[P] Day 1: The Arrival of a Changeling

[Nizizi]

  

Kinder und sterne küssen und verlieren sich

The sea is safe.  The sea will be home.  

It feels like It is whole again.

Cold.

Compressed.

Calm.

It can taste the sodium chloride in the air,

    --in the sand,

    --in the sea, 

    --in the blood. 

Not just the changeling's blood, but the thing's blood.  

Not just the thing's blood, 

the thing's blood.

It recognizes that Outsider flavor, similar to It but also different. 

Larger,

Stronger,

hungrier

Eshek is a giantess in relation to Nizizi, and the bear a clumsy and plausible foe with how easy it torn down like it was nothing.  The changeling understands what such savage aggression can do, but It does not know it to be much different than a hunt. 

Stars, Nizizi knows, are the best hunters in their own galaxies.  Stars know no Heaven or Hell, they only know Hunger.  They have been known to vaporize Gods and rewrite histories.  Nizizi is so young, so small, so hungry.

Come out from the waves.  She is a magnet reaching forward with the invisible force of her words.  And Nizizi, a filing of iron in the direct path.  Nizizi is nothing in this space -here- not yet, the outsider is but a few minutes alive for the first time.  


Bigger stars always eat smaller ones, does Eshek's gravity intend to draw Nizizi in so it may devour It?  The changeling bobs in the waves, lost at sea until she is commanded forward by the First One. Its hair looks like moonblood in the black water, glowing luminous white and so very-very starry bright, it ripples and weaves forward, driven towards the shore -- and the body follows.

Even the tides obey the First One.

Nizizi's dark eyes reflect all of Its sister stars as they study the dark creature waiting for It. 

This body,
--this corporeal and damaged thing,
rolls forward out of the last wave to touch It,

It spills out onto the sand like hot titanium being poured out in the form of a small horse. It is not afraid of Eshek, It merely understands that, like the bear, It too must succumb to a larger force. It leans, waiting for all that is the First One, to undo what incarnation of Nizizi has come to be in Novus.  It wanes forward, legs carrying the conscious platform closer, closer,

until It can smell ozone on Eshek's breath.  Oh, what moons has she been savoring as a feast?  Secretly, Nizizi breathes in deep and tries to decide what secrets a dead universe might smell like in Eshek's hair. And then,

It can feel the solidness of Eshek -- 

Nizizi clicks in confusion and steps back, blinking, the horrible deflated tent of wings flaps pitifully in the wind, all those loose pieces of skin screaming to be mended.  The outsider takes inventory of Its reality, eyes flitting back towards the bear slurry -- back to the First One -- then back again.

What are you?  
What am I?
What are we?

        Are we?  Me?
        Are we -- you?

It can in no way describe what It is thinking, all It can do is lean forward again to lick the blood off of Eshek's knee, not because It cares, but because It is hungry.

N I Z I Z I
die traumgötter brachten mich in eine landschaft

 

@Eshek