The Aether, as much as it was an it, had never considered itself as an extent being confined by an it. It had always been undefined, intangible, a force among the cosmos that was as complicated as it was simple – it had been the breath of wind upon the reeds, the ribs of deathly spires reaching for uncharted heavens, the acrid nature of properties too otherworldly to put into earthly terms. It had been the magma center of warm planets, the icy hades of cold planets, the grumbling cores of stars, the silence of space in between. Each passing particle of dust, each unnamed god, each vein of life and death and all that existed once flowed through the same channel that was aether – that was it. But never, never had it been categorized as such a small organism as an it or a he or an Erasmus. Therefore it struggles in the lining of horseflesh and bones, writhing in marrow, splintering thoughts, reflections that glint like mirrors in the dark of what-was, what-will-be, and what is no more.
Erasmus is no longer the boy, the vessel, that dreaming and sad thing that hungers and hungers but never knows what it is he truly wants. That boy who looks to the stars and thinks that his mother's tales meant that he was some blissful demigod, destined for greatness bounded by the heavens. That he is Achilles, or Orpheus, or Theseus, and his victories that amounted during his short time in Novus had not done anything to alleviate those childish assumptions. That Erasmus is no more than filament in the bulb – a resting encyclopedia that the aether calls upon when it knows no better, an open book of mortal knowledge laid before a savage which dreams of sophistication. It does not wonder if that is what she sees, though it does notice that she looks for something in the eyes of What-Was, as if there was something there that caught her eye for the slightest of moments and she is trying to see it again, yearning for that glimpse, that movement in the dark.
Aether is that movement in the dark. Aether is the ghost in the machine. At its core thrums only curiosity, violence, and things that it can only translate as hunger.
It doesn't tell her that. There is no need. There is no fear when she searches – even if she finds it, those coils glistening from black lakes, those gilded cosmic waves of lurching terror, eldritch shadows stretching beneath the moonlight – and no fury either that she dares, there is only cold complacency, allowing himself to be analyzed and analyzed again if she must. It almost teases, whispering in the bones of what-was, find me, then. But in time she relents, and it cannot tell if it is with satisfaction or wonder or even disdain, but she confronts him now as the Erasmus-That-Was, and not what waits beneath the surface.
It hears the discrepancies when she speaks – like she is backpedaling over the grassy knoll, recounting her less than graceful encounter with the bison in the field. The bull stands there still, lifting his head every once in a while, munching alfalfa and witchgrass that falls from its mouth in silver-green hairs, to be sure that the winged thing that challenged it still stood at a distance. She stammers, stutters, and, regaining her footing, returns his question with one of her own. Did you ever just feel drawn to something? The aether laughs cryptically, no more than a shudder in his flesh when it creeps up his throat like blood and is swallowed back down, down, heat in his core. Drawn to things. Like dying suns, like crumbling planets, like scattered moons, like gravity, like – like – Learn something from them.
Erasmus looks back to the buffalo bull, and it has by now semi-turned its back to them, seemingly satisfied that she did not return to tempt its temper further. It thinks of the thing that sits in the register of the photographic memory for What-Was, the srreptu. Those great, hulking, ugly, wise sages with the waters of a Great Lake on their back, divine things that held the knowledge of the deep earth readily supplied in their spines like an acid drip memory. The boy's mind had always devised them to be a crock, and while the aether did not entirely understand the depth of the word, it touched to the surface of what it meant – a lie, a fanciful untruth, things that old men told children to make it seem as though they sat at the center of everything, a store and wealth of infinite, old knowledge.
Not unlike the srreptu.
"They do not speak your language." he says, absentmindedly, watching the bull graze through the golden-grass that undulates dreamily in the breeze. It does not hitch itself when it says your, forgetting that awful truth that aether is still confined within an it, that it is not some disembodied thing that speaks in the wind and the waters and the clouds and the trees. That it does not grow roots into the center of this planet, tunneling and voracious, and spring from it the fruits of new things: new hymns, new beings, new gods. That it does not reach into the cosmos and strangle their stars, making new moons in the eye of their sun. "They speak the language of this earth, only, without words. And they share secrets only with one another." his voice is distant, pondering, unwavering, a call from some forgotten nether that croons across eons and finds her now. Do you see it yet?
When it returns its eyes to her, they are desolate hollows that birth the cold moons in their center, and it is hard to tell which part of him truly looks at her. It too learns, and aches to learn, aches to understand the why - because they are things that it could not have ever comprehended, separated from them by millions of galaxies and rifts whose chance had only found his once. In there, it was not a he or a she or an it or even a they. It was all, and now it is miniscule, and it searches for an answer of how miniscule, and an even more terrifying question: how may it grow beyond those limits? It doesn't know what it wants beyond this. It only knows that Erasmus's last thought before he gave himself to the aether was hunger.
It, unknowingly, conflates many emotions therefore with the single solitary feeling: hunger.
It does not tell her this, either. In fact, it tells her nothing.
