrounded by his entourage, himself painted immaculately red, and waved majestically to the gathered crowd. Above his head other hands held a sparkling golden wreath, and from time to time dry lips whispered something close to his ear that seemed important to hear.

The nameless Mori (a matter of moments) leaned forward with all their might as the other nameless one (a matter of moments) leaned over their head as far as they were physically capable.

“You're going to fall, what are you doing?!”

“I can't hear what they're saying to him, can you get a little closer?”

“No, no, how could I?!” They shuffled forward a little and bumped into the people in front of them.

“Just a little more... I'm almost there...” Mori heard from above.

“It can't be that important...”

They tried to squeeze between the two links in the chain. They closed in and wouldn't let them through, pushing them back. They struggled, but their balance was already off, and both they and the other being on top of them fell backwards onto the ground with overwhelming momentum.

Suddenly, there was silence just for them; the silence of things that might still be important.

A satisfied smile among the swirling dust particles.

“I know what they said.”

And here comes the stillness.

Almost. This is a different kind of spark, flashback, flashbulb.

“What?” Have we met before?

“Something like memento mori.”

(Something else that might have meant that at the time, but it never really mattered.)

“Memento...?”

“Mori.”

“Memento,” Mori called out timidly, as one would recall a dawning memory.

“Mori!” Memento nodded, their eyes shining.

ⴵ ⴵ

The suffocating volcanic ash had not yet cooled when Memento hummed the festive rhythms of a parade and scratched lines into it with their index finger. Sometimes they would shake their head and wipe away the squiggles they had drawn, then start again. Sometimes they would stop and look disapprovingly at their dirty fingernails.

“What if I painted them?”

Mori sat next to him with their knees pulled up, on the last remnants of the heat-frozen city, under sunless skies among the shadows of ruins.

It took them a while to realize that someone was talking to them.

“It's already gray, isn't it? That's a color too,” they finally said. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“Um, well, you know, I'm noting that we were here,” replied Memento, then with a small sigh they smoothed the ash-canvas again so they could start writing from the beginning.

Hic fiumus cari duo nos sine fine sodales nomina si quaeris...

ⴵ ⴵ

Mem████

████ento

███████

Memento

ⴵ ⴵ

If you think about it, the sand in an hourglass frames itself in the glass.

All it needs is heat.

Just a spark.

ⴵ ⴵ

Memento falls silent here. They furrow their brow, and the watch chain rests on their wrist as they stop.

“What is it?” asks Mori. Lacking any immediate effect (and with only minimal revenge in mind) they poke Memento in the ribs. “What is it? We don't have time for this, stay here!”

“Ouch, I just remembered that you fell into water at one point!” Memento says with a sullen look, then their face slowly drifts away as the pain subsides. “From a ship maybe. Yes, a ship. It doesn't matter which one, it could have sunk anyway. Someone must have survived to tell the tale. But you fell into the ocean, and everything was a big blackness, the calm sky and the wildly swirling water. It was night then, like now, lightless and smelling of salt and cold, stiff corpse-like cold and the whole universe seemed so desperately endless, curving in on itself. You were scared. Lost.” They ponder the scene that follows. “Then of course, I was there too. With you. I swam around you among the bloated bodies, splashed water in your face, then pulled you ashore.” They began to snap their fingers to the beat as if the rhythmic sound would coax the details out of the back of their brain. “Was this where you first told me not to touch you? This was where you first told me not to touch you.”

Mori's sharp gaze stays in the darkness, the cold, the endless vastness. A cloud pushes in front of the moon.

“I'm sure you think this is also a good part. If it came to your mind like that.”

“Oh, I keep the best parts in my heart, of course! This is just a little intermezzo, but it seems important. To lead us here. If it happened differently maybe we wouldn't be who we are...” Memento's thoughts rush off-off-off in different directions again, scanning the dots of light above, their gaze randomly connecting one, two, three. “How many light bulbs would it take to replace the stars?”

Silence lingers between the heartthumps, because Mori is sincerely thinking about it.

ⴵ ⴵ

They have time.

Sand still sticks to their hands like pieces of bone to the sea mud.

ⴵ ⴵ

One step forward, tick-tock. One step back, thump-thump.

Round and round and round because not time progresseth; it is we who change.

Forward.

Forward...

“Stop!” Mori cried out, lost.

