TLUS.1.4
But even nature needs to blink.
Has to scratch an itch. Force a sneeze.
And regardless the degree of marksmanship, a distraction is a distraction, no room for argument, and when you only have one shot, she must take solace in knowing that, even if only by one, it did indeed miss its mark, and she will accept the consequences, weapon in hand.
Nature sighed its deepest of sighs and lowered its gun, content with its count for the day and seemingly accepting that a single survivor may be allowed, just this once, against the odds of its own realm. Betrayed by its own creation, she will turn and walk away from the single soldier remaining, even if she knows she should not. She'll let him awaken, get confused and then scared, maybe just die anyway from a lack of air or at the hands of one of the approaching Foolish crews, intent on not letting her contribution to the battle go to waste.
His suit was oxygenated, so he will not starve for air. Around him swims a testament to his impossibility, so this is not luck hard to greet. Instead, his eyes fold on themselves in colours curling, as he tries to regain a sense of direction or thought, splayed in motionless form within the corpse.
A gutted thing, the ship had been made paper against the storm. Now a skeleton itself, to let the webwork of light from beyond be cut and torn into odd shapes, to flow over the debris. It is as though the ruined form is caught falling among sand, as the fragments of things whole moments ago float, catching the glow. Amidst this, the only thing complete save for the beams of his craft, floats the man if wild improbabilities.
Saved, from the totally inevitable. He, unfeasible.
The face behind the helmet was rapt in drunken disbelief, open mouthed and dull eyed, trying to make sense as the cold crept in.
The carcass is vast and consuming but a nothingness to the dark, which fills the spaces between the lined and paints the man against black. But it is punctuated by something green. Some star or planet, to meet the ship in its thrown off course, those of the helm able to make distance but not enough, to allow the grand body now to move alongside a deep, virescent light, which beams in deep tones through the many holes and wounds of the ship, as streaks and edges of bottle green. It is among this psychedelic memorial to seconds-past carnage which braced him, as he flares with consciousness and his mind breathes life, from the instruction of desperation, which brings wide eyes to a doomed state.
He floats there, caught in the attention of the leaf-coloured God. It stares at the slim figure who flails and spins, reaching in distorted shapes. He is central, in a strain of the ship long and flat. A walkway, within which he is frozen, unable to reach either side, so to try and turn to distances a finger too far.
He isn't scared. He is too cold and too shocked for fear to boil yet, but it bleeds in muted shades through stiff limbs, as things colder than even the void play against his back, burning against his nerves, so that he twitches with this foreign experience.
Nobody should be alive.
Surely, the green God said kill everything. Indeed, it is bitter of its inaccuracy, which would let some slip. Now, to stare among the skeleton and see that thing twitch, is to glare, in shades of things trapped between death and life. The leaf which blooms and dies, of that familial tone.
The man makes no sound. Nothing does, yet his motion connotes only the quiet, as all he touches are the millions of things which catch the light also, as fragments which hold themselves in perfect stillness. His wide clutches create shockwaves then, orchestrated as dust by the warm window, which ripples from him.
He disturbs that which ought to be dead. Is impulsive in his offered survival, and this attracts attention. Things which would haunt the grave must surely have their eyes drawn, because as he flails, thought cast but to the motion he pursues, that bracing fear is allowed to break for a moment.
His eyes twitch, and he struggles to turn.
The green churns and moves, as though the God looks to run.
Something moves in the way, and the webwork around him shifts from behind to accommodate that which travels high, stalking before the trails of light.
Among the skeleton remains and the wire-like green, a thing moves when he does not.
He cannot turn so he instead strains, his helmet shifting but preventing what he may see if he was free. He cannot pretend to guard or defend, and communication falls to the darkness, so he instead tries to see, following from the corner of his searching eye the trails of taken green, so that he can estimate distance and placement, among the framework of the ruined place. The thing is higher than he and it moves slowly, following the beams behind him. But its motion is odd, not held by the demand to push and catch itself from rail to rail. It stalks at a constant, holding to the straits of the skeletal walkway.
