Truest Angel Part 3 of 3

I did not return to Dr. Levianas. My wound may have healed and I at least cleaned my face but my clothes were still bloodied and torn. The sight would worry her so I took a risk.
I flew to the capital and sought out Dr. Geisler, using information from his letters to Dr. Levianas and using my own sense to confirm his presence.
He was pleasantly surprised to see me before I stepped into the light, not giving much concern of whether I dodged the attention of security creatures. For a moment, shock ran through him but as soon as he assessed my wounds were closed, his mind returned to normal, his composure not even breaking. He trusted me enough that his first question was why I chose to visit rather than if I had been followed or why I was covered in blood. We greeted each other and I showed him my damaged garments.
He said the closest thing to a snide remark I ever received from him, matter of factly reminding me that he weaved essence, not silk.
He measured possible scenarios. From the damage tomy garments, he assumed, except for the inhumanly colored spatters, that the blood belonged to me.
He got me a fresh set of clothes and sent my old ones to one of the capital's many seam-creatures to be repaired after washing out my blood with chemicals.
He estimated with the time for the delivery drones to reach the seam-creature, the seam-creature already having a workload, and the delivery back that I would need to wait a few hours. He chose a rather expensive manufacturer in hope there would be a smaller line as he guessed correctly I had already been away from Dr. Levianas for at least half of what you would consider a day.
He asked what caused it such damage.
I described the beak and rotating teeth to him. He recognized the design and asked for confirmation on certain details.
He explained then that I had been struck with a creature meant to pierce through hardened bone and chitin. It would then eat the beast from within. From that, he was able to guess I had been on a battlefield.
Such an organism should have went right through me. Instead, it stopped in my arm. He asked me if I used my will to slow its velocity, something I knew I did not. He concluded then that my body was evolving further.
It would be best I phrased it exactly as it was spoken from his lips. He said, "It appears you never needed pain. Pain exists for an organism to learn from an experience. Your body adapts to any damage it has undergone so it becomes resistant overtime. Pain would be counterproductive to such a constitution. It is unfortunate though that the cost was you also not feeling anything.”
My vision changed as my eyes widened at that revelation. He continued speaking.
“I imagine you might actually become resistant to aging,” he observed before he saw how I was frowning. “Did I say something wrong?”
He did not know. Angels did not age and were impervious to harm. To me, he was describing me as what so many used to think I was.
I asked him to talk about anything else. He began to speak about his own ventures, his mind mentioned that he met with the founder of the project.
I latched onto that detail and asked him where the founder was. He did not tell me but his mind let it slip.
He changed the subject to me. He wanted to know how I was faring. I told him how I revisited the laboratory and involved myself in a skirmish. I did not tell him that I killed anyone. I said I tried to stop it but failed.
His mind rushed with a torrent of questions that went by too fast for me to answer. He did not ask a single one.
After I received my repaired clothes. Claiming I was returning to Dr. Levanias, I went out to locate the founder and easily found his mansion.
I snuck in through his window. He noticed my entry and went to his drawer to retrieve his weapon without a thought with the force of habit only someone who had been on a battlefield would have.
He called out for me, an intruder to identify myself. I sensed him calculating my location, aiming his weapon toward the entryway I would enter from.
I called back to him. I told him my name and reminded him that we had met in my earliest years. He lowered his weapon but did not put it away as he turned the corner to confirm.
I watched as his expression went from stern suspicion to a beaming smile at the sight of me.
He had more weight than I remembered with more wrinkles and no gray hairs left on his scalp.
He recognized me and invited me into the living room, nonchalantly putting his weapon back in his drawer.
He said quite a number of greetings. He stated how nice it was to see me, asked how I was, he told me I looked beautiful, etc before finally asking why I came.
I was not entirely sure myself. Why? Why was I there?
He used the silence as an opportunity to sit in a chair and I sat across from him.
"I want to know what I was made to be," I finally said.
To that he answered, “The world we live in lacks myth. Our ancient ancestors had tales of gods that shaped the mountains and filled the seas. We lack such mystery, we came here enlightened, our new home mundane. Our people needed a mythology all its own.”
I said that did not explain anything. Before he elaborated, he asked me what I thought adulthood was. I gave him the commonly accepted definition that to be an adult meant one reached reproductive maturity.
He respectfully shook his head to that and offered his own opinion. He believed adulthood was when the child reached the point when it could survive without its parents. Many reached the point where they could beget children but if their own sires perished, they would die too. He held to the idea that one could not reliably nurture the next generation if still tied to the same fate as the previous one.