When it sees the trouble in her face, it grins. It is amiable, balanced, and its shadows do not border the terrifying when he looks to her. In fact, it may be the very first genuine grin that the aether has ever manufactured on the borrowed face of Erasmus. If it knew any better, it may have been proud. Or starving. In the corner of its eyes, it still remembers that blood drips from her wound, and it is clotting. Wasting. But he remembers the way he had seen her overhead – some soaring comet, some flailing asteroid, wondering if time had lent him some secret of Novus, some stone he did not yet overturn. He would ignore her cut, no matter how it prickled at the back of his skull. But if it was revealed that she held the secret in her blood, so he would drink it in. "You are not... from here, are you?" his tone bears a nod to the prairies that surround them, but for a moment, it seems deeper than that.
Erasmus is no longer the boy, the vessel, that dreaming and sad thing that hungers and hungers but never knows what it is he truly wants. That boy who looks to the stars and thinks that his mother's tales meant that he was some blissful demigod, destined for greatness bounded by the heavens. That he is Achilles, or Orpheus, or Theseus, and his victories that amounted during his short time in Novus had not done anything to alleviate those childish assumptions. That Erasmus is no more than filament in the bulb – a resting encyclopedia that the aether calls upon when it knows no better, an open book of mortal knowledge laid before a savage which dreams of sophistication. It does not wonder if that is what she sees, though it does notice that she looks for something in the eyes of What-Was, as if there was something there that caught her eye for the slightest of moments and she is trying to see it again, yearning for that glimpse, that movement in the dark.
Aether is that movement in the dark. Aether is the ghost in the machine. At its core thrums only curiosity, violence, and things that it can only translate as hunger.
It doesn't tell her that. There is no need. There is no fear when she searches – even if she finds it, those coils glistening from black lakes, those gilded cosmic waves of lurching terror, eldritch shadows stretching beneath the moonlight – and no fury either that she dares, there is only cold complacency, allowing himself to be analyzed and analyzed again if she must. It almost teases, whispering in the bones of what-was, find me, then. But in time she relents, and it cannot tell if it is with satisfaction or wonder or even disdain, but she confronts him now as the Erasmus-That-Was, and not what waits beneath the surface.
It hears the discrepancies when she speaks – like she is backpedaling over the grassy knoll, recounting her less than graceful encounter with the bison in the field. The bull stands there still, lifting his head every once in a while, munching alfalfa and witchgrass that falls from its mouth in silver-green hairs, to be sure that the winged thing that challenged it still stood at a distance. She stammers, stutters, and, regaining her footing, returns his question with one of her own. Did you ever just feel drawn to something? The aether laughs cryptically, no more than a shudder in his flesh when it creeps up his throat like blood and is swallowed back down, down, heat in his core. Drawn to things. Like dying suns, like crumbling planets, like scattered moons, like gravity, like – like – Learn something from them.
Erasmus looks back to the buffalo bull, and it has by now semi-turned its back to them, seemingly satisfied that she did not return to tempt its temper further. It thinks of the thing that sits in the register of the photographic memory for What-Was, the srreptu. Those great, hulking, ugly, wise sages with the waters of a Great Lake on their back, divine things that held the knowledge of the deep earth readily supplied in their spines like an acid drip memory. The boy's mind had always devised them to be a crock, and while the aether did not entirely understand the depth of the word, it touched to the surface of what it meant – a lie, a fanciful untruth, things that old men told children to make it seem as though they sat at the center of everything, a store and wealth of infinite, old knowledge.
Not unlike the srreptu.
"They do not speak your language." he says, absentmindedly, watching the bull graze through the golden-grass that undulates dreamily in the breeze. It does not hitch itself when it says your, forgetting that awful truth that aether is still confined within an it, that it is not some disembodied thing that speaks in the wind and the waters and the clouds and the trees. That it does not grow roots into the center of this planet, tunneling and voracious, and spring from it the fruits of new things: new hymns, new beings, new gods. That it does not reach into the cosmos and strangle their stars, making new moons in the eye of their sun. "They speak the language of this earth, only, without words. And they share secrets only with one another." his voice is distant, pondering, unwavering, a call from some forgotten nether that croons across eons and finds her now. Do you see it yet?
When it returns its eyes to her, they are desolate hollows that birth the cold moons in their center, and it is hard to tell which part of him truly looks at her. It too learns, and aches to learn, aches to understand the why - because they are things that it could not have ever comprehended, separated from them by millions of galaxies and rifts whose chance had only found his once. In there, it was not a he or a she or an it or even a they. It was all, and now it is miniscule, and it searches for an answer of how miniscule, and an even more terrifying question: how may it grow beyond those limits? It doesn't know what it wants beyond this. It only knows that Erasmus's last thought before he gave himself to the aether was hunger.
It, unknowingly, conflates many emotions therefore with the single solitary feeling: hunger.
It does not tell her this, either. In fact, it tells her nothing.
When it sees the trouble in her face, it grins. It is amiable, balanced, and its shadows do not border the terrifying when he looks to her. In fact, it may be the very first genuine grin that the aether has ever manufactured on the borrowed face of Erasmus. If it knew any better, it may have been proud. Or starving. In the corner of its eyes, it still remembers that blood drips from her wound, and it is clotting. Wasting. But he remembers the way he had seen her overhead – some soaring comet, some flailing asteroid, wondering if time had lent him some secret of Novus, some stone he did not yet overturn. He would ignore her cut, no matter how it prickled at the back of his skull. But if it was revealed that she held the secret in her blood, so he would drink it in. "You are not... from here, are you?" his tone bears a nod to the prairies that surround them, but for a moment, it seems deeper than that.
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