“who would have thought saving the world could be so boring?” — @maurilyan.

aliens are hard work. the running theme i'm getting between this interaction and rocky alike is that they're never ever satisfied. we're literally undertaking intergalactic salvation here, but oh no, it's just not enough for anyone nowadays. when did the bar get raised so goddamn high ?

❛ you know that not everything is pew - pew action and space battles, right ? you know that sometimes it's research. and science, and figuring out how to create and defend against the pew - pew action part. ❜ it is a wonder of the universe that they're rivalling a guy who's pretty sure he has latent undiagnosed adhd as far as attention spans go, but he supposes he can't blame them totally. saving the world does sound a whole lot more mighty and glorious than it's cracked out to be most of the time, but he's already done this song and dance once ( twice if you count erid ) and he knows bettter than to expect grandiosity. there sure are moments — he still shudders thinking about taumoeba fishing — but overall the experience between destinations is pretty nondescript.

the man is funny-shaped, and he talks like a forgone conclusion. if he had proven to be like the last man they had met, it would have been decided they would not be interested in men at all. there had been lingering signs, so fleeting that they could not have been sure they had actually caught them, and they listened so attentively, to these minuscule, barely perceptible signs. it had been so exhausting constantly finding a new roundabout way to explain things: he speaks of research and science, and now the uncertainty that had been blooming ahead had become a pleasure in itself and nicely complimented their time now spent together. he has plans for which he sacrifices everything else, yet every day he spends staring into dreadful equipment. no wonder he is so ... nervy.

for a breath, they look away from their face to rove over the scattered notes and papers — letters and alphabets familiar but would require harsher attention than the moment affords. leitha had unwound the heart of it in great ribbons, anyhow.

looking down at them again, they find that they cannot speak, a sudden distance, an erupted structure between them now. slowly, so the other may anticipate the shift, nineteen raises their left hand to brush stray hairs from their face. their right follows, and their thumb lays at the center of their forehead. the pressure is scant but enough to mold the flesh of their own finger, and they wait for their warmth to seep through the glove, the thinnest leather of their vesture. with the contrivance made, only then do words manage to trickle. " ... i shall ease the ( ... ) contradiction. " they lean their torso a smidge more forward, the press on the forehead made a little more pronounced, then never more than that. " i want to lie in death. i want to lie in it ( ... ) more than anything. " and if their soul, wherever it may be, cannot be saved, then it is to be annihilated. they are to be wholly destroyed.

for several seconds, they are too shunned to abandon this into the hole of their memory, too stunned to hide a showing of interest. the tang of their sweat, the tinny smell of the leather of their clothes, the racket of voices necessitated through the pressure against their skin and with gaze met, kept. the irritating thing, the most irritating thing of it all, is that the other speaks with an ease of experience, the wisdom of an earl. the bishop of death, commander and count. for leitha, to leitha, they partake in it, death, in solemn foolery. what had brought them back was a mystery written into the face of the moon; and for if they had only asked their lunar lady to solve it, they would be silenced once more.

instead, they stare upwards at a different face. rounded and familiar. their own eyes bound from either of theirs, to and fro. they cannot help but feel the sense of being known, examined, and rejected. nineteen's voice had almost become dreamy, and it serves an awful reminder that the mage in their reliving, had become oppressed with this sort of lunatic enthusiasm. they are not pretending, and they are not a hypocrite, but if they are not, and nineteen is neither, their death then, had been nothing more than a terrific blow. painless, flattened out. not condemned. they do not get up for minutes more, and feel the grooves of the others glove against the lilac of their flesh given by a tainted savior, the moon mother, and they wish they could crawl inside of it. fixed in the eternity of the strain.

it is nothing more but a fragment of a puzzle stuck in the back of their mind. and for some odd reason, it trumps triumph after triumph, victory after victory. an endless cycle, pressured by power. ❝ ━i am afraid. ❞ remember this: death remains. you are outside history, you are nonexistent. you are promised a lie. a venereal disease. they are a skeleton-like thing speaking with cheeks seemed and drawn in. ❝ i will not be taken by death once more. never again. ❞ and what is a whimper for mercy, than a truth spoiled by the lips of a jester ? they are rotting away. a bag of filth.

kept   her   aching   conscience   hidden   ;   buried   beneath   gentle   smile   &   kind   eyes   —-   she   had   to   be   strong   for   her   comrades   ,   for   her   friends   .   but   ,   in   the   depth   of   the   night   ,   she   lay   bare   her   secrets   to   the   moon   .   her   strength   ,   her   solace   .   tear   stricken   visage   a   glistening   contrast   below   silver   glow   as   she   allowed   her   heart   to   bleed   .   yet   another’s   presence   alerted   her   ,   quick   to   dampen   heartstrings   as   she   whispered   her   vulnerability   ,   ❛   who’s   there   ?   ❜

an imaginary gap. that is all that stands between them and the moon, a crevassed sighing mother that hides during the dawn and turns shy its face even in the darkest and deepest of nights. there is that gap that spreads, one that boils. the mystical reverence that is kneaded into flesh when staring at the palen clock, one that is mixed with the ashen grays of the skies. it has been this way for so long that it is only natural for leitha to begin to feel this way for everyone that lives underneath this interminable distance. under such clouded and cloudless skies, one that stretches to each smoking chimney across this city and that leaves them to ponder: perhaps she does not wish to be feared, but to be left alone. her, the moon, this gap between their drumming heart and a veiled mind.

thus found: there is strength found in like mindedness. sanity found in such equality, and against the odds, they find consciousness despite the gap. and in the end, an awakening would come. against the odds, it fights, and moves between all of them, staying alive. despite the odds.