The man, as he watches the lights, is unsure what to make of the movements. The obvious holds to mind, but he tries to shake it anyway, dismissing the idea to his own obvious limitations.
But it does look as though the thing walks.
His struggle brings him to grunt in effort, so he lets the motions waver.
Upon a breath he floats, caught on shadows. It is a sense unlike all others which leads his gaze to sit, perched on the sockets of his eyes, to await the thing to stray into view. He couldn't talk; all radios would have been torn to shreds, and anyway, he wouldn't give the Fools a pinpoint. So he hung in silence, as silence strung him upon bloody, tight threads, which dug into his nerves.
He is cold as he waits, following the lights. His chest hurts, the sudden decompression playing with his senses, and the chill keeps the pain locked.
It is a sense of dread which plays him, forming notes of heavy breath and twitching limbs, which chase slight prickles across his freezing body.
His hand slams to his thigh, on impulse birthed by something he himself hadn't properly felt, as a fleeting sense, but he finds no gun. His grip clutches his leg, tight and desperate, before it slips free.
It is a feeling most unusual which embraces him, as a shape dwells on the extents of his vision, indeed high and tracing the beams. As though all that has ever happened to him slips into normality, as he stands against something truly peculiar. An event unseen. A truth untold. Something which, in that moment, he could let all other things subside to.
He breathes hard and tenses up, as it wanders.
He watches it come, letting thoughts run without detail. A thing which walks without force, in human form, to tread lightly across steel rods. A senseless motion, as the things clothes are taken by space, to float as a hood and short cape, which swells with movement unchanged by the lack of gravity, to be shrouded in that which obeyed the soldier's laws.
This thing is embedded in the black. The man who floats makes his distinctions only by the straight lights which pin against the back. Of its face, he can say nothing, but it is masculine in figure and its forearms and legs are bound with thin, wrapping strips, to create an odd illusion, as thin limbs carry ordinary travel under a cover of shifting, slipping cloth. It is an alien form, too inhuman for the thought to be passed off as a slim build. Like a child under the sheet, the ghost creeps slowly among the skeleton, head turned a margin toward the man. It is unnatural, both in the clear rule-breaking of its stance but also in those movements, as an apparition which sways among chaos, as though it is here out of curiosity.
It is then that this thing stops, looking out toward the dark and away from the green, and says that it has a problem.
The soldier blinks.
He hears the thing talk.
His mind freezes and slows as he tries to think.
Staring, the man makes to speak, but feels it pointless. Even then, addressing the unthinkable, it is a pointless proposition, and he does not hear the voice over his radio. It is a tone of conversation, cast when none other can be heard. Instead, he remains still, and watches the figure of shadow, cloth and pin-prick green.
It says that it doesn't understand how the man is here. Why the man is here, in the middle of the nothingness.
It speaks in a light tone, holding severity to an airiness of intrigue. As though it is making conversation with a friend of a friend. Reluctant to respond, the man knows that his answer would be unsatisfactory, and watches the figure raise a hand to its head, blocking an invisible sunlight as it gazes into the deep. What to make of it, the man does not know. To fall on his desire to consider it a threat would be to forget his inevitable death if left alone.
It turns, head cocked as it speaks.
It asks who the man is. To have survived this, it says, gesturing vaguely, he must surely be someone important, regardless of what he himself thinks. A one of a kind, truly. The tone is almost childish in bubbling admiration, and the soldier is concerned to keep a straight face, for he somehow thinks the figure can see his expressions behind the mask.
Against all judgment, the soldier licks his lips, and says that he doesn't know how he survived. That he was nobody that special.
For a moment, he is unsure whether anyone heard him, but a gentle waver from the figure recognises response, as it shrugs and turns, walking slowly back the way it had come.