Memento spun around among the people laughing, as if they didn't even notice that they were the only one in the crowd who could do this of their own free will. They glided between blood-red shoes, rattling bones under flayed skin and exhausted groans, reaching the musicians on tiptoe and waving.

“Let's dance!”

Mori stopped in the middle of everything. Around them chaos reigned, organized into certain uncertainty.

The only contrast in this unrestrained lifelessness, a familiar hand reaching out to him was lost among the exhausted movements of the dancers.

Have we met before?

“Don't touch me...”

So they followed this uncertain certainty, round and round and round.

Memento moved with them in mirror-motion, guiding their steps, round and round and round, and they heard roaring music and a rhythm that cut into their flesh and crazy shouts and ragged laughter and frenzied crying.

And Mori heard gasping breaths—in and out, in and out—and heartbeats, and felt the exhausted human bodies falling one by one from the ever-moving line, never to move again.

"Why are they doing this?" they shouted. (They could have reached them. They could have taken their hand. They got scared and backed off, losing them again. Someone else's fingers intertwined with theirs, but they immediately, instinctively shook them off. It was too late.)

“Oh, it's just for fun!” Memento shouted from a distance and began to sing, their voice haunting the accompaniment. “Come dance with me!”

They hurried toward Mori step by step. Then Memento spoke again from behind them, always spinning another dancer hand in hand, and it was as if there and then, a world separated the two of them.

“Stop…” Mori begged chasing after them again and again, wishing that their strength would fade, that they and all the dancers would tire, not knowing what frightened them more: that they wished for this or that they had been wishing for it for so long and yet nothing happened.

“Wait, no! This is their punishment! They can't stop!” The music carried this line to Mori, Memento's voice resonating high. “But I really don't know what they did to deserve to die for it!”

ⴵ ⴵ

“It wasn't punishment. That's what they believed, so I believed it too. They just got sick,” Memento notes, as a definite fact, not so much as a fun fact. “Maybe there was something in the wheat those people ate. Or mass psychosis, though that's less likely. That's what they say.” Then they mumble something about a kind of danse macabre, and something about oh, I shouldn't have said that.

They notice that Mori's eyes are closed and they are breathing too deeply. Nervous-clumsy they reach for their hand, the sand left on their thumb could scratch the thin skin of the other’s wrist, but before they connect, Mori looks back at them impassively.

“I'm listening. Your watch was just ticking very loudly.”

The curve at the corner of their mouth is nervous-clumsy, distant-star faint, and Memento responds in kind.

“It's good that you're listening! You have to listen to the good parts.”

ⴵ ⴵ

Mori couldn't take it anymore. They squeezed their eyes shut and yelled as loud as they could: Stop!

Once more, like the first time: Stop!

And again and again and again, until they were almost hoarse: Stop!

So they spun around forever and ever, as long as the world had been. Until everyone, absolutely everyone collapsed, withered away, and rotted to pieces.

Until Memento continued to waltz with a skeleton worn down to a shiny beige, then it too fell apart in their arms, dust swirled everywhere and Memento hummed and spun and turned undisturbed. Thump-thump, gradually slowing down.

Now they should have been alone, the two of them. But Mori could only watched in horror, listening to the quieting heartbeat and the fading breath, waiting for the moment of the elsewhere-emptiness when the other's eyes would glaze over and they would no longer move.

One step forward, one step back—a hesitant maybe-waltz.

Stop.

ⴵ ⴵ

“Have you ever been to a funeral?”

“Don't touch me!”

The shadow of Memento's hand fluttered away from Mori's shoulder as quickly as a wild animal startled by a sound.

It was a cold morning. A vacuum-like silence and a sticky, scratchy fog hung over the cemetery. The gray twilight was almost suffocating.

“Don't touch me...”

Mori closed their eyes and felt like they were drowning. They waited a few more gasping moments for the all-encompassing fog to dissipate, one moment, then another, and another.

Then they had no choice but to look up again.

ⴵ ⴵ

Memento taps the glass of their pocket watch restlessly once, twice, as if they want to dictate a new rhythm to the minutes. They wonder (aloud) if that's really how it was. Maybe they aren’t saying it right.

They note that this is actually a good part, meaning that from here on it will be very good.

Or maybe not. Instead they shake their head, and with that the desert sand buries their moonlight-bleached, tousled hair even more.

Next to them Mori comes to the conclusion (also aloud and kindly, which is important) that the real question is whether Memento would have been happy if their fleeting lives had turned out that way. That's all that matters.

