Welcome! Please, make yourself at home.

[This was back during my construction days. Now, my construction team and I were great pals. They were my first exposure to comradery [sic.] and teamwork in general. We looked out for each other; the welfare of one was the welfare of all. So, naturally, I reflected their great excitement when a rare event fell upon us - a spectacular comet show was approaching! Evidently, it did not occur in every lifetime, but if you were lucky, you could see it twice. It was beyond exciting.]

[There were festivals for days beforehand, and every town had a different story about the significance of the comets. We of course party-hopped and saw the best of every place. Even I switched out of my armour and into something more festive.]

I don’t think that my explanations could do it justice. Just know that in all of my traveling, I have yet to see an event that comes close to those displays of heart, soul, and fever.

[At the time of the comets, my team and I found ourselves a beautiful spot atop a mountain. The glow of the sky gradually took priority over the dimming light of the festivals below us. And in all of this excitement, I’m ashamed to say that I forgot one crucial detail about comets ...]

[...They’re only visible because they’re reflecting starlight. An entire atmosphere of gas, scattering it every which way.]

[Tarble: “...Dear asker, I don’t know if this next bit is a stroke of profound fortune, a poleless curse of my mortal blood, -- Or just Really FREAKIN’ Embarrassing.”]

[Tarble: “Yeah I turned into a Great Ape. But I did not get far. I guess I almost immediately fell off of a cliff and hit my head really hard. I was out for the equivalent of two Earth days, I think.”]

I call it an “incident” because a festival got trampled before the unexpected ravine stole me. And I do believe that some of my teammates got hurt. At least, I got that impression from the way that only a few of them watched me gather my things when I returned to our base later. And from the way that, between vitriol and profanity, silence and sorrow, they would not meet my trembling eye.

...Oh, but this story does have an upturn. See, these were the circumstances that brought Gure and I onto the same path. 

[I woke up at the bottom of that cliff, naked, cold, thirsty, hungry, matted in dry blood, and alone. Generally, after a successful transformation, you would still have your armor. But like I mentioned, I had left it all behind. Stripped in favor of a new culture, which at the time, was beginning to look like it did not suit me.]

...You don’t have to pity me. I’m better now, obviously. But, in all truthfulness... I was nothing more than a beast then.

[The weight of nebulous confusion could not protect me from the weight of absolute conviction that I had done wrong, The blood in my hair, which in my younger years I had craved to see, could have very well been the blood of my friends. The blinding pain in my skull and the general delusion of my limbs were not salvation, but simple comeuppance for being alive.]

As I wandered, I felt that I would never return to myself. The beast who had been knocking on the innards of my chest had finally clawed out. And suddenly, I had never grown from that failed Saiyan child who had arrived here alone all those years ago.

I do remember the taste of bitter peace being ubiquitous, and continuing to rapidly bleed. Succumbing to thoughtlessness, you could say. But consider my perspective for a moment - I had never known whether to forgo my birth home who had forwent me, or to hold our honorable blood close to my breast as it is all I have and am. I had, at this time, not yet known how to be true and loving to myself, because I did not yet know which self was me.

This is where it gets, or I get, convoluted. To be clear, when I had very first arrived on that planet, I did not want to immerse myself on the foreign frontier entirely, for that would have left me fighting my own mind. Maybe everything in that mind was inculcated by those who had banished me, and so its substance should be thrown away as such - but it’s hard for one to change so much. I did not know who would remain to judge my actions. Death in life; the fresh start sounded good, but it's much too hard to kill a Saiyan. My blood is my own, after all. 

But I had not wanted to remain unequivocally true to my origins either. This new planet was my new everything, and if I destroyed it, what would I be proving to whom? I was banished for a reason. Might as well be the disgraceful misfit that my condemners had wanted nothing to do with. They didn't care what would become of me, so it was best that I just forget them. Best that I do not perpetrate their hatred for me against myself. Best that I do not view my new planet as they would view it.

But it's ironic. They kick me out for having a heart, sentimentality, a sense of value for others - and that's precisely why I couldn't, and can't, forget them.