The figure says, with a wave of its hand, that the soldier doesn't know who he is. To propose such a thing is meaningless, especially out here. Away from all his stories and memories, all are nothing, no different to the dark. Indeed, the thing says, with another wayward point, the man is no different to the torn and shredded cells of his fallen comrades, which linger as powder against his coat. The man looks around at the particulates glowing.
No, the figure continues. He has a problem, not a question. A question cast far, toward whatever let a storm pass perfectly around the man, curled in a ball, bracing for death. What would hold him close, without given reason, when a whole ship would be made ash, unknown and indivisible, as a mess of broken and forgotten swirls.
The soldier watches the dust float past his helmet, eyes tracing the shine, and says vaguely that he's more than just cells. He doesn't know why he conversates, when the thing has expressed the soldier as a mere witness to speculation. Maybe it is the oddity of the things figure and tone, which makes the man lose a sense he may have had before it arrived.
To his side, the thing drops to his level, upon a beam of level height, and the soldier shudders with an impact unheard and unfelt, as the thing approaches, half in vision, but similarly cast in the unseeable.
The thing asks, waving, what the man is talking about. It says that the man floats there, twitching and flexing with the cold, his mind working to figure what is happening. Working from impulse, the brain forcing questions to try and make connections. As it approaches, the shroud drifts down a separate beam, away from sight, but continues toward the soldier.
It says that it isn't even talking to anyone, truly. The brain is working, and its conscious is speaking. The man cannot move from that spot, yet the brain lets him feel deathly cold. The man doesn't know what he is doing, his mind is just saying that he does. Conjuring chemical representations, of things the man calls fear, and cold. Surely, if he knew what he was, the man could see these expressions as infallible and non-existent. As electricity and meat, making false emotion.
The soldier listens as the thing talks, amusing itself over conversating.
A waver in the system, the thing says as it nears, voice looming. With time, and without true threat, the brain does not become stronger, so much as it lends more space to its personality. Simpler animals don't have as much personality, it says, as a person, but it can run and walk and do all of the same physical things. A brain which let its conscious slip then, as it needed less instinct and let thoughts blossom, and accommodated these, to maintain control, with what the soldier feels now.
The soldier, who feels unease and the chill, lets his limbs loose, as he hovers there.
It is a chemical practice that says that it knows what it is, the thing continues, drawing close. A false pretence of strength, no? Of control which, when the thought is allowed peace to wander, can conjure so much, but under true circumstances, falls to the work of the mind. That which churns and powers and focusses, letting its consciousness play with its civilisations.
As the thing speaks, the man can picture it pretending to fiddle with something between its fingers.
Truly, when the soldier floats there, and says that he knows what he is, he must by lying. He is nothing more than the dust, except he is dust which still gets hungry, and cold, and scared. Where is his justification in that? His proclaimed knowledge? He is a thought, carried by the mind. The mind shifts and changes and grows, but as it becomes evermore complacent, it lets its space slip to the thing which whispers and chants in the back.
The thing comes close, emerging behind the soldier, standing on a broken outcrop just from reach.
The man mustn't know what he is, or else he would figure the coming discomfort and kill himself before it came. He is alone, with only so much air, slowly freezing. If he knew who he was, he'd already be dead. It is the machine which tells him he wants to live, as an unimaginative and primitive mechanism.
The man, who tries to turn, says that regardless, he is alive. He may not know, but he is what he is.
The thing, looking at its hand, says that there isn't a single piece left of that man from the day he was borne. It has all died off and been remade, time and time again. Dividing and dividing, the man cannot even be sure he is the same person he was a few years ago. A day ago. Before the ship was ripped apart.
The soldier strains to turn as far as possible, and asks what should be soundless what it is doing here.
The thing is still for a moment, looking at its fingers, as a shade against the dark.
It pushes itself from the beams, losing gravity, to come close to the man's shoulder, the distance creating ribbons of light which catch a silvery face, cast as bone to be worn as a mask. Hooded as a metal, dead thing, close to the soldier who listens, it says that it has come to figure what could survive the impossible, and whether it ought to be curios.