“I was thinking, by the way...” Mori asks quietly, “If you could, would you go back?”

Just a shake of the head. That's all.

ⴵ ⴵ

They remember correctly, by the way.

It wasn't like that.

ⴵ ⴵ

“Have you ever been to a funeral?” Memento's figure appeared from behind a conspicuously tidy grave leaning on it with their elbows. The freshly carved name and number of years were immaculately engraved on the headstone.

It was a cold morning. Thick and clinging fog lingered among the graves, colors faded in the grayness: comforting blue, sympathetic yellow, loving pink on the flowers, the green of life on the leaves, and the crystalline mirror-play of dewdrops on the white petals.

Mori didn't even blink.

Who knows if they had ever met before.

“Should I have?” they finally asked.

“Yeah, no, I mean…” Memento pushed themself away from the gravestone and picked up one of the many coins (we should call them Charon’s pieces) left there from the top of the headstone next to them. They spun it around and pushed it toward Mori, who just barely caught it. “Good for you! It's just... It occurred to me how interesting it is what people usually do at funerals. They gather around what remains and they talk about the remains talking at length about what it was like when it was there. And from all that they piece together who the person was.” As if there’s nothing more to say they patted the top of the gravestone then continued to sway on their heels with their hands clasped behind their back. “That she was her to them. Evoking her, they bring her back a bit. How wonderful that is.”

Mori was now blinking.

“Well, that must be terribly brilliant for someone who isn't me.”

“Come on,” Memento pouted their lower lip. “No need to be mean!”

“I'm not being mean,” Mori spread their arms. “I just don't understand what you're saying because you're not saying it clearly.”

“See, you are mean! So, the thing is... I'll show you, wait,” Memento stomped over to them. “Let's pretend that this is...” They touched their index finger and thumb together to frame the epitaph in front of Mori. “That was me. Imagine that what lies down there, with its dusty bones and decaying skin, is me. Got it?”

“What?” Mori hugged themself in shock. The flowers on the wreaths no longer escaped the grip of the fog turning them autumn white, and from then on Mori looked everywhere, really everywhere, searching for the colors of the gracefully curved petals and serrated leaves, just so they wouldn't have to look at the grave. Something rustled nearby, perhaps just the dewy grass beneath their feet.

“This! This is it! It is me! It was me!” Memento's voice soared to enthusiastic heights. “And then imagine what you would say about me, who I was. What would you say to me, who am I?” And their eyes sparkled with anticipation, an anticipation so old that even they themself had not yet grasped.

“Who you were... Who you are.”

Memento hummed in agreement into the vacuum of silence, and something else far below, thump-thump-thumped. A stray breeze rustled uncertainly.

Mori realized then (or so they thought) that they were unable to say anything about them. Their shoulders slumped at the devastating discovery.

After all, perhaps they hadn't met yet.

(They realized later, much later, that they didn't want to talk about it.

Not like this. Never like this.

Ever.

Ever.)

“Who are you?” they asked in a voice as soft as pebbles touching.

ⴵ ⴵ

It's you, Memento.

Here beside me.

Mem, it's you.

ⴵ ⴵ

“Oh,” Memento stared into the grayness, dropping their hands to their sides. With a little exaggeration, they could have been called disappointed. “Well, I... I thought... Okay.” They tilted their head to one side and pondered the question, and especially the fact that they had never actually pondered this question before. “I understand. If I had to say something about myself, I would say...”

They didn't say anything for a while.

During that time, it was as if Memento wasn't standing in the cemetery, and they weren't looking at the grave in front of them, but at something else, many, many other things, everything else that would’ve made for multiple vibrant and exciting lives.

Mori however, focused only on the gravestone and a tingling sensation came alive in their fingertips (and a vague déjà vu in their mind).

A snail was crawling upward on the stone leaving a slimy trail, slowly passing over the date of birth.

Mori crossed their arms, their nails digging into their upper arms, the thumping below would not stop.

“Don't say anything...”

“I would say I'm a numbskull.”

For a moment, everything trembled.

Then Mori burst out in hysterical laughter.

ⴵ ⴵ

Both of them burst out in hysterical laughter.

“I was such an idiot, my god...” Memento wiped away their tears.

“Only as much as I am, but are you sure you said that?”

“I'm almost a hundred percent sure. It would be very funny.”

