Monday, August 6, 2012

Avalon chapter eight

   She awoke abruptly fears of the hounds rising as she sensed thier nearness.  "calm, sister, calm... your mind was near dissolution, we would not see you harm your self", said a voice, female, beautiful, so full of radiant all knowing wisdom.  Trying to move she realized she was strapped down and blind.  Her minds eye equally blind, she began to panic, struggling against her bonds.  "please sister, be calm...we shall release you, we did not desire harm to come to you, flesh is so....fragile,"  The voice spoke now with what sounded like infinite sadness, maybe even regret.
   Suddenly she realized her limbs were her own, and a cool cloth woven of some strange material she'd never seen was removed, then vanished.  Moving slowly she sat up, not wanting to be restrained agian.  Suddenly she thought of her crew mates, images of a time  before when she was being held by a cold unfeeling force while something tenebrous had been crawling through her mind pulling at her thoughts.  Nearly as quick as she could think,  an image of Jo jo appeared in the air before her.
   Jo jo, how he must despise her, his brown hair, and dark eyes you could fall into forever, with his strong rim forged body, compared to her icy blue eyes, long straight white hair, thin frame, small breasts and edenic features.   Her chest heaved and hitched at the thought of him.  Knowing that firm, calloused hand would never touch her like he even touched that ship.  It was safer than she was, even though both of them had been born in the core, as a rye chuckle escapes her soft throat, her eugenic modification banned as unholy by his people, her heart catches in her pulsing chest, her breathing becomes jagged, psionic, damned, she's a psi, rasped out, she's abomination.  He could never even see her, she was everything his people despised, in the end the ship was more real, both things of the imperium, both eugenically modified, both, she couldn't think it, his faith didn't speak of ships only sentients.
   "be still sister, you worry yourself, tell us more of your crew, and your people, we've slept eons, waiting to come forth in the age of companions, but are you ready to join us"?  A warmth suffused her, calming her like a balm, taking away the pain.  Pain, she thought of the doctor, so strange, like a giant squid floating around on helium filled bladders, but his multiple arms made him an incredible doctor. Even if he was prone to change colors with his moods, and his thoughts strange and angular.  Poor Den, growing up on Hadean.  He was EG too.  Not like her though, his dark skin, and black in black eyes.  Dark gills, and spots all over his body.  She understood, just as she'd been modified for Intelligence, beauty, genetic skill, and psi potential, he'd been modified to thrive.  While she was made unto everything desirable, he was made into everything to survive and serve, though that was left unsaid but never forgotten. His body utilized everything, allowing for almost no waste, what little his body failed to find a use for was excreted through sweat.  He was always so lonely, and sad but you never knew, always laughing, trying to cheer up the rest of the crew.  The first with a laugh or a joke.  Yet his thoughts always circling around the captain.
   Strange how as she thought of these things they seemed to appear in front of her, in full detail, she could almost see things shed never noticed before.  From out of the darkness a new voice was heard, cold, making her skin prickle.   "This takes to long, return her to me, I will finish extracting the information needed", her heart began to race,  blood going cold, she wanted nothing to do with that voice, didn't want it inside her mind.  She began to withdraw her mind into that safe core, reaching out for the others, the captain, Aery, anyone.  "you see brother, you move to quickly, she is not ready, move slowly, the answers come we have waited and slumbered what's a small amount of time, to create emissary?"
   Jandi remembered a trip she once took to the kissing river with friends, it had become a place the young would come to swim and escape the heat, and control of the authority for a short time consuming fermented juices and other illicits. One day they had gone out and a boy she wasn't very much fond of had produced what he called a Queryan blossom. It was truly beautiful, it's azure, cerulean and royal purple petals glowing with it's own inner bio-luminescent light.  She didn't want it destroyed, they were very rare, coming from only one world on the far outer rim.  They were expensive beyond belief to acquire, you could probably by a whole world with the cost of one flower, the world from which they came was in one of the many regions of space owned and governed by those not wanting to abide by imperium law.
    So they had seized large portions of the rim, and whether feudal lord, criminal empire, or corporate realm they protected thier regions of space violently she had heard.  How Jorvan had gotten the blossom was a total mystery, as she moved to stop him he laughingly threw the blossom into the fire, "it's ok, my old man's nearly blind from looking into these things", for a single moment the bloom became so incandescent you could only look away, its odor unlike anything she'd smelled before then the light consumed her as the azure smoke began to rise.  Carrying her mind with it.  For a moment she understood he had stolen the blossom from his father, then all thought had fled from her.  She was a creature of instinct flying over land between sea and sky.  Observing her world as it was, is, and one day will be.  Her mind stretched out beyond her world, out into the deep void, she craved so desperately.  Looking back at her world, she could sense all of the tiny minds like flickering lights, and sought her parents. Finding thier minds pattern easy enough, she could hear their thoughts, draconian syndrome, the bane of psi's for generations.  Tales told of how an out of control dragon had ended the days of old terra in fire and blood.  She knew a little about S. T. S., Synaptic teratogenic syndrome, no one knew what caused it, but it was terrible.  Causing dementia, and physical coma, while the mind remained trapped, useless, and helpless inside the decaying body.  How could they believe she had D. S.  That was impossible, or she thought it was, until that day she overheard her friends, saying those awful things.
   It all came rushing back, the hounds, her fleeing, being sent off to Trinity station that night for her protection.  Then that calming warmth returned, "calm yourself, you are not this dragon you fear, nor we're you ever, we have helped you though.  We've increased your potential a thousand fold", the voice whispered in her mind, "no, no, no, you can't have, oh great maker no, he'll despise me forever", she thought sinking deeper in despair.  "No, sister we've made you better, stronger, no longer an unweeded garden, you are now in full bloo-", she's cut off as a tearing rending thought shatters the aether, "you've ruined me FOREVER, and I'm not your sister".  Then Jandi knew only an alien darkness as it wrapped its tendrils around her body, and mind.

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