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“My name is Anne Boonchuy, and today is the day I died.”
Well, that’s what I said 72 years ago. The Guardian (or as I like to call her, Domino 3), said the initial shock of being alive while also being technically dead would be too much for my human brain to handle at first, but saying it out loud would let it sink in faster.
“Of course, now that you’re Guardian, concepts like being ‘alive’ or being ‘dead’ start losing their meaning,” Domino 3 explained to me. “You are Life. You are Death. And you are everything that comes before, in between, and after.”
She also told me that my identity from the time I was a living human girl would start to fade. The image of my body would be useless, and since no one will visit me, I wouldn’t have to keep up appearances. Slowly I would forget how I used to look as a mortal, and so even if I made an effort to look the same as I once did, eventually I would fade into a being of ethereal light and power, with no connection to any world or a life once lived. Similarly, any memory of any part of my life -my home, my parents, my friends- would eventually be forgotten. Time itself would cease to have any meaning when years turn into decades turn into centuries turn into millennia.
At least, that was the assumption.
When Domino 3 passed down her duties for me, she let me keep the house on the floating island she created for me, all the way back when she made the copy of me seconds before my death. The house had everything that made me, me. My tennis racket and blue sword. Pictures of all my friends and family hung up on the wall. The ugly Domino 2 plushie. The butterfly teapot. The Plantar farm sign. My missing shoe.
Domino 3 was confused. “You wish to keep all these knowing that they will eventually lose all meaning to you?”
All I could do was shrug and nod along. “I sacrificed my life for Amphibia. For my friends. Even if one day I move on, that doesn’t mean I should sit idly by today.”
“I can’t say I understand you, Anne, but I shall respect your wish.” She was in what I call her Alpha Domino form now, with her feathery wings spread out while time and space warped around her, ready to accept her into the cosmos where she will spend her retirement. “Any last words you would like to tell me before I depart?”
I didn’t have anything else to say, not to her at least, so all we had to do was to say our goodbyes. “See you on the other side,” was what I ended up going for.
Domino 3 gave me a quizzical look. “Anne… there is no other side.” With a mighty flap of her wings, a bright flash of light illuminated around her, and then she was gone.
It was these final words which haunted me the most, and what took up most of my thoughts in the beginning.
I tried keeping myself busy, of course. But when you have quite literally all the time in the world and more, it’s important to pace yourself.
The first thing I did was put up a clock on the wall. I knew that time was meaningless, but I knew having a way to track time on Earth and Amphibia would come in handy eventually. Plus, there was nothing stopping me from materialising anything I wanted, so why not?
The next thing I did was wait. If being the Guardian of the universe had any perks, it was the ability to observe any planet in existence. And so, I positioned my little house on the island right next to a bright blue planet with a single continent the shape of a giant lily pad. My home. Amphibia.
It was here that I stood and watched for years. I did not visit Earth, not at first. The thought of seeing my parents grieve over me, realising in horror that I was never going to come back, and being unable to comfort them was an idea that I could never come to terms with, not even as a literal god. I gave them time to mourn in privacy, maybe for my sake more than theirs, but eventually I started to observe both planets, switching between the two whenever something special happened. I watched my parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary with everyone at the Thai Temple, and Ally and Jess graduate college. I watched Sasha’s parents reconcile, and Marcy’s parents divorce. I even watched Mr. X while he was busy on his missions, though none of the calls he received regarding extraterrestrials ever amounted to anything. We were his biggest success story, it seemed.
Mostly, though, I watched over Amphibia and waited. Waited and waited, and then waited some more.
Until now.
Whenever there is a change with a soul, I am able to sense it. Of course, with billions upon billions of organisms living on billions upon billions of different planets, I had to tune them out to preserve my sanity. But there were a select few I kept close to me, so I could sense whenever there was a shift.
Now, a soul was departing in Amphibia. A very special soul. I take notice immediately, hoping and praying that it is the one I’ve been looking for. It’s silly to still pray, knowing I am the god I am praying to, but I still take comfort in the small act.
As it turns out, my prayer to myself has been answered.
There is a faint glow that comes from the planet, a mere speck on a part of the continent, but it immediately starts glowing brighter as it starts to travel towards space, turning an iridescent pink as it continues. Travelling right towards me.
Though my body still resembles my old self, Domino 3 was half-right in that slowly changes will start to occur. The first thing that started to change were the colours, where they slowly faded to nothingness and the colour my body and clothes instead took on the properties of space. There is an obscure sense of luminosity that surrounds my form now, that separates me from my surroundings and defines the shape that makes up me, but besides that my physical features remain intact. Same fluffy hair, same lanky limbs, and of course, same leaves and twigs that manage to stick onto me despite being in literal space.
A more obvious difference, besides looking like a galaxy in the shape of a human girl, is my size. There was no reason to stay at my mortal height after becoming the Guardian, especially when I would try to juggle spending time observing both Amphibia and Earth, so to make things more efficient, I let myself grow and grow until I could fit a planet snugly on my palm. The act alleviated a sense of gloom that came with this job, a special type of misery that came from being lonely for all this time, being able to see everyone live their lives but never being able to interact with them. Being able to hold everyone I love in one hand, to cradle them and know that now no one would be able to harm them, was one way to bring some relief to the burden I carry.
Now, with the soul getting closer to me still, I shrink down to a smaller size, hoping this will make me look more approachable. I remember the day I first saw Domino 3 and being intimidated until she took on the shape of something more recognisable, and so I try to do the same now.