Mori buries their face in their elbow, snorting.

ⴵ ⴵ

Mori buried their face in their hands, their stifled laughter becoming a muffled noise between their fingers.

“I can't take this...” They would have squeaked out if Memento had been paying attention.

Memento perhaps for the first time, definitely for the first time, didn't pay attention to them.

“Numb-skull…” they repeated, savoring the word, rolling it softly in their mouth (it was like an unripe orange), trying out its aroma, its shape, its personality. “A numb skull rooted deep in the soil of consciousness. It contains the buzz of spring, the crackle of autumn, the frost of summer, the heat of winter, and everything else that sprouts between them. It contains the return. What will be and what will remain. The possibility of roses blooming in December. Pressed petals between sheets of paper.”

And Memento was still not there, and their dear half-smile radiated something that Mori could not possibly have anything to do with. But they were curious.

They wanted to see, they wanted to see more than anything else.

Stillness in the fog.

“No!” Memento suddenly snapped. “Or yes. This too. And everything else. The crumbling warmth of the fireplace, which is the home-warmth, which is not the same for anyone, and yet is the golden home-warmth for everyone. There's a word for it... There's something for it, I know. And! And-and-and complicated knots on a thin string, as you clench your fist and run your hand along it, and you get stuck on them, wondering why they're there, how many there are. One, two, three... Nine. Sixty. Three hundred and sixty-five. Four thousand seven hundred and thirty-three.

Four thousand seven hundred and thirty-one... No, two. Numbers and causes and patterns! Constalle... Consta... Constellations! The smell of almond sponge cake. Taunts and capers and lullaby rhymes and myths whispered into the embers. One of two ravens. A burnt matchstick in a black room and its long-dissipated bluish smoke. Pine-scented mysteries. A column capital kept in the wrong place. Eternal music and layers of paint one on top of the other. A box buried underground…” (Mori sucked in a sharp breath but no one noticed so it didn't happen), “but rather the key to the lock hidden in a pocket. A lock of hair worn in a pendant over the heart. That too... That too is me. Boredom and regret and just because and big words.”

Finally, they closed their eyes.

“I am proof of eternal life. And I have always been a promise of immortality.”

And they dared to smile.

“That's what they say. So that's what I say. What do you think, do I look nice?”

Their eyes met at that moment.

Memento's eyes widened, and they began to back away with their eyes’ glow fading.

ⴵ ⴵ

Silence descends upon them once more. The night turns slowly overhead.

“I'm such an idiot, my god...” Memento whimpers, then croaks to stifle their whimpering.

“Only as much as I am. You didn't even include ‘idiot’ in your list anyway,” Mori tries to soften their tone a little, but even with the best of intentions it’s impossible. “Don't be like that. It's not your fault.”

“I thought I saw you then. That I was really meeting you for the first time.”

“You did see me, didn't you? You looked at me... If you're a deep-rooted thing, then I'm...” A sharp Swish! escapes from between their teeth, then they fall silent. “You were just afraid.”

“No! It wasn't you!” Memento jumps up, holding themself up with unquestionable conviction. “Not you! I would never be afraid of you, not you!” They gasp as they stare at Mori, then having made up their mind they wipe their eyes wildly. “I'm telling it differently, okay? That's the point. It didn't happen this way.”

Mori follows the path of a salty little drop of water on Memento's face, and their next sentence would be, would you go back so it wouldn't be like this?

Then they change their mind and just nod awkwardly, understandingly: that's really the point.

Speak no ill of the dead.

ⴵ ⴵ

Probably nothing else happened, nor could it have happened: for the first time, Memento saw what every person is forced to see once in their lifetime.

But Memento could stare at their own face and the faces of everyone who ever lived and died, reflected in the glass of a ticking hourglass, and the hand made of bare bones that held the clock was Mori's, and Mori's gaze beyond the hourglass promised endless eternity, infinite cruelty and darkness, which begins with a flash, with the swing of a scythe's sharp blade, after which nothing, absolutely nothing remains, and which knows no mercy, ever, ever, ever.

That's what they said, so that’s what Memento saw, and that’s what they remembered for a long time.

ⴵ ⴵ

Memento took a step back, then another, and faster and faster, back through the fabric of time.

Mori did not follow. They just watched frozen and still, as the figure was slowly swallowed by the fog, like a coffin by the earth piled on top of it: the face remained last, and the dull eyes.

