Chapter Text
When is a body no longer a body, and what deems it to be?
Must it have four limbs and a still-beating heart, or is it determined once it carves into the cliffside with the same ferocity it could swallow a city whole, pushing and pulling and drowning out all noise, must it extend to the starless sky above, hungry for warmth, bending to it like it never had a choice in the first place, something innate and buried and animal that knows a way to a home it has never felt? A thing that never had a name before human's inherent desire to dominate, to be first, to expect that when they determine a name for something beyond their comprehension, it must obey the laws of said name, folding itself down, smaller and smaller until the human mind swallows it whole and it is just an echo of what it once was.
Time is not time.
Death is not death.
A body is not a body.
It is more and less, as above and so below, beyond and within, more than beginnings or ends, because there is none, only the endless turn of the tide, the rise of the moon and fall of the sun, a memory that fades but never forgotten, not by the cosmos, not by the indent of a soul and the claw marks on something that was loved and not let go, the rot of the carcass on the forest floor, and even the iron fears the rot, and rot is not sickness, not inherent wrongness, because there is no wrong or right, right or left, it does not matter, an illusion for the road is already paved, worn and walked before and after, and that is the fear, that there will no longer be a path but erosion, a slow crawl consuming all that lay before it, and fear is not real, not real not real and if it was, it does not matter against this—
—there are no stars, there is no sky, nothing but an ocean of space and currents of time that is not time, collapsing upon itself as it carves its way through the cosmos, flooding with it's own forgotten echoes, curling and calling calling calling can't you hear it, it hears you, it listens, always, beyond the edge of vision, the curve of the night, caught between breath, the space between fingers, the marrow of bones on the forest floor, in beasts that were once living before they were monsters with bloodied maws and bared fangs and aching hearts, razor sharp bones that are kind before they are mean, piercing and breaking and there, sighing and dripping and heavy and warmth that will soon turn cold, a beautiful, violent, simple thing. Because freedom is intrinsic, and it belongs to forces beyond mortality, but someone said it must be earned, and how does one earn something that never knew cost before the palms of men touched it, before life itself, only that things rotted and bloomed, pushed and pulled, an exchange, a dance, sometimes fair and other times cruel, but beyond the reach of foolish, finite creatures with hands hungrier than their minds, always reaching, always wanting things they cannot understand, before they bottled lightning and thought it meant they knew how to command a storm, wondering why its eye is calm when the rest is violent, shouldn't it be more balanced, shouldn't there be more, why was everything taken, why does lightning never strike the same place twice but a thing will knowingly hurt another again and again and again the same way, and why why why and nothing speaks, there is only questions without answers, patience without kindness, forgiving but not forgetting, no, no, not anymore, but—
—forgetting and never forgiving, a small creature swelling in the chest that calls itself pride until its teeth crack and the end of the world is upon it, but the world does not end, no end, only now and then and here and always, an immovable force that does move, it must, it does, can't you see how it dances as the universe continues in its own song, for everything is just atoms and stardust and thoughts that are not thoughts, saplings planted that blossom into an indomitable spirit, chemicals that are as bitter as they are sweet, a storm that has been long building, an end, and nobody looks up anymore, nobody looks, why is nobody looking, there is phantom iridescence, right there, can't you see it, it's there, lingering at the back of a mind, his, theirs, its, coalescing and the hollows points where stars have been carved from their homes, not falling, a brilliant final gasp of fire and force, plummeting through echoes of those who fell before, etching through the sky above, but stolen, devoured and consumed and now the dark waves of an infinite ocean loom above, a wretched reflection spanning across space and time, too much of one and not enough of the other—
—but there was enough, there was there was there was because time is not time, death is not death, a body is not a body and there is only hunger, innate and evermore and always there, it's so hungry, after stars and planets and hope, it is not enough, it is never enough, it will never be, because there is always more, a path that it had yet to find, not a tunnel, but a current in this ocean, not the scarlet one, but above, below, as above always above, a tear in the fabric, a pinprick of light, the reflection in which light must pass through so it, no not it, but it, can see, as all watchful things must do so, not a burden or a curse, but a pillar, a fundamental, and even it cannot reject that animal part of them, the very thing that binds them to the universe, tethering, a string, someone once said something about a string, someone once said something about a string, red and fine and important, and somewhere it eats and it is not the only thing that all understand, a symbiosis not fathomed, that at the bottom of the moon and to the spinning of a spaceship even though there are none, but there are, not here, elsewhere, but there is no elsewhere, no, no there is something more, something other, at the edge of the night, the frayed edge of the universe—
