Again and again, Phos has been told that they must change in order to exist within this world. In order to be a proper member of their community, they must change their personality and embrace diligence and propriety, abandoning the core of their identity in order to better fit a static mold. In order to succeed as a defender of their land, they must replace their physical body, incurring any manner of degradation or transformation in hopes of better facing the Lunarians. In order to save Cinnabar, they must reinvent the very fundamentals of gem culture, carving out a place for their friend while somehow dispelling the sense of disjoint and isolation that caused them to recognize Cinnabar as a fellow outcast in the first place.

It is a towering, contradictory mountain of demands, and in attempting to fulfill all these instructions, it is no surprise that Phos has been chipped and broken over and over. The process of personal reinvention is a painful, thankless one, and as Land of the Lustrous has repeatedly emphasized, change is a neutral variable. Not all change is good change, not all progress carries us in the right direction. It is comforting to believe that all of our suffering serves some higher purpose, but in truth, most suffering is senseless, leaving only fresh scars in its wake. While we strive to change ourselves for the better, perhaps the only inevitable change we all undergo is an unhappy one, one we can only hope does not fracture us beyond repair: the experience of loss.

We all experience loss in small ways as we mature, and many are forced to reckon with its true face long before they should. But inevitably, all of us will lose someone who was essential to us, a key pillar in our sense of personal security. That loss will feel as monumental and unbelievable as the sun failing to rise, an earthquake rattling our very identity, an absence and emptiness that will never fully close. We are changed by loss, all of us, and our only choice in the matter is deciding how we carry on in spite of the intolerable, how we exist when someone who helped build our world has gone. Phos has attempted to change their personality and significantly altered their physical body over the course of their adventures, but nothing they have undergone could possibly match the significance of reaching out for Antarcticite and failing to catch their hand. Nothing changes us like loss.

This fact is made painfully apparent as spring arrives, grass and flowers hesitantly emerging from the cold earth. It is almost unfair how easy nature makes it look, how confidently the natural world sweeps through vast, fundamental transformations without a hint of hesitation. This graceful transition makes Phos’ own changes strike all the more starkly: close-cut hair matching Antarcticite’s utilitarian look, golden arms and heels, and a cool, blank expression on their face. Old Phos would likely have found these changes bizarre and thrilling, but having experienced the loss of Antarcticite, the inevitable changes of their body morphing through age somehow just don’t seem as important anymore.

Staring at an approaching Lunarian force, Phos stands without fear or even much apparent interest, saying only “better report this” as they turn to leave. A scene that would have been terrifying before Antarcticite’s death now scans as routine, demonstrating an emotional transformation every bit as consequential as their physical shift. It’s not surprising; loss has a way of blowing out our emotional speakers, and making us indifferent to the idle currents of emotional response that once felt monumental. Once we’ve experienced something as world-altering as the death of a loved one, it is hard to still feel much passion for the light, passing eddies of emotional turbulence that define our day-to-day lives.

There is little of the Phos we once knew in this solemn steward – none of their buoyancy of spirit, none of their passion, none of their irreverence, none of their anxiety. All the emotions that once defined them have been blanketed by the preeminence of Antarcticite’s absence, and the absolute need to take over their responsibilities. What point is there in worrying if you’re truly content with your life when there’s work to be done? Phos has at last discovered the dark secret underlying most people’s allegedly contentedness with their daily lives: many of them actually aren’t content, they just have more pressing concerns than worrying about self-actualization. Loss has a way of distinguishing what you wish were the case from what you must accept as true.

Facing off against a Lunarian with Sensei at their side, Phos has at last achieved everything they believed they wanted, for the simple cost of abandoning any hope of actually being content. Though Phos believed they lacked something crucial to becoming a proper gem, the truth was quite the opposite. Everyone else wasn’t perfectly happy because their roles all perfectly suited their personalities – they were happy because they lacked Phos’ questioning, restless spirit. Your ability to achieve personal happiness is often directly correlated to your lack of curiosity regarding the world beyond your immediate experience. Phos has not found the answer to their questions – they have simply given up on questioning things, thereby achieving the same dull complacency as their fellow gems.