I personally agreed with that outlook but still reminded him there were organisms that were born orphans. To that he alluded that perhaps both of us were wrong and maybe adulthood was when both conditions were met.
I let myself be distracted by that subject more than I intended to but eventually I remembered my original purpose and asked him what that had to do with my creation.
He took a long pause as he sorted his thoughts, trying to decide where to begin. I knew everything he was to say before he said it, I actually knew more than what he said as he omitted many smaller details so that he was no longer dallying, realizing he delayed me enough.
He explained that he believed species had childhood stages, an adult species would have freedom from the world that spawned it. Humanity in its final days reached maturity but at least we that reached Hedelm regressed back into an infantile state, our new parent being Hedelm.
The first pioneers of this planet were like superhumans able to make massive leaps and bounds and lift boulders with their bare hands under their new world’s lighter gravity but within the first generation, that changed. The new humans became more mundane born and raised within this low gravity as if it was their home so they became more fragile, similar enough in disposition humans of old but within the scale of Hedelm as did the livestock.
So, he acknowledged that we were in a learning stage, and children learned lessons through tales. Our culture needed a mythos of its own, unbound to the single sun and moon and even the stars of the world before.
Thus, he wanted to make something great, an ideal made flesh to inspire the culture to come.
I informed him there were plenty of tall tales. As I flew over cities, every street was ripe with its own rumors. To that, he argued that he wanted a legend, something remembered and passed down. The cities might remember the slumlords and local heroes for a while but Hedelm would always remember the winged being that flew across its skies.
So, I asked if that was what I was supposed to be, a legend. He replied that might have been true if he was the one that made me.
But that original purpose had been abandoned. He gave up on his dream after a hundred failures. He noted how strange it was that he only needed to stay for nine more.
It was Dr. Geisler and Dr. Levianas that brought me to life. I should have known what purpose they had in mind for me. His words perfectly matched with his intent.
I felt a burden lift from me. Not immediately but I felt better. I knew Dr. Levianas and Geisler. Maybe there had been something more behind my creation but they raised me to be me. I had been born to be born.
I returned to Dr. Levianas. The first thing I said to her was “Thank you for letting me be born.”
We did not converse as much as we should have. She noticed I was tired and made me go to bed.
When I awoke, she had a meal ready for me. She reminded me what I told her earlier and asked what brought me to express such gratitude.
Should I have started with how I killed a human? That I was rejected by everyone? That I might be an immortal monstrosity? Yet they still cared about me.
I did tell her all that and more but later. I told her I met Dr. Aquinas and he explained how I was free from any role. I existed because I existed.
For far too short of a time, I stayed with her as if I forgot how to fly. Dr. Levianas's reaction to learning I killed someone was shock but not horror. She had seen war. It appalled her that I, someone she found to be so… I do not know what the word would be. It appalled her that someone like me bloodied my hands.
She did not even need me to explain. She did not even ask me to explain. She knew I was no manic killer, she knew there had to be a reason. However, she also knew I would have told her sooner if it had been an accident. I told her everything for my own sake.
With her in that small house was the only place I belonged. Or maybe it was the only place I wanted to belong in anymore.
I blame no one, not anymore. Both sides of the feud had their reasons justified or unjustified to hate me. If I wanted to, I could have flown to the other side of the world and see what other nations there were to choose from. Not many, I discovered later. My world really was small. Nations I could fly across in a matter of hours in old world time were the world's two greatest superpowers.
Ironically, the skirmishes began to happen less frequently as the special year approached. Both sides preferred to dedicate the time spent orbiting Enion to production.
Or that was what we were told at the time. News of my interference in that skirmish never seemed to officially reach the public of the Technocracy or the Republic. According to Dr. Geisler, later, who heard from Dr. Aquinas skirmishes became less frequent as both sides communed with the other to discuss who it was that I served. The Technocracy had no records of me as their citizen but had to acknowledge the fact I had been involved with them before while the Republic could not reject the possibility I was one of its citizens gone rogue. Neither could fully explain my "invisible attacks." Unable to fully condemn the other, they started to suspect, oddly correctly, that a third party was involved.
They needed to turn their attention away from each other so they could assess other possible threats. The beginning of the special year was sufficient excuse without alerting whatever imaginary nation I truly served.
We could have returned to the laboratory then. We should have but…
Dr. Levianas grew ill. I personally treated her, following her instructions and the results were not favorable. Her heart was failing and quickly. I think she had two attacks where her heart stopped beating before Dr. Geisler arrived. The third one happened in front of everyone.
