Through a Glass Eye
Taboo

"The spear in the other's heart is the spear in your own."
-Tenet of Surak, Vulcan Language Institute



The nights were long to living beings.

They were interminable and ephemeral to a thing with no sense of time, place or identity.

The camera's lens watched with unblinking, keen focus on the little room it was set to watch. It took note of the eerie calm, the cries and the whispered words. It peered at him with neither sympathy nor merciless judgment. It just watched him and recorded his every move.

Tonight, it recorded Cape Horn on land.

It recorded first, a perhaps bizarre ritual of the creature reverently laying out its possessions -- eight years worth of things from places far, near, wide and close. He had a burnt bit of wood. A loose diamond chip. He had a white eagle feather and a small white amulet of an alien deity. He had a well-loved journal with far more than journal entries in it.
He had over a hundred letters addressed to a dead man.
He had a tiny shard of grayish-blue bone with a name carved into it.

He had memories encased within remnants of his travels far, wide and not.

The camera watched as he performed this ritual with a near Pontiff-like reverence. It observed him as he picked up each item and spoke. It was strange how, but while his voice produced eerie harmonics, tones and chords, it also split into a crude form of English.
It was a shame a mere camera couldn't measure brain waves.

One holds thee now. Thee, old now and gone, long. Thee not Betray. Thee, Joy still hold. Thee, have name. Osprey. Thee, have name. Ashes. Thee, have name. Santharina. Thee, Zon-ker. And thee, have name. Richard.

Some treasures, he smiled at. Others, he wept.
Some treasures caused red flashes in his eyes and others turned his eyes silver.

He read aloud every letter he'd received or written except for one.
That one was too sacred for unpredictable humans. Too sacred for eyes that could too easily shift.
But the camera got a glimpse of worn, folded paper. It was the most it would get.

One hear thee, Hunter. Thee, evil. Away! No. One not listen to thee.

He heard anyway. And cursed his ears for being so keen.

----------------

The camera would never be aware of anything but what it was programmed to do. It would never be able to record the snatches of words shouted outside between two souls caught in a maelstrom of anger. All the camera could record was the creature within the holding cell.
And as it put away its possessions, its ears perked. The creature listened, heard and reacted to a thing out of its reach.
Don't call my name in battle -- It's not wise

It was a split second that turned a weeping, seemingly lost creature into a frenzied beast. The creature began with predatory growls, flashes of its teeth and flaring of its ears. Its skin and eyes darkened.
The camera watched as this beast sprang at the prison wall opposite to the drawings it had created and lashed at a nonexistent target. The wall stood overall impervious to the attack. It lost its plastering. The monster's talons dug deep slashes with lengths varying from a few inches to the longest at nearly two feet.
Do not distract me when you see a new soul in these eyes

The camera didn't see the ghost called the Hunter. It never heard what the blue-skinned predator heard. It only watched the creature as it vacillated from a frenzied, screaming wild thing to a more sinister creature that stalked around the room like an expert predator.
The far wall bore numerous and deep marks from the attack but it was not the only thing left to ruin from this beastly animal.
That thing called a toilet fell victim to a far worse attack with slashes, bites and even sprays of venom that slowly ate away at the structure.
The camera saw it all with an emotionless glass eye.
Don't call my name in battle -- wait the time

For hours, the attacks raged on. For hours, the monster screamed and howled at nonexistent adversaries. Occasionally, broken English was recorded from his voice completely unlike the eerie tones and voice-over translation that had been created.
The camera lens watched and the recording listened to words that ranged from exalting to mortifying.
Hero. Brother. T'hyhar-an. Stranger. Betrayer. One-Who-Shall-Never-Be-Named.
It was a conversation where only one side could be heard. It was a duel that only one side had an audience.
Until I fall and rise again with eyes you know are mine

The words were understandable but only if one listened closely enough. They were words that could chill a bone and if not understood, leave one utterly confused. It was a one-sided war.
One let the other down somehow.
The other abandoned that one.
The one came back, always came back.
The other threw the one to the wolves.
The one ran away.

But the other always came back.

It was a war that had been going on for years and it was a war that often defined the duality within this creature -- defined the crazed frenzy against the cold, calculated calm and the jaded autonomy against the burning need to belong, be useful.
Be worth something more than the jester in the courts.
The camera saw the jester in its least comedic moments.

