Human

"Sinussa maailman kauneus
Josta kuolema teki minusta taiteilijan."
--Nightwish, Kuolema Tekee Taitateilijan







He usually loved mysteries -- the wonder of discovering something new and the joy of putting things together. It always went back to two primary goals: Learning, and when he could, helping others.

This time however, he had three mysteries he didn't like.

Pavel was missing.
Why did Oobie wish to be a Human of all things?
He remembered what the Scotsman had said about feeling not-right and cringed.

Renne had flown through the Rhy'Din winter sky for hours and at sunrise, he landed on a familiar stretch of beach. It had in ways become his beach; abandoned things often became his in some way or other. There were times when he didn't mind it but this morning as he crawled through the freezing, snow-dusted sand it tore at his nerves.
His hands inspected the vaguely human shape forming. He'd promised her and if this was how he was to keep that promise, so be it. Renne could do that, create a humanish shell. That was easy part.

Pavel's voice wept and laughed somewhere in his mind.

The Scotts joined in with their mellow, slightly different brogues and Harold's laughter came close to driving Renne to tears.

He created a human cast in the sand. Somewhere, his mind whispered distantly of Mamela speaking to him of gods and how they create beings from the dust. Renne knew he was no god. He didn't want to be. That kind of power actually scares him on more than one level.
Afraid? Why? You have slain gods...
He shut out the darker voice in his head and concentrated on his mysteries.

It was time he learned to do more than pick up the pieces.

Human
We and I, Among the Broken Stars

"Man was never meant to fly and he made himself wings. Man was never meant to have to see the beauties and the uglies of that which makes him."







Dude Three had spoken of a migraine. He didn't know what that was until another word had simplified the meaning. He didn't know either, and would never know, that upon reaching Dude Three's bedroom door, Renne had for a moment, faced the business end of a phaser.

Snowball had, thankfully, ceased to shriek when Montgomery Scott opened his door and reclaimed her.

They had gone back downstairs together, the quiet fading into the din of a full tavern. Renne heard the Human stop, soon enough had asked and found out what a migraine was. He'd had headaches before, dreaded painful ones and it unsettled him that another was in pain. He offered the one thing he could because he wanted to. Renne was familiar with pain, didn't like it in the slightest.
Dude Three had allowed the Empath in.
It went properly...at first.

-He knew this part. Stretch forward. Fuse. The fusing always felt this way, tingling, slightly itchy. Warm and cold as bloods and skins and bones meshed in a strange dance. They were partners in this dance of rushing life and the pounding heartdrums. Skin was warm and cold, blood thick and incredibly thin, silvery and not. He knew this step and crossed the threshold as the painkillers flowed.
He knocked on the Door.

'Entity. Request permission to proceed?'

When and only when he was allowed in did the Entity proceed. He moved onward properly. Formal, polite, honouring the Home. The Home, the Self. He did not ask to explore and he didn't want to. He was on a mission here. This House was in pain. Pain was not and is not conducive to survival. Not in any long-term sense of the word. he proceeded onward, seeking That-Which-Created-Pain like a hound.
He trod carefully when he entered; he went with increasing reverence the further he went. This was Id. This was...

He'd never gone to the Id. Ever.

Confusion swept the Entity, but he proceeded on, not daring to step without care. This was new and when he found the roiling knot called Pain, he was afraid to touch it as a surgeon might fear touching an ill-located clot. he was afraid but he couldn't allow that to interfere.
Pain did not belong here. This was Id.
The pain was examined carefully, Understood. Held. This far down, words were nothing. Concepts here, where beyond walls, beyond and in the House's heart was the Id.

'Alive. Here? Pain. Yes?'
'Affirmative. Pain. Affirmative. Alive. Not-right.'
'Alive. Yes. Pain. Not conducive to survival. Affirmative. Not-Right. Error?'

'Memory. Not found. Not Kalashnikov. Here.'

This wasn't right. This Human was older, supposed to be older. Memories he did not have, should have, weren't there. Renne couldn't stop the Id from speak-thinking. The concepts tightened. The questions asked further. More bluntly. Closer to home. Home, here, now and then and not-then and not-now. It had neither sound nor touch nor taste nor scent and it had all of that. It was definitively Him and Not Him.
Him. He. Made not-right, made by the pain, not-right.

'Understood. Pain. Not-right. Alive. Error found.'-

When the fusing finally ended and Renne picked himself off from the expected throw of separation, he went with Montgomery to the kitchen. It seemed somehow all right that while pain mounted inside his own head, he had a clearer understanding of things. Pain had transferred, most of it, properly. But as he finished creating an enormous sandwich for the two of them, Renne's mind sank back to remember the strange, not-right path he'd gone down.
The Id. The Self.

He'd never done that before and it scared him.

To hurt down there, in that deep place was wrong.

Human
White Soundings

"I grew up believing in things
Time and lines and before-comes-after
Walking 'round in nowhere
Standing still in an everywhere


Ever sit down and listen, feel?
Pale soprano and the deep

Baritone in the distance
Isn't so distant beyond the hands

Of silvery time."







He didn't have to take weeks to get there, didn't want to. The time for sojourns alone with only the past as company was done.

Here and now, he went to his Labyrint'ine quickly with a goal in his mind. It felt kind of good to have a goal, to finally have something he could focus on. A purpose, even one such as this. The tattoo on his arm was still as vibrant in colour as ever, even still raised some after all this time but its prominence had faded. It had gained a second meaning.

Renne crawled through the vine-twisted entrance and took care to turn left. He'd turned right on an occasion before and all that got him was endlessly lost for near a month. He'd turned right when he had no purpose. No anchor. Nothing to keep, nothing to hold. He'd turned right when all he had left was the breath in his lung.
It felt good to turn left, turning this way and that down long but otherwise now familiar paths. The Labyrinth didn't toy with him too much this time; only that silvery-metallic taste in his mouth was the thing to change. It felt like he had a spoon in his mouth but hadn't taken it out, like licking stainless steel a thousand times.

When he got to the middle, the sensation bathed him in silvery endlessness.

Renne sat in the middle of a fluid, changing maze with an anchor on his arm. Here, he tasted and felt things you shouldn't taste or feel. Tasted, felt things that scientists said have neither taste nor touch. He remembered Scotty's words, Harold's words.
He remembered the Id.
Help. Want to help. Fix.
He swayed in a slow, steady rhythm when his mind sank in and expanded out. Half-Transcended, the mirror-metallic taste/feel was almost a part of him. He was out of place-time, out of his Origin. But he was here. They were out-of-place, out of Origin, wherever that had been. They were as real as he was, he knew that.
Questions flew through the swirling maelstrom in that conceptual, abstract way. He held questions in his hands and Renne didn't register his own hands gathering up treasures. Anchors.
His scarf. His mug. His PADD. His medallion. His journal. his Alethiometer. One was twisted around his neck. One was hooked on two fingers. The others were in his lap. Half-not-solid, they sank into him a little and connected. They were anchors keeping something there.

Why? How? Anomalies found, errors detected. Pain is not conducive to survival. Not-Here, when clearly here. Both-and-neither. Emotionally unstable.

The concepts sounded as white and silver, fleeting in ways the wind could only dream of. The Id poured as water dared only hope. In the middle of a technicolour, evermoving chaos, Renne sat and reached out the only way he knew.

Whispers screamed through the metallic waterfabric; up, down, across, within, out and beyond.

Help me.