She needed a new heart. With Dr. Geisler's and Levianas's skills combined, they had several options. Securing a donor or replacing it with something superior were among the choices. The former would be simple enough. The surgery would need to be performed by an expert if either was the case. We did not have the time to grow an entirely new heart or let viral treatment take effect. However, that would require travelling to a surgeon or having the surgeon come to them. Dr. Levianas knew her own body. The next time would be her last and the time spent would work against her.
She by far had saved more people than failed to save but she knew what it meant to die on a surgeon's table. To have the height of hope shattered and last moments be spent asleep surrounded by strangers.
She chose to stay at home. I read her thoughts and found them to be quite clear. She did not want to leave me alone but she accepted her time had come. She had spent her later years operating on me and my departed kin, she did not think she deserved to have her life extended by the same methods she transformed me.
I confronted her about this as she sat in bed and she smiled. I asked why she was so against augmentations and implants to extend her own life when she did the same for others.
Her answer was this, "I have no right to say this as one so involved with such a project but I prefer the way of the previous world. If a person wanted to fly like a bird, they would not sprout out wings. They would not change themselves but how they approached the matter. That is how we made flying crafts long ago, to have ideas transformed by people rather than people that shaped themselves to an idea."
I stated that I liked my wings. That they represented freedom. That they allowed me to go anywhere I wanted. She smiled wider as she thought about all the places I could go.
Dr. Levanas took my hand, held it as tightly as she could as if I might somehow feel her touch. Wisdom secreted some chemical fear into me to confirm how strong that final grasp was. When I dream, I think I felt it, a dull pressure around my palm.
"I think this world is too small for you," she mused as her heart stopped.
I let my hand slip out of hers and found I could not stand. I felt heavy. There was this weight in my chest that I should not have felt. I sat as Dr. Geisler rose.
We did not resuscitate her. Geisler slowly pulled the cloth over her face then sat beside me. There we both wordless stayed, hollow together. His mind was utterly empty for once.
I wanted to feel sorry for myself but right beside me was a man who lost his friend, his only friend, from his own quiet reasoning.
We only had each other.
I think in that moment he must have read my mind. He hugged me. At first I did not notice but I sensed the closeness of his mind and the scant comfort he felt in my presence, desperately holding onto the only person he had left. I am not sure which of us cried first.
We held our own silent wake there. I had time to read Dr. Levianas's thoughts and Dr. Geisler already knew so I said nothing as he called for and directed the undertaker. She wanted to be buried with her husband.
Dr. Geisler attended the official funeral. I did not. Dr. Geisler passed invitations to the surviving members of the project and they held a reunion at my birthplace.
I encountered Dr. Aquinus and many people I only ever heard of. Many were awed by word of my capabilities but I was not in the mood to perform any demonstrations.
There, Dr. Geisler gave his true eulogy. I do not remember it well. After the beginning, I began to cry. It had an awkward start as Dr. Geisler reminded everyone of their joint venture before he… I think he admitted he envied Dr. Levianas. He said she was someone who naturally cared. At some point among her long list of achievements, he stated her greatest accomplishment was raising me. Everyone there was content to create but she was the only one suited to nurture as was required for raising another.
The others left but Dr. Geisler and I stayed. We moved back in. We left it half filled but it felt empty.
A few days after we settled back in, I brought up what Dr. Levianas said to me at the end. She had forseen where I would be able to journey. If I truly would come to stop aging, I would soon enough be able to see all of Hedelm.
It was difficult to explain to him my idea, in many ways. How was I supposed to tell him I was thinking about flying to another world without sounding like a fool or I was trying to abandon him?
Of course I did not want to abandon him. Maybe I felt a kinship with him. If his blood was to be tested, he would at least be arrested in his own home soil and he was still too ordinary to fit among the people of the Republic. He was the only person left in the world I knew I could hope to understand me. However his isolation had always been a matter of his own choosing.
I never once called him by father and never once did he attribute my existence to his design. I was born from the project, he just happened to have been the one that finally brought the experiments to fruition.
I lied just now. Did I not? This exile of mine that brought me here was of my own choosing. Maybe I really was his offspring.
He asked me for what purpose I wanted to leave. If I was leaving Hedelm because there was something I hated about it, I could change it. In half of one of our years, I had become a popular figure in a land that should have hated me. They feared me thanks to the revived hostilities but if I waited long enough, I could retake that place in their hearts. He even suggested that I could defect to the Republic. I had no true ties of citizenship or obligation to bind me.
