He remembers a body, in good working order. His tentacles struggle to maintain purchase on the heaving deck. He doesn’t remember much between those points. He’s afraid he doesn’t need to.

He loves the memory too much to let the Lethe carry it away. And yet here it is before him. See the cooperation necessary to work tectonic muscles, to set fins against wind, cloud, and water alike to push a universe forward. Then see the miracle happen a hundred times over without fail. Marvel at the shellsmith’s work, no planet was ever so encrusted. The divots and cracks only show how indestructible the whole is. It’s not time yet to hear the clack-clack of claws and beak, sharp enough to split suns and drink their golden cores, and the sound alone may rattle their ship to pieces.

Go ahead then. Kill this dream dead. Split its skull. Empty it of the cosmos until it is nothing but a lonely, haunted husk. Let the communiques cease and the last claws snap. Just that, and the way forward will be clear.

He does not know how to kill this dream any more than he knows how to be whole again, and a mouse presently stands taller than him. He cannot forget to fear any more than he can forget to hunger. He can only feel adrift because he knew his place once. 

His breath comes steady, because she taught him to sit with fear. His breath comes steady, and her silhouette vanishes into the distance against the wall of flesh before them.

He remembers a body in good working order.

“The Department of Doubt will be sending scores of supplicants to central. This must be a trap, they will cry. It cannot be what it seems. The first ship we have seen in memory cannot be piloted by fools alone.”

“The Sages of Fear will remember the taste of a thousand legends of a thousand worlds. How often did the brave hero find victory in the moment of their defeat? How often did the jaws of doom reveal the one place their spear could pierce?”

“The Archivists of Reason must be raising an objection, that the inside of our beak is sufficient to crack planets, but no Secretary worth their office would let that motion stand.”

“The beak will not open until the last moment. There will be a swell of water, a wall of water when it opens. Anticipate it! Count on it! Use it!”

His thin quavering voice carries to the knight at the helm, just as it carries to the chef tucked away on the deck, awaiting his moment to leap.