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NePoi!
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Ontario, Canada
Age: 43
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The first bit of part 6.
Spoiler for Crystal Valley - Part 6:
Part 6
Destiny is where... you make a stand.
- Season 1.5 trailer for Stargate: Universe
BGM: Epic Score - I Still Have a Soul
Things had happened so quickly after I first heard the Call.
I could not recall the precise moment that It had reached across the distance from its lair to me and beckoned me forth… yet, once it had happened, I could not bring myself to think of a time I could not hear it.
At first, I relied to ignore Its beacon, to set it aside. There was so much we still had to do, to try and establish some kind of workable life for ourselves on the Island. There were so few of us left in our immediate circle, it felt wrong for me to take off and abandon what little remained.
Even so, the longer I tried to resist, the more patiently insistent the siren call remained. It was only a matter of time before I had to go.
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My mother stood before me, her arm held before me, her eyes filled with that tell-tale mixture of sadness and determination. It wasn’t something I registered clearly as a child, but I now recognise that look as one which tells me that yet another irrevocable decision is about to be made.
“Andryusha, ” she said, gesturing to the glowing runes on her right forearm with the outstretched fingertips of her left hand, “This is the legacy of your family – the sum of knowledge earned through generations’ worth of toil and sacrifice.”
Of course, I had known of her magic crest, which she had carried in secret during our long flight from our former homeland. Yet, I could not recall seeing it so clearly before. Was it due to carelessness on my part? The carefulness of my mother to hide it, to avoid its use, or at least to activate it in my presence? Or something else entirely?
In any event, as my eyes followed the intricate patterns the runes weaved upon her arm’s flesh, it had not occurred to me that it would not be on her arm forever.
“The time has come,” she affirmed, “for you to bear this burden, my son.”
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The last time I saw her before I left Hong Kong was at the Queen’s Pier, in the shadow of the City Hall. It wasn’t that often that this pier was used for more than ceremonial roles, but the ferry currently docked there was an exception – the first step on the long journey It had set me upon.
“It won’t be that long, I promise,” I told her, though I could feel how my unspoken thoughts were likely betraying me. But then, I still couldn’t quite believe that the woman who had brought me into the world, who had sheltered me from one upheaval to the next, who had placed the future of the Muraviev lineage in my hands, would not be there at my side when I was to board that ferry.
Her arms wrapped around me, as we both shed tears at this departure. I could almost feel how her right arm was somehow… changed, even though to the untrained eye it would look no different to how it had been long before.
“Remember your training, my son,” she whispered to me, in a steady, measured tone. How many times had she channelled her emotions through the filter of reason like this? “And don’t worry for my sake. I’ll be here to welcome you back to the Island, no matter how long your journey takes you.”
Even through her concerns and fears – or, perhaps, through my own – she held fast to her deep faith in me. Her pride in how far we had gone to this point… and at what she believed I would one day become.
Would that it was so easy for me to share that belief in myself!
The boarding call sounded, signalling the end of this last moment of communion. “ Bol'šoe spasibo , Mama.” Thank you. For everything.
She looked at me, smiling softly. “Sčastlivogo puti, Andryusha. ” Bon voyage.
Before I knew it, the ferry was pulling away, into Victoria Harbour – with the Island to one side and the southern shore of Kowloon on the other.
I was on my own.
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From this latest water-borne transport I had taken on my journey, I could see the distinctive shoreline of the city of Belém recede into the distance. This gateway to the Amazon basin was already a hundred kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, yet itself barely scratched the ever-changing surface of the mighty river.
Most of the traffic at the port seemed to be going in the opposite direction – taking the various resources plucked from trees, grown from soil or dug from the ground further into the basin, then sending them to wherever they were called upon to go. Perhaps even as far back as the Island itself.
That said, there were still many who had different reasons to go into the interior. Immigrants looking to build new lives away from their distant homelands, anthropologists searching for what to them were the strange, exotic tribespeople of the deep interior, missionaries seeking to yet further spread the already wide-ranging writ of the Vatican across this immense country. It might have surprised some, but for so large and so highly-populated a land, most of its major cities were tightly bound to the Atlantic coast. It could be hard to remember just how much there was, stretching under the vast canopy of the rainforest, rubbing shoulders with the far-ranging Andes mountains.