I of course never succeeded in eradicating myself of all that had made me me. And years down the line on that planet, I had actually tried to take the first steps in learning how to love what my family had hated. Because it was not just the contempt and condemnation from others - there was hatred for myself in my very own heart, and that creates a very hostile environment to grow in. 

And, naturally, I had began to favor my home - my new planet, my teammates, my neighbors - over anything else, but who I had always been was not wholly gone. He still isn't, and I know now that that's as it should be.

ANYWAY. To return to our story: And at this point, I had not yet discovered that my transformation was a Saiyan failure (you could barely call that a rampage!). I was instead struck by the silence of the ravine and the blood in my hair. My father would have been proud, I thought. The beautiful silence of success.

But I hadn't realized that I was still living by the faraway customs of my lovely bastard kin! I wasn't prepared for this success - I wasn't prepared to rip out my roots from the nourishment of my new life. I had friends. We worked hard. We had fun.

I did later learn that even as a Great Ape I was a disappointment, and that made it all the stranger in retrospect. I couldn't seem to be good for anybody. There were tears of relief alongside deep, bitter pits of distress in my stomach. Both equally cleansing in their expression.

...I don’t mean to take up too much of your time. Let's skip to the good bit, shall we?

[This ravine was known to those already living at its base as a quarry instead, and it was a particularly fruitful mistress for a particular family of local stonemasons.]

[After the comet show, and after some time to recover from the festivities, a daughter of this house could not bear to be at home any longer. Though she was thoroughly bored of her livelihood, and thoroughly bored of this familiar quarry, hunting for ores and geodes was the only excuse she had to get out and the only hobby to her name.]

[...Now, Gure’s always had a healthy amount of FEAR, as long as I’ve known her. Seeing a hunched-over BEAST, bare and hairy, thrice her size, should have sent her running. ...I’ve tried asking her on several occasions what had driven her next actions.]

[And she’s answered in a few different ways over the years. Sometimes it was her trusty pickaxe that gave her heart. Sometimes it was the angst of youth that filled her with brash confidence.]

[Sometimes it was her longing for something new that colored her defiant to even her own instincts.]

[Sometimes, she says that she just had a feeling.]

[Gure: “...Hello?...”]

[I remember it echoing off of the walls of the ravine. Spurring reflexive action like a tobbled brick.]

[Tarble: “...Hi.”]

[I don’t know what made her reach out to me that day. I don’t know how she had the courage. But at the same time, I do understand it, same as I’ve come to understand all of the whimsy and rapids that pass under her surface. It's a spectacle only available to the blind.]

And I know enough to be terrified at what would have happened to me if she hadn't taken a chance. I do believe that she saved my life that day. She saved me from being the hopeless beast that I felt I was. It turns out that believing that you are one is all it takes. She was there to ground me then, and I've had the rest of my life to realize that my history cannot undo me, my nature cannot defy me, and it is all of me that defines me. A monster stops being a monster when you love it, I suppose. But I think that it's also when the monster realizes that it's not monstrous to just be. And I think that we could all use a little help with that.

Also... I've met a lot of people in my time. I just cannot stress enough how myopic and daft it is to still believe in monsters.

[She brought me home and fixed me up. I remember thinking about how humanizing it was to be scrubbed like an animal. As I was stuck on the irony, her family introduced themselves, and made it abundantly clear to me that I was welcome to stay as long as I liked.]

I only told Gure about the Great Ape thing at first. A lot of people had assumed that the beast had been a bizarre manifestation of divine magic, either intentional or incidental by native gods, and I never commented. If anything, I agreed. The arcane majesty of Blutz waves is something I too hold in reverence, even if my language can sometimes err on the dry scientific.

So, that's the Great Ape incident. Gure ended up coming with me when I went to reconnect with my construction crew and collect my things, and she held her composure as they and I reconciled with our present and past, all burned by my bastard truth.

I feel like I don’t even need to say it, but Gure has always been not only understanding, but healing to me. And when she has been thrown by a truth of mine, it is always mindful and relevant; even though she makes jokes of it, shes never been put off by my simply alien nature. That cheap fact has held only one significance to her:

that she is my lady of stone and I her man of the stars.