It watched as the creature gave a final long, keening wail and seemed to half-collapse on the floor. It lay there for a long while and didn't move. When it did, it was nearly dawn. When it did move, the creature's face was pale and its movements were slow, aimless. It wandered the room in twisting circles with not a clue to where it was. Its face bore an expression of utter confusion with a little bit of fear.
Neither camera nor creature heard the low-voiced reconciliation beyond the prison walls.
The lens never blinked.
You'll not be surprised to see how much I stand alone

~<>~

* Leslie Fish, Serious Steel

Through a Glass Eye
Eden's Tree

"Dreams are for rookies."
Philoctetes, Disney's Hercules




He was confused in the silence.

He didn't want to be, but he was.

Just last night, a strange Female had come and had asked him a myriad of questions, probing into places of his mind that he didn't trust to just anyone. The question was, was she another "just anyone"?
No.
Yes.
Unknown.

She was a healer of a kind, she said. And she had said she needed the stories of his past in her method of healing. Or diagnosing. Whatever that was.
He was ashamed of himself in many levels. He nearly broke down in front of her -- and while all life-forms are sacred few, if any, earn the right to see him at his weakest moments.
Few had earned that right and fewer still had managed to keep his trust for longer than a year or so.

It didn't matter that a camera watched him. It didn't matter that he was unaware of it.

What mattered right now were his thoughts as he sat in this place so euphemistically named a holding house.
It was another prison to mark among many. That was all.
So when the Female came, he told as she'd asked. He hadn't wanted to, much less to a stranger, but he couldn't argue.
When she asked about his distant past, he balked.

He didn't want to tell a Humanoid, a stranger, things that were so integral to himself and who he was.
Still, he had to.
Somewhere inside, he felt in himself a change.

He didn't go into much detail -- wouldn't if his life depended on it -- but he gave the Human what she asked for. Which, in all honesty, she came off as all right. She didn't trigger red flags in his mind, nor did she seem to give off the same kind of thing most Humans tended to release as emotional signatures.
In the end, she proved to be somewhat likable even if confusing.
And in the end, he shed a layer of himself off like dried snakeskin.

The walls told him he was alone.
The Hunter whispered of abandonment.
A lesson from long ago reminded him.

Trust like a child. Be as a child.

He didn't sleep much that night.

-------------------

He lay awake in his furs thinking about it all, dissecting it all. He didn't understand as much as he'd have liked but he understood enough.
On the one hand, it could be that his mind was sick. On the one hand, this "trial" could be a key to eliminating the mind's disease.
On the other, he could have done something unspeakable. On the other hand, he might not be worth the warmth he survives on.

He heard the Hunter's voice whispering already.

Through a Glass Eye
Godforsaken Children

"Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven."
John Milton, Paradise Lost



The camera kept watching its half of a one-man war.

It kept documenting every movement and sound in a robotic, fruitless attempt to gain more than just half of the events going on. It was recording a skirmish amid the war that was about to let loose.

-----------------

He hadn't moved from his place in hours.
The Analysis had to continue.

Useless eyes remained unblinking on a face that contorted in inner agony or on occasion, tried to smile. The eyes kept changing colour like a kaleidoscope gone rolling down a flight of stairs.
The eyes, as it is said, are windows to the soul.
His was Chaos.

Renne said no words; only made sounds anywhere from whimpers to chirps to maddened howls. He sat ramrod straight bundled in his furs and faced down another Analysis.
His mind wasn't in his control for long.

When he lost that control, the camera struck a gold mine.
The mind opened itself up and things began to play out as if the prison cell had become a stage.

----------------------

-The doors were flung open. The fortress of stone and bone stood to mock any sane mind that might challenge it. He stood in front of it though with only a stance of familiarity.
He wasn't the Renne of now. He was still, calm and could walk upright. He held his head level and his ears back.
When he spoke, it was accented but blended with many a sound. He spoke to the structure before him.
The fortress was his own but it had been captured.
His fortress was overrun.

"This, Home is."

The Hunter spoke from the walls and showed no face. He was in the bone carvings, the black roses and in the earth beneath Renne's feet.

"Not yours now. Mine. You are unworthy of here."

"Home is mine. I do not destroy a promise."

The fortress doors swung slowly in the way shutters do when battered by wind and storm. They slammed shut, then opened again with a great shriek.
Renne started walking and for a while tuned out the Hunter's mocking voice. He knew what this place held.
He knew what he had to come to grips with.

The doors slammed shut behind him.
He didn't have a choice to turn back.

The fortress was a shadow if its former self -- the marble floors turned to bone and festooned with dust. The walls stood cracked and decorated with tapestries of moth-eaten cloth. Spider webs hung down and looked like they had taken years to construct.
The halls twisted as they did -- any and every which-way. Skeletal corpses flew about as fish swimming in the air and made painful keening noises.
He walked onward.

