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“Come with me, Woody, think of all we could do… together!” Harry’s voice– that strong tone, the surefire way of speaking that could convince Sisyphus to put down the rock. He remembered the sound of his best friend. Maybe more. No. He couldn’t.
“I live here now, Harry. I don’t do that kinda stuff anymore.” Woody was tired, defeated. He had friends here. He had a life here. Why couldn’t Harry see that? Yes, it hurt to leave, and if he was alone with his thoughts long enough it threatened to consume him whole, but he needed the change.
“Don’t you remember the good old days? Just you and I, creating cosmic mess and cleaning it up.”
Woody shuddered at the memory. Yes, they had been like gods, circulating the cosmos and bringing a cocktail of chaos and order to worlds. It had been a euphoria like no other. But there was something here that Harry didn’t understand, something that Woody had witnessed on this sequestered planet. It had drawn him in like a magnet, and he clung to it like a lifeline.
“Harry, I mean it. I live here now.”
“What could these humans possibly give you that I can’t?”
There it was. The question that Woody had been grappling with ever since he arrived on this little dirt hill. Why would he relinquish godhood for mortality? Why would he incarnate as a sentient napkin when he could swallow stars whole and coast through nebulas with the knowledge that he could conquer the universe if only his will would permit him?
“Harry, there’s something here that these humans have, I can’t- it’s hard to explain.”
The cosmos were beautiful. But space was empty. Painfully, endlessly empty. Yes, he had Harry, but eternity with him felt impossible. Eternity was a long time, and the longer he lived it, the more oppressive it felt. Humans had something that nothing else had. Not even God.
“You can come with me, you know.” The offer was fleeting, and as soon as the words left him, it felt like they fell flat on the floor. “I can show you this place, all the-”
“You’re above that, Woody! This place will be destroyed like everything else, and who will be there to clean it up?”
He knew Harry was right. This place would be destroyed in due time, as all things were. Why bother attaching himself to such an insignificant pocket of the universe when the infinite cosmos were there for the taking?
Perhaps it was because these people had taught him what it means to have humanity. He’d been above it all for so long that he hadn’t bothered to notice the rich tapestry they were weaving beneath the clouds.
The same way humans dismiss ants, he’d rejected interest in any mortal society until he crouched down to actually see. And what he saw was beyond his wildest imagination. He knew what he had to do. Harry would never see eye to eye, he was too far gone from this place to understand. He would destroy it to spite Woody, and one of the most precious things to his heart would be gone forever. The culture, the language. The ways in which love manifested itself in invisible ways. It would disappear at the drop of a hat.
His hat. His love. Someone who had given him everything and was willing to take it all away.
Goodbye, Harry.
He thought to himself.
I’ll see you in the stars.