I am selfish. I know that. I am not the ideal being the project wanted but some part of me wanted to do this for Hedeldo anyone else out there.
As far as Hedelm knew, they could have been the only survivors. They might have been alone or just beyond the stars, there could be countless others. I knew what it felt like to be surrounded yet feel alone so… I decided to travel to another world so I could tell them that they were not alone.
Do you want to know how our conversation went? Rather than forthrightly reject the idea, he assessed it step by step then asked questions.
He inquired how I was supposed to survive the cold emptiness of the void if I could somehow leave the atmosphere.
I had no answer. That was why I needed to consult him. He skipped ahead to the hypothetical that we discovered I could go without air, food, and warmth. I still be adrift in the emptiness. My wings would have no air to fly upon.
That I already considered. I could steer and propel myself with my will. He was surprised by my ready answer and assumed I already thought about how I was supposed to locate a place to steer myself towards.
Indeed, I did. I could use my sense to notice other life.
Dr. Geisler acknowledged already put some thought into it. He assessed I only needed him for the task of ensuring I could survive.
He was very clear that he would not assist me in committing suicide. So, he promised to help me in every way he could. But he needed me to promise something.
I already detected the request nestled in his head. I still asked what it was he needed me to promise.
His request was simple. If our venture was deemed impossible, I had to give up. I then asked if he meant for it to be deemed impossible by him or by me.
He confirmed that he meant me. It had to be me. I would decide but he would not allow me to risk my life for what I know to be nothing.
What I hated most besides leaving Dr. Geisler was that before the tests could even begin, I had to have Wisdom removed. Wisdom had quite literally become a part of me. Even if he had been forcefully removed, he could regenerate from any piece that remained.
No, Wisdom had to be lured out in his entirety in a very long process. That was if we wanted Wisdom to live, which I insisted. The exit point was the nape of my neck as the parasite detached from my nervous system and crawled into a storage tank filled with fluids. The open air caused him pain and I felt his distress in place of the agony the procedure would have forced any other soul to endure.
It disturbed me that Wisdom's initial reaction to essentially being moved into an aquarium was fear then discontent. I had been so used to him being at least satisfied that his unhappiness felt alien to me.
Wisdom was quite large after having time to mature. The parasite looked like a scale outline of myself or maybe a winged stick figure covered in branching filaments. Outside of me, Wisdom rolled into a fibrous worm-shape when in motion while coiling into a condensed ball when at rest.
Wisdom's mood bettered once Dr. Geisler mixed nutrients directly into the solution he swam in. He actually became happy after being able to eat freely and move about at one's own power.
Losing Wisdom's presence troubled me. I do not know if this would be the same but I know people who can hear and listen to their own heartbeats. I imagine it would be the same as no longer being able to hear or smell an everpresent part of my life, like no longer being able to hear your own heartbeat or breathing.
I asked Dr. Geisler what he intended to do with Wisdom. He answered truthfully that he would keep the worm as for lack of a better word, a pet. The parasite would be incompatible with anyone other than me and supposedly had limited intelligence. A comparison was made to him being somewhere near a domesticated fish in learning capacity. Of course, that was based on the original organism that served as Wisdom's template.
Wisdom would have interfered with the trials. I endured environments that should have killed or driven mad any other. The one that suffered the most was Dr. Geisler who watched the entire time, ready to cut the experience short if it appeared I would die.
The trials were simple, I would be exposed to a stimulus each, I would not say our days but, your idea of a day and that stimulus would grow more extreme each time. I was slowly deprived of oxygen, starved, for lack of a better word beaten, incinerated, and frozen until nothing seemed to be able to hurt me at all. It was difficult to find a means to acclimate me to heavier gravity. As I am now, I can survive off the rays of distant stars.
While I underwent the trials, Dr. Geisler calculated the means for me to make my escape from the bounds of gravity. It took him longer than normal to arrive at a conclusion but his answer was quite simple. I would need to leave in the middle of a special year, when Hedelm was furthest from the triplet stars.
As for how I would break through the atmosphere, my will gave little regard to gravity. I would direct myself towards (fourth star) and make an orbit around it to gain momentum before breaking free at a pace exceeding that of Hedelm's own journey across the stars.
It was already the early stages of the special year when he finished his calculation. I would be physically ready by then but I suggested staying through another cycle for his sake. I thought maybe I might stay until the day he joined Dr. Levianas.