The Hunter stopped him in the center of the fortress's main chamber; from which all other halls met. He stood and sneered down at the blue creature but didn't speak above a disturbingly calm whisper.

"You have not what it takes."

Renne answered back in an equally disturbing whisper.

"You know me not."-

--------------------

The things that were never meant to be seen by outside eyes were thrown into the world's reality. It was all visible but intangible like a play performed by ghosts.
It was a ghost story never meant for living observation.

It was a ghost story captured by a robotic lens.

Through a Glass Eye
Godforsaken Children III

"Leave no man behind."
-Black Hawk Down




-He walked down the vaulted hallway for almost an hour before reaching his desired point. When he did, he stood before a chamber that was somehow both disturbingly psychotic and tragically beautiful.
The walls were stone with golden bars embedded in. Layers of dust dulled the gold and brown, dying vines snaked along the surface like some twisted mosaic. The floor was of stone covered with thick, blue-black water about two inches deep. And he almost purred at the sensation of HomeWorld water on his feet.
But it wasn't all this that he was here for.

It was for the far wall.

This wall contrasted starkly from the others. It was so white as to be painfully so. It was decorated with small bronze-coloured statues lined up in neat rows along this glaring-white wall.
Each figure was individual and showed its individual features but all had one word beneath -- Family. None were set above any other and none were duller or brighter than any other.
It was all the same.

He stood before the wall and didn't have to see to know what was there. He whispered the names with quiet reverence.

Pendrell Vodalia. Galos Nyte. Mordred Ravenwood. Zonker. Archie Kennedy. Melkor. Merit. Harold Lowe. Vicfryn Ryliniryn. Silver. Shadow. Richard Murrigu. Santharina Silverleaf. Osprey. Darran. Johnathan Helena Tapole. Stephen Kidd. Gekko Borderlain.

And so many others.
None were higher, none were lower. They all just were.
And he loved them all without reproach.

The Hunter drifted like a shade into the chamber to stand between Renne and the wall. He spoke with an evenly toned whisper that was meant to send chills down the spine.

"Family. Precious."

Renne met the voice with quiet resistance.

"They are all mine. I do for them all the same."

"You broke when Pendrell died."

"Yes. Pendrell was taken. None of us could do anything. I understand this now. Kyra and Odin called it sickness."

"You broke when that one -- " The Hunter tapped the representation of Harold. " -- took his own life."

Renne shuddered.

"I took that life. I gave him the means."

"The maker of thunder."

"Yes."

"You mourn him."

"I still do. I spoke to him by the Great Water for many cold-times."

"He would not have heard you."

Renne didn't move even as the Hunter began to topple each figurine from its place.

"He would not hear you just as his other would not hear you. They have no need of you."

"I will still be here should they have need of me. For all of them."

"You are a toy to them. Amusing but non-essential."

"If that is my place, so be it."

The Hunter put the entire figurine display to the floor in one fast sweep. In a rush, he was inches away from Renne's face but his voice had yet to raise above that whisper.

"The Matron was right. Slave you were, slave you are and slave you will be. They are merciful that they do not beat you."

"I do not wear the band. I stand independent."

"And you would do anything these Humans would ask of you."
It wasn't a question.

"I would."

"You broke when the Human vanished."

"Yes. I do not understand it. I was not there."

"You let him down. You let them all down."

"Be silent. There is much I do not understand."

The Hunter grinned and flew back into the existence/nonexistence that he came from. From the walls themselves, the Hunter watched as Renne gingerly found each figurine and returned it to its place on the wall.
Amid doing this, his thoughts were reeling. He had an idea to explain his ways. But it had to form.
He had to be sure.

When each figure was in its place, Renne dropped into a low, cross-legged/cross-armed bow. Then he stood up and walked back out and down the newest corridor of his mind.-

------------------

He didn't know that the camera existed. He didn't know that it had caught his attempted Analysis for any eye to see. He came out of it with a sharp breath -- the battle was won but the war still raged.
This round at least had provided some idea on how to teach the human healer-of-the-mind.

He carefully shrugged off his yeti furs and put them away. Down off the bed he hopped and soon sat on the floor. His ears flopped to a relaxed position and he held his webbed hands in front of himself, palms-up.
Body temperature raised.
Sweat poured.
Humidity grew until a fog began to take form.

He narrowed the heat down to a point in his hands and thus brought the humid fog with it.

For this, he'd put his memory into someone else's hands.
This once, he'd tell the same stories that were told to him.

For this, he abandoned his strictest tenets in the name of Family.