Strange Bedfellows

The Pale Maiden, goddess of the moon, returned to her bed in a palace of silver and glass. Earthlight streamed into the open room illuminating the chamber's other awaiting occupant. The Unrisen, phantom of the Endless Void and her companion this evening, could clearly see the unease that had roused her remained.
“How is she?” the wraith asked.
The Maiden paused, as if weighing her responses, then sighed. “She took quite a beating. I've never seen her in such pain.”
“She's strong.”
“Yes, but I don't think she'll ever be the same.”
“You can't blame yourself.” He wasn’t certain he had chosen his words correctly, so he reached out to offer comfort; also an unfamiliar gesture. As soon as his ghostly hand touched her bare shoulder, the Unrisen gained substance. Contact felt… pleasant. He was trying not to grow fond of the experience.
The Maiden rolled over to face him, forcing the Unrisen to pull back. Her deep blue eyes peered intensely into his as they swiftly retreated to the shadows; his grim, ghostlike appearance returning. “Of course I don't. They are the ones who wrecked my bar!”
“Bar? Oh, your bar.” Maybe she didn’t notice his confused reply.
Or she saw right thru him.
Rolling onto her back and staring out at the earth, her ward, she steadied her tone. “My champion, on the other hand, that is a responsibility I must accept. I can no longer sit back and claim blindness to my other half's disinterest.”
The Unrisen had wondered if, or when, it would come to this. The Event had not only merged two worlds but placed both of their moons in the sky. Where there were now twin moons there were twin goddesses, similar some ways, but different in so many more. The goddess of his world, the Pale Maiden lying next to him, had protected her people for longer than anyone could remember, fought during the Collapse, suffered imprisonment as a mortal, and returned to her place as guardian. Along the way, she and the Unrisen shared a past that he had tried hard to forget, for his own sanity.
The Pale Maiden's twin, her "other half", was born of the Event as magic began to spread thru the other world. But her spirit had existed as far back as the stories of the Axe of the Moon protecting her people during moonlit nights. She was brash, rude, and worst of all disorganized. The Unrisen didn’t care for her. Unfortunately, the feeling wasn’t mutual. Saoirse, as she had come to be known, shared many of the Pale Maiden’s older memories including some of their more intimate experiences. Call it a quirk of this new world or unlucky timing; the Maiden had been absent at the time of Saoirse's birth and there was an abundance of pent-up worship. She became what her followers believed.
The Unrisen could set aside his distaste for Saoirse, but not the results of her incompetence. She had tried her best in the Maiden’s absence but failed utterly to prepare a champion. At least in her case, it was simply the arrogance of inexperience. For most of the others, they outright disregarded the signs. It was for this reason the Unrisen broke his own rule and left the Void; for this reason he had yet to return to his domain. He remained among the living to prepare champions for their great battle ahead. Or had he not returned because of—! Looking over to the Maiden, he couldn't let that thought continue. Returning to the Void, losing her again, would it be his undoing?
And now the Maiden was joining him; taking ownership of Saoirse’s stumbles but also taking on...
“You are aware of the risks? There’s little the Ancients can do to me. But you—”
“Lewis, is that concern? How sweet. The risks are no different than Aneall and Gosric or the battle of Xiory.”
“I haven’t forgotten the battle of Xiory.” The Maiden’s smirk distracted the wraith but he continued, “So many lost to the Void that day; so many I could not send on their path. I was ready to surrender to my failure and I knew the Transition would not stand in my way. I still don’t know why you did. Why you saved me—” The wraith ended his melancholy prose abruptly. The Pale Maiden had rolled over to look at him again, her hand moving to cradle his face, but it hadn’t yet touched. Somehow he had become corporal. Not just corporal, but himself, his old self! Her look of shock quickly subsided.
“What is tugging at my arm?” Lewis asked shakily, uncomfortable in a body he hadn’t felt in tens of millennium, unwilling to turn his head and look.
The Maiden smiled warmly. “I think we have a visitor.”
She sat up, not bothering to wrap the sheet around herself. “Welcome. How can I help you, my friend?”
A small hand reached up and waved from Lewis’ side of the large bed. The Maiden waved back cheerfully over top of the confused man. From behind the Maiden, long grey hair flowed in the windless room as a woman appeared, translucent in the earthlight, speaking softly. “We have moved the descendants of Tildryn to a safe haven.”
“What the—”
“Oh, hush.” The Maiden cut off Lewis’ rude remark with simple scolding, “I wanted to thank you for finding refuge, as there is nowhere I could bring them that was out of the Ancients’ reach.
“Of course you couldn't.” a staccato voice chimed in from the corner as a young woman with raven hair and a blue-black uniform emerged.
“There are three of them in here—?”
“Lewis, shush.”
Eyes fixed on a glowing screen in her hand, Lt. Carpenter, the Shattered’s embodiment of her original self, continued without pause. “Here it drops below 140 degrees at night. I don't think they'd find it very comfortable.”
“I told you it was cold—” Lewis blurted, silencing himself with a look from the Maiden.
The Shattered finally turned to look at Lewis. “And you Mr. of Bharda live in a class 2 wormhole, a rather inhospitable home for anyone who has not already been materially dismissed.”
Unrisen paused, curious at the wording. “You mean dead? It's not exactly hospitable for us either.”
“It took me more than 2.3 seconds of meticulous calculation” she continued, slowing down for emphasis “to find the two remaining shards that met all the necessary conditions.” Mild irritation was apparently the limit of her range.
“Again, thank you. I appreciate that you choose one, ah, shard where they could be with someone familiar. But I'm curious. Why didn't you choose the other?”
“Copyright restrictions.”
With that, all three visitors vanished, along with Unrisen’s old self. Sensing him slipping back into a ghastly melancholy, the Maiden wrapped herself around the wraith’s body.
He looked back up at her out of grey eyes, a manifestation of her magic and his memory. “Thank you for saving me.” It was as genuine and heartfelt as anything he’d heard himself say in… longer than he remembered. And it was more devastating than any horror the Void could evoke.
The Maiden smiled broadly.
With a deep sigh, the Unrisen relaxed into the soft bed and the Maiden's embrace. “Finally, alone.”
“What!?” the Maiden pulled her head up. “Alone?” Pointing out at the starry night, she turned the Unrisen’s head to follow.
"Don't tell me some bedtime story where the stars are spirits of our ancestors watching over us," the Unrisen mocked, catching himself and flatting his tone. "I know better than anyone the truth of that creepy fable."
"No, look there." The Maiden guided him among the endless starfield to a gap, a swath of blackness.
As the Unrisen stared, the gap became a shape; the silhouette of a body, stretched out as if laying peacefully. Every time he imagined his body in the Endless Void it was curled up in agony, but in truth, he had no body and no pain, just the unending suffering of nothingness. This figure seemed tranquil in the emptiness of space.
He could no longer contain his curiously. “Who… what is that?”
“That is the Shattered. She’s always watching”.
“Watching what?”
“All the everythings.”
The Maiden slowly, gently closed Lewis’ gaping mouth as she covered them both in sheets.