Strong Enough To Brave Despair (OPEN)

[Zeneka]

Dawn was approaching; color was beginning to seep back into the night darkened world of Pern and that meant Syrus would soon be returning to the caves. He lingered beside the beast pens where the beastcrafters were already herding a head of bovines into the open. None of the creatures wandered too close to him, which was just fine. Few animals seemed to want to be anywhere near him anymore. He sighed, leaning forward against the fence that penned the bovines in. He was getting bored to death with tunnelsnakes, but no one would miss a tunnelsnake and if he was found perhaps they wouldn’t care too terribly about what he had been doing to them. It was all in the name of knowledge, but he knew they would never understand. The questions didn’t torment them like they did him, they didn’t keep the others awake wondering constantly at the answer. How could anyone sleep when there were so many questions left without the hint of an answer?

Tunnelsnakes… hateful creatures; he felt nothing at all about performing his experiments on them, not that he’d felt much of anything since…. He fingered the jagged egg shard hanging around his neck, staring straight ahead at a particular bovine, but not really seeing it. However, the bovine seemed to feel his gaze and quickly moved away behind one of its fellows. He muttered to himself, “What do you think… with a bovine… what might be discovered? So different… tunnelsnakes… like dragons, six limbs… but bovines…. No, tunnelsnakes. Better tunnelsnakes. Closer to dragons. But a bovine… oh, if only… can’t have a bovine, too valuable….” At that he kicked the fence in frustration causing a couple of the bovines to start and move further away.

“Escape the dragon’s claws and await another day for your slaughter, stupid beasts… rather be food than knowledge… who needs you? There are plenty of tunnelsnakes you know, but they die too quickly… too quickly…. Need more time, somehow.” He looked up to see a bovine staring at him blankly, chewing grass all the while. He grinned happily, “You want to help, do you? But you can’t… they wouldn’t let me. Stop giving me that look.” He fingered the hilt of his knife, sheathed at his side. He could do it here… he wouldn’t have to take it anywhere. The sky caught his attention as color spread over him. The sun was rising. He winced, chewed his lip, looking longingly at the bovine and slumped down against the fence. They would see him though; they wouldn’t like it if he did.

He sighed once more and leaned back, head tilted toward the sky. It had been a while since he’d watched the sun rise. But he hated the sun, and he hated the sky too… the same color as he was. He reached up, his fingers stretched out as if to grab at a piece of sky before letting it fall back to his side. “Where are you…?” he whispered, “Where did you go…? I’ll find you one day… one day… I’ll discover where you went, and how to get there… and how to come back again.” He paused for a long while, tears beginning to glisten in his eyes, “I’ll find you Remmy… I’ll find you.”