There is thus no excitement, no sense of achievement in Phos defeating this Lunarian; only the blank affirmation of a job complete, and a reminder of Phos’ new physical instability. Phos’ gold-platinum alloy has actually set their frame at war with itself, meaning that every time they unleash their new power, cracks run along their entire body. This fragility serves as the physical counterpoint to Phos’ emotional transformation, and is similarly simply how it goes with aging. Once we pass our physical peak, we abruptly shift from growing into our fully developed selves to collapsing, losing fragments of proficiency with each calendar year. As with loss, this experience serves as a key, inevitable brush with mortality – a moment of recognition that this is not all a slope towards some grand peak, and that we are instead merely waves which crest, collapse, and return to the sea.

And yet, for all their attempts to close off their feelings and commit to their duty, Phos’ original kindness is still present, if only expressed through their feelings of guilt towards Antarcticite. “I’ve cleaned up a bit, haven’t I? I wanted to be more like you,” they admit, laying down a flower and speaking of spring’s approach. As we accumulate loss, more and more of our most intimate conversations are shared with ghosts, fragments of the past that still live within us. It was these fragments that actually pushed Phos to truly change, if only to keep some aspect of Antarcticite alive. When our loved ones are gone, it falls to us to keep them in living memory, and let their lessons live on through the ways they’ve sculpted us.

Huddling beside the remnants of Antarcticite, Phos confesses that “I’m afraid to even close my eyes now. Because every time I do, I see you.” In these quiet fears, we see the reason Phos has embraced a numb affect and a focus on their professional duties. When faced with the loss of a loved one, many people bury themselves in ordinary concerns, embracing the practical and necessary because that is easier than facing the unfixable and intolerable. If Phos were to embrace their emotions, they wouldn’t return to the chipper, fun-loving Phos we remember: they would be lost to the void, utterly consumed by their guilt and fear and sense of worthlessness.

From the outside, it might seem like numbness is what has replaced a loved one’s original vivaciousness after experiencing loss. In truth, the numbness is actually a defense mechanism against what has truly changed within them, a more fundamental unraveling of their certainty and optimism that has made their original personality seem utterly foreign to them. We are most ourselves when we embrace vulnerability, but the only thing embracing vulnerability in the face of loss provides us is a torrent of senseless, directionless grief.

So what can carry us out of this morass, and draw us back towards full emotional engagement with the world? Well, time mostly, in the manner of most things. Looking out across the emerging spring landscape, Phos acknowledges that “living beings change at such a fast rate, don’t they? It’s frightening.” Phos has at last come to see change not as positive, but simply inevitable, to which Sensei responds that Phos also changes quickly. The camera holds on their face as they consider and accept this, savoring the knowledge that even this pain will eventually subside. For all of Phos’ current despair and stoicism, one of the most enduring changes of this transformation is their leaky, inconsistent alloy: Phos has gained the ability to cry, becoming more expressive and human than ever.

The spring thaw also facilitates a merciful thawing of Phos’ emotions, as the other gems awaken and express variable shock at Phos’ new persona, as well as their inability to remember Cinnabar. To the early Phos, “I can’t do much, but I’m the only one who cares enough to help Cinnabar” was the core of their motivation, the hope that kept them pushing forward. In losing sight of that hope, Phos seems to have given up on ever changing the structure of this world. What most fundamentally made Phos Phos – their abiding concern for their fellow gems, completely divorced from the hierarchy of value that guided their society – has now been lost, abandoned in their desperation to cope with Antarcticite’s absence.

But though loss marks us indelibly, it need not cause us to abandon our gentleness, our kindness, our optimism and hope. Noting the shocked reaction to this confession, Phos immediately recants, saying “Forget what I said. I think I might be a bit of a mess.” In this confession, we at last see the vulnerability that was once inherent in Phos’ expressions, returning to the surface via the concern of a friend. As we journey through the muffled world of grief, abstracting ourselves from vulnerability to avoid further pain, it can be hard to recognize the hopes and fears that once drove us. But change is as inevitable as suffering, and once the all-consuming tidal wave of grief subsides, there is always time to rebuild.

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