The glow of the soul is still amorphous, but as it grows accustomed to its new surroundings it starts to build its physique. Webbed feet and hands emerge from the glow, and the body and head follow soon after. The pink from the glow seeps into the smooth skin, getting paler on the chin and stomach. A blonde patch of overgrown hair is next, which frames two big eyes that have not opened yet. Lastly, the clothes cover the body as the remains of the glow fade into the skin, in this case the clothing being a matching set of a forest green jacket and hat with goggles, with a red bandana wrapped around the neck and skinny black pants to tie everything together.
Once the being is fully formed, he tries to take a step forward, but stumbles a bit. Of course, I am there to catch him. The feeling of my hand on his arm makes him react, and for the first time his eyes flutter open, and for the first time in 72 years he is looking at me and I am looking at him.
He is the first to find his voice. “Anne?” His tone is cautious, but already his eyes start getting glossy with tears as his hands search for mine. He finds them and holds them tight, as if he never plans on letting go.
Despite everything, I try to find it in myself to laugh casually. “Hey, Sprig. Miss me?”
The next few moments go by in a blur. He launches himself at me, and the weight of another being feels so unfamiliar that it causes me to topple down. And he’s crying now, full on sobbing into me, but I don’t mind because my best friend is hugging me and I am hugging him and we are together again at last.
He stays there for a while, his head buried in my shoulder and my arms around him as he weeps. When he moves away to wipe his tears, I get another good look at him, and notice a few differences. He is older now, slightly bigger and stronger, with fuzzy patches of stubble around his face. But when he stops rubbing his eyes and asks “Anne, is that really you?” his voice is the same as it's ever been.
I try to say ‘yes, of course it is’, but my voice catches in my throat and then it is me who is crying, so all I do is nod and hug him again.
Explaining the entire concept of being a Guardian to someone who is newly dead and has entered a new plane of existence is tricky, to say the least. I find that it is easier to simply answer his questions as they come, the more he looks around and puts the pieces together.
Sprig stares at the planet of Amphibia with me for a moment, before simply asking, “Am I dead?” And when I answer that yes, he is, he asks “Are you dead?” And I say yes again.
His next question is, “How come you look like that when I just look like me?” I try to explain that a departed soul will try to take on the shape of whatever body came the most naturally to them, which usually ends up being the one they looked for the longest amount of time. So if they had a special outfit they wore often, for example, that’s the clothing they will wear.
“You’ve lived a long and full life, Sprig,” I say to him. “So you can choose to look like any way you did throughout the time you were living. Just think of it, and your body will respond.”
He thinks about this for a while, and his body glows and transforms again, and when it forms he is younger, looking exactly the way he did when he found me outside Wartwood all those years ago.
“Well, why don’t I take this look out for a spin this time, for old time’s sake?”
I take him to the little house on the island, and he looks through every nook and cranny, pausing to stare at each item from Amphibia. Once he’s done searching the place, he meets back up with me outside, sitting by my side on the edge of the island, legs dangling and kicking at the dirt on the side.
He tells me about his life in Amphibia after I left, and even though I know just about all of it -I was still watching over everyone, after all- I let him talk because he looks so excited to catch up and tell me everything. His words get faster as he tries to get everything off his chest, and his hands wave around wildly as he tries to explain every little detail. The good, the bad, and the ugly. He laughs as he maps out his love life, how he ended up breaking up with Ivy and marrying Maddie after all, but remained great friends with his ex and went on many adventures together. He forces back tears as he describes how the worst year of his life led into the best year, where Hop Pop passed away naturally and Polly was killed in a freak mudslide accident.
“But then my daughter was born just a few months later, and no amount of sorrow could compare to the amount of love I feel for her. It’s like the holes in my heart left from all the family that was gone filled up instantly.”
He named her Petunia, which was Polly’s middle name. “It ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. She’s just as feisty as her aunt. Maybe that’s why they never got the chance to meet, they would’ve ended up tearing the town apart!”
Cautiously, he tells me about my friends. That Sasha and Marcy never ended up leaving Amphibia, and settled down in a small village outside Newtopia to get a fresh start. Their situation didn’t bother me, in fact I was happy for them. Knowing them back on Earth, I knew there was nothing for them there. Their jobs, their friends, were all in Amphibia now.
Eventually he is brave enough to ask me a question that I can tell has been at the back of his mind this entire time. “Where… is everyone else? Hop Pop and Polly and Ivy and Marcy and the rest?”
I tell him I don’t have an answer to that, but I can tell him what little I do know. “The universe that I look over is for the physical. The living. I’ve seen souls depart and they just… disappear. I don’t know where they go after that, if they even go anywhere. Maybe they just fizzle out into nothingness.”
“Why am I here, then? Why are you here?”
“I accepted the job of being the universe’s cosmic guardian, where I will look after everything for countless eons. Truthfully, I don’t think I’m supposed to interfere with the cycle of life. I shouldn’t meddle with life or death. I just… missed you so much. I waited and waited until I could sense you leaving the mortal world, and I couldn’t bear the thought of you potentially fizzling out into nothingness before I got to see you again. I still believe in what I said in the castle all those years ago, you’re my best friend in this world, and in any other world.”
Sprig puts my arm in his lap and hugs it to comfort me while I try not to cry a second time.
“I’m sorry if this wasn’t what you wanted. I know that you lived a long time, and if you want to rest now, I understand. Just let me know when you’re ready, and I’ll send you off.”
He doesn’t answer immediately, instead he traces meaningless shapes on the palm of my hand, his forehead wrinkling up and relaxing as thoughts race through his head.
Eventually, he answers. “Well, I don’t have to go right away, do I? I can stay for a while?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Then I’d like to stay here for a bit.”
“With me?”
Sunrise is approaching Amphibia, and soon everyone in it will start to wake and begin a new day. The thick jungle canopy that covered much of the continent basked in its nurturing rays, and the jagged mountain peaks covered the valleys below in dramatic shadows. Sprig continued holding my arm.
“Yeah, with you.”