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One of the first things people learn in their life is the notion of object permanence. That something can vanish from sight, but that it still exists even out of sight. It was a fairly key milestone in most very tiny lives, important for the functioning of the human mind, but more than that it was perhaps one of the first lessons people would ever learn in the ideal of faith.
Scotty had learned object permanence. Faith, though, was harder.
He didn't remember a time when he had any certainty that those he loved would indeed come back again, even though he knew they still existed. His earliest memories were of the shuffle and leaving, and only rarely the returns: His mother taking him to relatives he barely knew, or hired caretakers, or sometimes neighbors if he had school. Leaving, with no set time to come back; if she did set a time, he would count the hours in anxiety. It was a very uncertain life for any child, let alone one who just badly wanted something of a routine to believe in.
Little by little, he gave up waiting. And eventually, he gave up hoping. Faith never had entered into the equation, and when things finally all exploded, he went so far as he could run the other way.
It was, therefore, somehow strange that the first inklings towards faith didn't come from starship duty on a ship he didn't like, or in a brother he had badly wanted to love, but in a place where the world could be changed with a wave of a hand.
What had started as friendship, sometimes occasional antagonism, turned to something like idle flirtation and then became something real in open defiance of the nature of the beach. Became something solid, something that came as close to permanence as Scotty had ever known in his life.
It was not to say that he had faith it would be forever. Life had battered too much of that from him. He knew, in his mind, that this could and perhaps would be fleeting, not because he thought that they would want to end it, but just because something went wrong, or something happened to take it away.
Scotty didn't have faith, but he had Harold.
And morning, in their bed, in their house, this stable little place in an unstable universe would drift through his senses; sea, and laundry soap, and finally Harold himself, still asleep in the pale, vague pre-dawn light. Dark, and quiet. Breathing. His.
He stole an early morning kiss, feather light so as not to wake Harold up, then snuggled back into the comforter. A reminder to himself. A defiance against the laws he'd lived by throughout his memory.
He didn't believe in faith, but with Harold, for the first time he started really wanting to again.
Such were the lessons of morning.
One of the first things people learn in their life is the notion of object permanence. That something can vanish from sight, but that it still exists even out of sight. It was a fairly key milestone in most very tiny lives, important for the functioning of the human mind, but more than that it was perhaps one of the first lessons people would ever learn in the ideal of faith.
Scotty had learned object permanence. Faith, though, was harder.
He didn't remember a time when he had any certainty that those he loved would indeed come back again, even though he knew they still existed. His earliest memories were of the shuffle and leaving, and only rarely the returns: His mother taking him to relatives he barely knew, or hired caretakers, or sometimes neighbors if he had school. Leaving, with no set time to come back; if she did set a time, he would count the hours in anxiety. It was a very uncertain life for any child, let alone one who just badly wanted something of a routine to believe in.
Little by little, he gave up waiting. And eventually, he gave up hoping. Faith never had entered into the equation, and when things finally all exploded, he went so far as he could run the other way.
It was, therefore, somehow strange that the first inklings towards faith didn't come from starship duty on a ship he didn't like, or in a brother he had badly wanted to love, but in a place where the world could be changed with a wave of a hand.
What had started as friendship, sometimes occasional antagonism, turned to something like idle flirtation and then became something real in open defiance of the nature of the beach. Became something solid, something that came as close to permanence as Scotty had ever known in his life.
It was not to say that he had faith it would be forever. Life had battered too much of that from him. He knew, in his mind, that this could and perhaps would be fleeting, not because he thought that they would want to end it, but just because something went wrong, or something happened to take it away.
Scotty didn't have faith, but he had Harold.
And morning, in their bed, in their house, this stable little place in an unstable universe would drift through his senses; sea, and laundry soap, and finally Harold himself, still asleep in the pale, vague pre-dawn light. Dark, and quiet. Breathing. His.
He stole an early morning kiss, feather light so as not to wake Harold up, then snuggled back into the comforter. A reminder to himself. A defiance against the laws he'd lived by throughout his memory.
He didn't believe in faith, but with Harold, for the first time he started really wanting to again.
Such were the lessons of morning.