If he was correct that I might one day cease to age, we had many years left together until his viral treatments no longer proved adequate or he encountered an accident.
Dr. Geisler rejected that idea. If I intended to stay, it could not be for him. If I wanted what was best for him, he wanted to be alive to see me leave, to know I safely began my journey.
I did not want to leave him alone. His comparison to me leaving as asuicidae attempt was a symptom of the emptiness he himself wrestled with. He had no plans, it was not as though he was plotting his demise for after I left but I could not guess what direction my absence would lead him.
Near the end, he was drafting schematics for mechanisms capable of leaving the planet. With our technology the way it was, he could not think of a creature capable of producing enough combustion to leave the atmosphere by its own power, so he recommended the construction of towers reaching into space. After that, the space voyagers would need to be able to survive in a sealed ecosystem. The passengers would either need to live there and maintain a population for generations or be put into hibernation. The difficult part would be designing a creature capable of protecting its charges from the impact of reaching a new world.
This was a strange subject to interest him. He only seemed to care about such principles when it came to me making my escape.
I discovered his reasons through my usual means but I still respected him enough to ask why he was making such designs. His answer was simple, he wanted people to be able to follow me so he would not have to worry about me being alone.
I think that reassured me. Even if I failed to find another colonized world, I could hope to land somewhere and have someone from my own world one day discover me.
Oh do not worry, I traveled here faster than other feasible means from my world. You do not need to fear an invasion from my home within your lifetime. Even if by some cruel working of fate, they appeared here tomorrow with war in mind, I think I already revealed at least some of their weaknesses and you currently are in many ways more advanced than the world I remember. Our greatest strength had always been flesh and stone.
Even now, I have faith in my own people. They may have fought each other but even the warmongers among them would realize that with such slow travel, any world they come across would have had years to advance themselves while they drifted through the emptiness. I imagine they really would come in peace. If they chose otherwise, those that chose to retain their human form would not fare well in simple combat once they touched the ground after spending so long unchained by gravity.
I do imagine them doing as their ancestors did. Once Hedelm was entirely covered with life, they would send vessels to worlds beyond. By then they would hopefully be adults as Dr. Aquinas put it. If they do come here in the distant future and I am for some reason gone, please try to be welcoming, it is lonely in the dark. Now that I think about it, a friendly face would be appreciated after such travel.
As much as I speak of my people resorting to violence, there is more to Hedelm’s history than violence. Alliances at least once existed. I hopefully just happened to be born in an era of retired warriors. I saw my people’s soul, I would like to think the ceasefire was the beginning of a new norm.
As the day of my departure drew near, we both left from the laboratory. Me, to see the world one last time and Dr. Geisler to secure favors so he would have an observatory in the capital reserved. We would meet at the observatory in the dark that only a night of a special year afforded us.
We promised to both go back. Me to feed Wisdom while he was busy and him to do the same when all was done. Leaving him responsible for Wisdom seemed to leave me feeling more secure that he had something he knew he needed to do once I was gone.
I no longer needed to sleep by the time I made my final flight. I can still sleep, I just do not need to anymore. If I could not, I imagine I would have gone mad. But it is also good that I no longer need to. It would not surprise me if I can detect every human on this planet. It is difficult to dream for myself when I have so many minds in contact with my own.
I am out of practice with limiting my sense’s range and I never did fully master controlling it while I slept. I simply learned to ignore the way I imagine you learned to stop listening rather than cut off your own ears if there was too much noise nearby. My sense’s further range is also giving me a bit of difficulty being certain that I am receiving only your thoughts when I talk so I thank you for speaking when you do choose to speak.
It only would have required me half of one of my days or three days by the count of the old world to fly around the world. However, I required two as I tried to appreciate the many minds I passed over, gauged their reactions to me, captured glimpses of their hopes and dreams, and assessed their everyday life.
I took to the skies and many below called out to me as an angel. I had to tell the less advanced groups hidden in the distant corners of the world that I came across not to worship me but that only convinced them all the more that I was an angel.
How frustrating it was to punctuate my final interaction with the world with a misunderstanding. One of the things the people noticed was how my cheeks went flush with what they did not seem to know was irritation.
After I returned to the laboratory, I said my farewells to Wisdom. Wisdom grew larger without my flesh to contain the parasite.
I pressed my hand to the side of the tank.
"Goodbye," I said.
Wisdom unfurled and mimicked my position like an enlarged mirror image, our "hands" meeting.
Goodbye, I felt Wisdom say to me.