Only their fingertips twitched toward them, the movement barely beginning and ending, but it was enough for Memento to bury themself even faster into the whiteness.

“Don't touch me!” they screamed in terror, definitively. “You don't touch me, we don't dance, we don't swim, we don't play, we don't exist, we don't... We can never, ever, ever meet!”

Then, in that suspended moment, there was silence.

ⴵ ⴵ

Speak no ill of the dead.

If you say nothing, they couldn't be any more dead.

ⴵ ⴵ

“So that's how you tell the story?” Mori sits up, leaning on their elbows, their voice deep and gentle.

Memento's lips twitch and they sniff as they mumble that they'll only tell it this way while they thinks of how else to tell it, but little by little they can't tell anything else about the two of them, because they weren't there, they didn't meet, little by little they gasp for air for their lungs, but they don't know, they don't remember...

ⴵ ⴵ

By the time the crows flew up in alarm from the bare trees Mori always and forever found themself alone in the freezing cold night.

Among bone-dry flowers, they sat cross-legged on a forgotten grave, spelling out the almost illegible name and date carved on the headstone in the fog, scratching the coin stuck in their hand over and over again with their fingernail.

Beneath them, under the hard earth, lay the one whose story should not have ended here, because she was alive (thump-thump, her heart pounded, almost deafening Mori), and at the same time, she banged the inside of their coffin with her fists and sobbed until she no longer moved.

What remained of her, and what no one can bring back to life, has cooled completely.

She never moved, she never lived, she turned to dust and evaporated into tears, and like everything else and like all death, Mori forgot this too for a cruelly long and dark time.

(What remained with them: loneliness. A black hole in the blinding whiteness.)

ⴵ ⴵ

Until midnight, until three in the morning, until nine in the morning, the countdown would be four minutes, but the silver pocket watch is clutched tightly to Memento's heart enclosed in two protective fists, and they aren’t even the one who notices that it hasn't been working for who knows how long (no ticking, no clicking), but Mori is.

ⴵ ⴵ

The rest is a little blurry. Like a snapshot taken in motion.

██████… Between flower you lie… █ More like everything was enclosed in amber. An indelible breath of mist on the glass. There is no more light, yet everything is too bright, and I am suffocating in the grayness.

Well, well, you can hear me! It was about time, huh?

I can hear you. Clearly. Unshakeably.

Well, I don't blame you, everything has become louder. That's just how it is when we enter a new era. Even screams are sharper, and when people laugh, the sound sometimes echoes across this big round world. Even pictures speak now, especially when they spin in sequence. Oh, and the seconds are more echoey! Tick-tocks and gears, let's not forget about that. Sand gets stuck in those much less often.

It's like... You talk just like...

I'm so glad we're talking! What were we talking about? Ah, yes, about what doesn't change.

What do you remember?

Nothing. Nothing that could have happened.

That doesn't make sense, does it? One important detail...

I have a coin.

Impressive. Heads or tails?

I didn't even toss it.

Do you know who gave it to me?

And where they are?

Of course!

In our every dying minute.

You just have to… Evoke them. Then bring them back.

█ … who only seems to cry… █

I see. You're afraid they won't... Move anymore.

█ … would you like to hide in the dark till very late? █

Well, they won't if there's no one to share the movement with.

But what if... What if we never met?

Never, always, and forever are separated by mere milliseconds, and the best part is that it's all a matter of choice. You can flip a coin, but you already know which side you're rooting for. Would you like to meet them?

Heads.

More than anything.

Great, there's no better time to go back to those roots. Will you tell me about that "more than anything"? How did you meet? And how would you two meet?

Mori should have hesitated.

Take your time. We have plenty of it.

ⴵ ⴵ

“You didn't pull the pin out on purpose, did you?”

They could disapprove but instead Mori gingerly adjusts the hands of the pocket watch with the loose crown, the numbers on the clock’s face fading to white in the moonlight shining through the glass.

“No way,” Memento wipes their eyes. First with the back of their hand, then painfully with their wrist. “Damn, sand got in...”

Mori smiles discreetly.

“Don't cry. Anyway, back to the light bulbs...” they say, looking for the right time.

Three minutes before the hour.

Thanks.

Ehhh?, suggests Memento's slightly teary-eyed expression.