—is hunger, universal and felt and known, a singular language that envelops all; stars, suns, planets, beings and mortal and beyond, weaving through the wet earth, feasting as it does, whispering through a breeze that dies before it can speak, knuckles white and a heart that screams thump thump thump, fists against metal, against the world, against the unfairness of it all, because life isn't fair, but maybe it could be if it tried, famished and wondering and asking, hunger in tandem, always parallel, always there, right beneath the surface, a want that for more, for understanding, for knowledge and now—
—there is no now, there is, but it is not alone, there is before and after and in between and yet to come and all at once, layers that stretch beyond the dark canvas above and the red that swallows all here, overlapping and voiceless and in the absence of this hunger, something different cuts through, piercing through ichor and sinew and the shape of the soul. A different want, all green and volatile and angry and needing to know, confusion that bleeds like a fresh cut, weeping into water that is not water, from a man that is not a man and a monster that is no a monster, returning, transmuting, a slow melt hybrid, waning and waxing, no beginning, no end, a snake somewhere that is devouring its own tail, a mother eating its young, beaks picking at bones that once sang their songs too, a nameless thing that once called survival and now named cannibal, beast, aberration, a stain a stain a stain against the good of the world, but what is the parameters of good, can it be weighed on a scale against a feather, or is it measured by choices made and others yet to come, by things that are not choices but nature, is a mother a monster for giving its kin mercy, does it make her cannibal, does it make her good and loving and kind and—
—kindness was once given without thought, now him, it, them, does not know this thing, only that they are cannibal of a different kind, the destruction of self without seeing, without knowing, but doesn't it know, it's meant to know, it wants to know, it's so hungry and this is new, this is different but familiar, recognized through space and time although neither is real, not really, in the corner of an eye that cannot see and the ones above, around, within, that always see, always, it knows this taste even though it has never had it upon its tongue, how does it know, this taste, this is—
—sacrifice.
Glass splinters, life blooms, iron bends, flesh tears and salt meets this sea for the first time, no, not first, but not like this, and the pinpricks of something beyond the bottom of this ocean looks upon this moment, maybe it, them, him, us, and nobody is looking, nobody is watching, a memory will be forgotten, the carcass will rot and bones bleach and the stars are gone, and there are no more trees, there are not meant to be trees, because the road is paved, and there is no left or right, yet here one blooms, hatching and shredding and tearing and demanding to be seen, to be known, to be heard, to exist, to sink into soil and lap hungrily at what is offered, and it is weeping, weeping at the acid it meets and it's hungry, burrowing further, shaping bones and fangs that break and blossom high and snap and snarl as it consumes, shifting, reshaping, refining until a body is a body, no more and no less—
—and there are limbs sprawling in a frantic race to a sun that is no more but it does not know, it only knows to seek, to bend, to survive, and the sun is gone and so are the stars, but where did they go, because memory is not just memory, it is remembrance, something that once was and is and will always be, and it must be somewhere, and its home gave it this mercy, a mother that eats its young, but they do not want to eat, they, him, us, only hunger for the familiar, for warmth, for more than they, us, us, no, him, were told could be earned, promised, promise, I promise, I promise, even though it should always have been given. And they want in a way they have never wanted and maybe it's because their home wanted it so terribly and still gave them life knowing they could not have both, given not freely as it should have been, not in forfeit, not in punishment, but in declaration, a flash against the dark, the first light that hits the curve of a planet's horizon, a new day bleeding from the night before, blooming and breathing into the lungs of something long thought dead but death is not death, an end is not a beginning, and a beginning not an end, and the great expanse of the cosmos, beyond the deafening silence something—
Gives.
Pluto and Charon do not give, they carve.
A mother does not nurse, she eats.
Lightning does not strike, it falls.
Loss does not speak, it feels.
Death is not death.
Time is not time.
A body is a body and—
—the universe takes but it also gives.
And a man drenched in blood lands on the floor of a spaceship with a nauseating thud.