Of course, I was surprised by this. I probably let my mouth go slack before adjusting it into a smile. I already said what I needed to, if I lingered I might have missed my appointment.
I found Dr. Geisler asleep on a leather seat. In the seat beside him sat Dr. Levianas's medical supplies, the same kit used to treat me from when I so ungracefully fell from the sky.
His sleeping mind was slow. Relishing memories for every detail.
I went through the supplies. Something somewhat familiar to me yet did not belong there caught my attention, a second syringe. The design was different from the ones Dr. Levianas used. It was much larger, meant for measuring and adjusting chemical input. There was no blood to be seen, then again there would not be.
Thinking the worst, I shook him awake, by the shoulder. His opening eyes caught a glimpse of the object in my hand and I understood what he did as his waking mind slowly began to regain its usual pace.
Dr. Geisler did it before I arrived because he knew he could not hide it from me. He knew if I had an idea what he had planned, I might try to stop him or refuse to fly, knowing he would do it the moment I was beyond his sight.
He took a syringe, loaded it with the cleanser that I might have mentioned was once meant for me and injected it in his neck.
It would not kill him, nor did it necessarily harm him. He had been keeping himself young through viral treatments. The injection set his time back in motion. It did not immediately revert him, he did not magically age but he was ordinary again.
He scolded me when I accused him of planning to kill himself. Saying that if his goal was to end his life, he would not need to become ordinary.
His reasoning was confusing, especially with how he so quickly disassembled everything, leaving his own mortality as hardly a footnote. He had plenty of things he wanted to do but he needed them done swiftly. An ordinary life gave him a time limit, a sense of urgency to drive him to make something of his own choice and design.
Of course, he only disclosed to me that he did not have any plans of suicide. His thoughts confirmed his words. By his logic, he could always start his viral treatments anew.
I remember frowning as I nodded in acknowledgement then forced myself to smile as we said our goodbyes.
He tried to spare me lectures. I was the one that could fly, I understood certain matters based on unique experience. Still, he worried about me, reminding me that I needed to slow myself before reentry the way one would remind a child to slow one’s steed when nearing the edge of a cliff.
Even if I can seemingly defy gravity with my will, I am not a god. I could not bring myself to halt at such velocities by will alone even if I wanted to. If I somehow could bring myself to a complete stop, it would be no better than letting myself crash into a wall. The best I could hope for was slowing my descent. If I was to encounter a potential world, I would need to revolve around it as a new satellite until I reached a manageable pace.
My personal objective was to fly towards the ground at an angle like a bird rather than plummet like a stone. I find it less difficult to glide down when I land, I do not need to use my will at all for such maneuvers, under normal circumstances but as you might have noticed reentering from the void of space is far from normal for me.
We hugged and I found myself struggling to move as I let him go yet he did not do the same for me. I returned the gesture as if i never tried to part, struggling against my own strength not to break him as I tried to hold him tightly as I could. It was not until his mind told me that my embrace hurt that I loosened my grip.
I pray he had a long and happy life. It is difficult to imagine a future that might have satisfied him.
We finally let each other go. He remained standing as motioned for me to fly free.
I spread my wings and went straight up. I felt Dr. Geasler and other souls in the city that happened to catch sight of me watching in awe.
I went beyond the clouds and reached out with my sense further than I ever had before and focused on that lone man (in the observatory) shouting his goodbyes to me as if his words could reach me.
I felt his familiar certainty and confidence but this time it was warm, light as if lifting me up, encouraging me, telling me over and over that I was almost there. I feared such an outburst might have been too much to his all too often calm heart.
Frost formed on the edge of my vision as I approached the endless black sky. My body went stiff, I had to guide myself through will alone as I forced my eyes to stay open a little longer. As I made it beyond, I saw the sun to my side even as the world beneath me was still in shadow.
As I went further, I saw in the distance behind me the three lights of Los, Ahania, and Vala. There was so much light yet everything was so dark. It was like a pure black sheet with holes where colors could be spied through.
I have mentioned before how Hedelm was small. If only you had the chance to see how tiny everything is when looking in from the great emptiness. It really should not be called something so bleak as emptiness or the void. All around you, you can see the tiny pinpricks of light from distant galaxies like a boundless night sky.
I relied so much on my sight and sense. Everything was set out before me to be seen yet… There was something missing. It was only my thoughts that were with me, no Dr. Geisler, not even Wisdom. It was thent that I realized I was utterly alone.
I closed my eyes. I felt cold, then I felt no more. The stars remained silent, at least for me.