But then, was the same not true for many people in his land of birth? How many from the likes of Moscow or St. Petersbu… Lenin grad truly registered the sheer distance one could travel to go to Irkutsk or Vladivostok?
The ones who had not been sent to count trees, that is.
I had come a long way already, but for some reason the flow of the Amazon seemed to stretch out longer for me than crossing the ocean had done. Of course, even the full length of this river – whichever way one might choose to define it – wasn’t close to the distance I had covered when crossing the Pacific Ocean. Yet, it somehow impressed itself upon me to a greater extent, even so.
But then, how much of that was due to my edging ever closer to my destination?
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It’s harder for me to think back to the final stage of my journey.
I remember a living statue, its twin eyes glowing in starlight.
I remember a message, a deep meaning, which had been imparted to me – one which told of a long and lasting aching for a time long buried, glazed with the faintest layer of hope for salvation.
I remember passing through the forest, following tracks crossed time and again by men and women long turned to dust.
I remember the circle of rippling energy, the silent guide beckoning me towards it.
I remember…
The all-too-elusive glimpses at a deeper view of the universe.
The awe-inspiring weight of Its godlike consciousness reaching out towards me – as if both It and I were attempting to unlock a hundred thousand unseen barriers between a common level of understanding.
The waves of thought given form, the confluence of matter and energy coursing through every atom in my body, re-writing what – or even who – I was with every infinitesimal step taken in moments of time briefer than I had thought possible.
The groundswell of hope, of joy, of affirmation…
The all-too-closely-dangling promise of my true destiny…
All of it…
All of it…
So close…
But then…
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…gone.
I was crumpled on the floor of my apartment, back in Central.
My hands… my arms… they were changed.
I could feel it – all of it – every ounce of my body which had been re-written.
I lifted myself up and tried to go to the mirror, but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t look.
At the thing I had become.
Why had It brought me so far?
To change me so utterly, yet not reveal what purpose it was to serve?
That I was to serve?
Destiny… had fallen to despair.
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The next time I remembered being conscious of my surroundings, I was back in my human form… almost.
Almost.
Almost human!
I could see my face in the mirror, my arms, my hands…
But I could feel the places where I could never go back to normal.
“I still have a soul…” I caught myself whispering.
The thought repeated itself, as I stared at my reflection.
“I STILL HAVE A SOUL!”
I screamed, but no-one heard me.
It was only then that I realised there was no-one else present.
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It took several days’ worth of searching for the truth to dawn on me.
After all that had happened, all of the changes I hadn’t asked to happen (or had I?), all of the irrevocable steps I had tumbled across…
She was gone.
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“I’m sorry,” Andrei said weakly, as he lifted his fingertips away from the sides of Houri’s temple. “I can’t… I need more time to…”
Her eyes blinked as they adjusted to normality, or rather to the concept of her regular vision matching that of her own consciousness. After such a maelstrom of thought, memory and emotion, she found herself left literally speechless.
She held firmly onto his wrists, her eyes looking deeply into his own, as he looked to hers. Neither of them could speak for several moments, though there was more being understood in this exchange than mere words could encapsulate.
“It’s so powerful, azukaru,” she at length offered. “So much, I... don’t know where to start.”
Andrei exhaled more loudly than he realised, feeling a great weight lift from his shoulders. “Neither do I, except to say thank you. This… is the first time I have been able to try to come to terms with all of this. I… can’t summon the ways in which I can express how much this means to me, Houri.”
At that, the mention of her name, she drew his head to her shoulder, pressing her arms around him tightly. This man, who she had entrusted with her life, and who had rewarded this trust with such extraordinary effort, had in turn put his trust in her.
“No matter how long it takes, azukaru,” she assured him, “for you to work through your history… and for me to come to terms with mine… we will find our way together.”
He looked up at her once more, the last word caught upon his mind. “Together?”
He could have added a hundred lines or more to try and explain the many different questions he was asking in that one word – but before he had a chance to do so, she took her fingertips and placed them gently on the sides of his face, her palms resting against his cheeks.
She said but one word in turn. The only one which mattered.
“Together.”
(…to be continued)
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