“I've thought it over. My answer is that I don't need any. You don't have to replace the stars. Form a different constellation with them, cover one of your eyes and watch them suddenly jump to a new place. But replace them completely?” They hold the clock by its chain, it starts ticking again, swinging back and forth, taking the place of one star or another in the Orion. “We wouldn't be ourselves then.”

“So you... You wouldn't do anything differently?” Memento blinks surprised. “If you could go back?”

“Only if I knew that at the end of the journey I would still be here with you. But if everything returns to the same spiral... I don't know what the point would be.”

ⴵ ⴵ

Once upon a time, there was a wonderfully designed mechanical clock into which people had built moments enough for ten thousand years.

Sitting cross-legged in front of this clock was someone who was called Mori at the time (for a while), and this Mori talked about someone (then still) called Memento until first the minute hands and then the entire clock face simply began to melt before their eyes.

Mori stopped just for a moment, eyeing the metallic puddle on the floor which was either really there or not, but it didn't matter, only the way it reflected the light from the ceiling bulbs. Then Mori got up, cracked their stiff limbs, and like a life-giving heartbeat, carried the ticking of the clock with them, giving rhythm to their steps forward, forward, and forward.

They continued to march through the foggy, frozen present, and the present was often not pretty, it banged and exploded and screeched and hissed, and the sounds of dying life did not fade away, but Mori perhaps for the first time, definitely for the first time, did not pay attention to all that. They contemplated the past at once, searching for memories that never were but still became, just as they looked into the imagined future where they seemed to see a familiar glow far, far away.

They headed in that direction, walking this strange, dreamlike waltz of attention, one step forward, one step back, and Mori told the tale that Memento was with them, and they wished that Memento had been with them. They imagined that they would like everything they saw, all these play-pretend thoughts dripping into reality.

The way them and Memento danced, stepping on each other's feet until they stumbled and fell, laughing. The way they juggled beige skulls on a stage, and dropped them all. The way they scribbled with their fingers in the wet sand, "if you want to know our names…" and watched as the waves washed it all away, then started again. With Memento, they played guessing games in front of post-mortem paintings and photographs, guessing who was dead and who was alive, and wrote their guesses on the back of Polaroids, which they then buried at the foot of an oak tree in an iron box. They played funeral with Memento, and Mori could hardly find the words again, all that came out of their throat was, this is you, Memento, here beside me, but they just wrote it down on a red piece of cloth, and again, twice, Memento, Memento.

Memento and Mori lay on the ground among fragile forget-me-nots and blooming spider lilies. It was just the two of them, always the two of them, and they were not afraid, never, ever afraid of each other.

This was the tale Mori told. They hoped that people would believe it.

ⴵ ⴵ

They met for the last time when Mori got into a boat and with difficulty, forcing their breath in and out, began to row.

The night rustled, the reeds, the trees, the murmuring waves.

Familiarity led them here: in the middle of the lake, like a silver disc displayed on black velvet, the full moon shone, and there Mori stopped, swaying as they stood up, a worn coin dancing nervously between their fingers, and in the gentle waves they glimpsed who might have given it to them.

Breathe in, breathe out, and a stray tale in their mind about falling into the water at one point, yes, this loud déjà vu, the echo of a mutter from the depths, not so far away, rang clearly. Did you say not to touch you?

No heads, no tails.

Breathe in.

The coin flew up, spinning in nothingness, and when Mori jumped, there was no splash.

It was as if they were swimming among the stars, the universe curving in on itself seemed so endlessly vast.

Mori moved toward the bottom of the blackness with unwavering strokes, and they had never felt such cold, this stiff corpse-like cold, guided for a while by the glimmer of moonlight, but the darkness slowly enveloped them, clung to them, enclosed them in a cocoon, and they cannot, could not, and will never be able to escape from it.

Here is the stillness.

Thump, thump.

Mori pushed themself forward to this rhythm, despite everything.

Then their fingers touched mud, and something glimmered among the wet grains at the bottom of the lake. Mori pushed the crumbling earth and the crumbling bones away with decisive movements, digging persistently and frantically until filtered sunlight surrounded them, painting streaks into the water, and they no longer dug downward, but upward, as if they had broken through the top of a giant hourglass with sheer force, where there was still sand to be sifted.

And on the surface, among the soggy leaves and pale petals, a silhouette floated motionless, surrounded by light.

Thump, thump.

Mori's eyes widened, panic leaving their mouth in a bubble. They swam toward them as fast as they could, almost reaching them, their hand searching for the other’s in the current. They found it when Mori burst out of the water, gasping for air, and the momentum splashed water droplets onto Memento's closed eyelids.

This is also a flashback, a flashbulb moment.

Mori dragged themself to the foot of some tart-smelling green trees and panted. Memento's face remained peaceful and unmoving, and the sharp rays of sunshine almost whitened their tousled hair.

This was not how Mori had imagined them. They had never seen them like this before. They would never forget them.

Thump, thump.

The first blink after waking up.

“Memento?” Mori uttered, recalling them, evoking them.

They turned toward the other, every movement a slow-motion snapshot. Mori had to grab them so they wouldn't fall, and had to help them find their footing.

There was silence, the silence of significant things, and for an endless moment it seemed that nothing would change.

Then Memento smiled brighter than the sun.

Let's play a guessing game.

“Oh, Mori. You beautiful, masochistic idiot, you.” And they jumped into Mori's arms and Mori hugged them tightly, muttering that they weren't a masochist and that they were going to fall, seriously, then they laughed, spun around their axis, spun once, spun twice.

Even if towers collapse, bombs explode, and the whole planet is turned upside down and nothing is the same as it was before, they will still be there for each other for as long as the world spins.

ⴵ ⴵ

“And of course, most importantly, I made you cry!” Memento's smile is familiar and frivolous. The pocket watch is back with them, resting on their chest, above their heart.

“Me? Cry?” Mori rolls their eyes without malice and takes a breath. “Certainly not. I was drenched.”

“Sure, sure, we can play pretend.”

“We're running out of time, hey, tick-tock, we barely have two minutes left.” They don't sound concerned about it, waving their hand dismissively. “What happened then, what comes next?”

“Wait a minute, hmmm.” Memento pinches the bridge of their nose in a gesture of intense concentration and inspiration, and before they start to speak, they click their tongue. “So. It wasn't that long ago. We're sitting on the shallow riverbank in summer, watching the mayflies hatch. You know, those insects, and I told you this back then and there too, that these little insects complete this thing called life in a single day, that's all the time they have, they're born, they're together, they pass away.

“You made a strange face then and asked, as if you had been cherishing this story in your heart for a long time, as if you had imagined something like this before, so you asked if we could play something like that too. Birth and… Death... You hesitated here, pulling at the grass around you, and that motion didn't make a Swish! sound. It would grow back anyway, as long as the roots remained in the ground.

“Well, then I said, to calm you down a bit, that it was interesting that other people were also thinking about this right now, and what's more, they wanted to record it, the way they would play it, that they were once here and wanting to remember that one day they won't be here, from moving image to moving image. That would be their measure of time. You raised your eyebrows then, like 'how no one can have a single unique idea'. True, but then they, the other people also thought that what if there wouldn't even be recordings! Only the recollection. Only the evocation. A real, heh, memento mori. As you pondered on this, a mayfly landed on your shoulder. Returning to the topic of the measure of time, you asked that how long would this birth-death... non-death last for them?”

The glinting in Memento's eyes is ageless.

“You know what I answered. Not a day. A year.”

ⴵ ⴵ

Two things are essential for creation. In fact, for dying as well.

One is time, the other is a name.

(What else can help: not one, but two idiots.)

Their story: they don't have time.

Lázadjon a lélek, ha kihunynak a fények.

ⴵ ⴵ

The two of them continued to sit on the edge of the hot tub in the garden, ripe oranges falling from the branches of the trees around them, the bubbling foam feeling neither warm nor cold as they dangled their feet in it.

“Unus,” Mori, who had been named Annus for a while, nodded to the other.

“Annus,” Memento, whose name was now Unus, raised their chin seriously.

Then they both watched the receding human figures, two men in suits, one all in black and one all in white, and a woman holding a video camera, and from its small screen these words whispered back, dripping with nostalgia: It’s nice! It is nice.

Memento squinted, then looked at them uncertainly.

“We don't look like them at all.”

A shrug of indifference was Mori's only response.

“Everyone imagines what they want to imagine, don't they?”

“If you say so... Oh, wait, they left this here, I don't think it's waterproof...”

Memento had just picked up the chain of the silver pocket watch from the edge of the pool when the woman suddenly appeared beside them and their eyes met.

Mori didn't dare blink.

“You're so sweet, thank you, but keep it, it's a gift,” the woman winked, and she was gone, leaving behind only the ticking and the rattling of gears.