EFS

[Solnath]

United Commonwealth Hospital, Children's Section, Poporma, Arasel.


Earlier.


"Nurse," the middle-aged doctor said as he went through the documents attached to the patient's file. "Is this information correct?" He had been brought in from the University Hospital in Jeerdrasill to study this strange case of what appeared to be, well, completely new and unfamiliar.

"Yes, hashi-doctor." The nurse, a woman in her early thirties replied. "Two months ago the patient simply fell comatose and none of the standard scans revealed any cause for it. Also, the metabolic levels are exceptionally high and there is a remarkable amount of bone and muscle tissue growth occurring constantly."

"Very curious. Have you checked whether it might be caused by internal proponents rather than external?"

"I am not aware of doctor Ajetal's plan of treatment, hashi-doctor. The file contains more information than what I possess. I simply take care of the needs of patients on a more basic level."

"Of course, of course. I forgot that things in public hospitals are different. Alright, we best check for RNA mutation. It might be some sort of viral infection." He waved his hand to dismiss the nurse and she left with a slight curtsy. The hashi-doctor's mood was surprisingly high. Finally, he had a chance to discover something new.

[Solnath]

Somewhere in Jutensa.


Later.


He almost looked as if he had just washed ashore from the sea, a survivor of a shipwreck, his clothes damp and slightly dirty. He lay on his back on the cool sand of the beach and stared at the starry sky with closed eyes. His breathing was calm and he felt relaxed, to whatever extent he could feel. He had not yet reached the point where he was concerned at all by his lack of memories and perhaps he would not, seeing that he lacked any.

To him, his life began then and there on that cool tourist resort, now quiet after the nigh half-year-long season of flocking gawkers.

Before he opened his eyes, he felt his body for the first time.

He had arms. He had legs.

It was amazing.

Exhaling was wonderful, inhaling divine. The steady beat echoing from his chest to his toes and head was comforting and sweet. He moved farther.

The fabric surrounding him, black velvet and white silk, felt both coarse and fine, chilled and warm, and something primitive within him rejoiced with the internal contrast. Something was pressed against his forehead and hung from the top of his head. It felt delicious and his first motion was to brush it with his fingers. That was how he found his hair.

For an instant he regretted opening his eyes when the world crashed into focus and he saw a quadrillion stars. The fact that now he began to hear the soft rolling of the waves that hit the shore. Aural and visual input flooding his mind, he stared for a long while, his mind almost escaping his body in front of the beauty that was the world. He did not even feel his arms and legs extending and moving to carve an angel in the sand underneath him.

He could have stared for hours, days, years maybe, but something drew his attentiion back from the infinite space above. He heard a strange noise, one he did not know to be footsteps, approaching.

[Allama]

Her focus was so intense she could have tripped over the man lying on the beach.  She has been staring into the stars, hoping for a glimpse of movement in the sky though her mind knew it wasn't the season for meteor showers.  In the meantime she'd studied the constellations, though she only recognized a few, and invented several new ones, making patterns with the dots of light and moving them around until the sky she saw wasn't the one above her at all.

This afternoon had been eventful, to say the least.  After so much chaos and insanity, all one could really do to fully unwind was go for a short midnight stroll on the terrace.  Those kinds of strolls inevitably turn into long walks, however, and meander from their "intended" path.  Somewhere in the back of her mind she'd probably meant to lose her shoes and aimlessly wander the beach, though, and she accepted that.

Her sister had gotten married that day.  Quite a lovely ceremony, but such an enormous hassle to organize.  She rather thought a large wedding to be a waste; an awful lot of money spent to have people constantly approaching and intruding upon your thoughts, every room full of bustling bodies and un-ending noise.

This was much calmer, more serene.  No sounds but those of the ocean, the occasional chirp of a cricket or plover, and the rushing of the wind past the cliffs.  Deidre's thoughts shifted to listen to the beautiful chorus, and that's when she heard the quiet rustling of sand being set slowly in motion.  Her eyes found the man lying on the beach just ahead of her, making an angel in the sand.  Upon seeing what he was doing, she was struck by the oddness of his behavior, staring upwards as she had just been but with such a look of blissful enjoyment on his face as she had never seen.

He looks so joyful in the midst of such a simple thing, Deidre thought.  It's... beautiful.

[Solnath]

Turning his head to face the arrivee was out of the question. Not only did he lack a sense of direction, but he also pretty much failed to grasp the concepts of "turning," "his" and "head." However, something in the way the stars reflected the beach like a mirror caught a thread of his imagination and thus his attention and he noticed that the world began to rotate. He heard a chafing noise and felt something strange on his neck as the stars rushed to the right.

From the left came the sand and a girl. The sand blew his mind completely with the sheer enormity of it and the detail of seeing reflections of the heavens in all of its grains. He studied each of them twice for good measure for deep down inside he knew that he might never see something as beautiful as that, the multiverse.

Then he saw her, standing there, looking at him, and he didn't know what to think. She wasn't the world and she wasn't a mirror of the world. She was something else. Something new. And full of contrast.

He saw colours he had never seen before, all packed in a small space a handful of feet high and much less wide. But beyond his eyes he felt something more. Whatever it was he was seeing was radiating hotter than the stars, brighter than the sand. Where the former had the light of eons and the latter repeated it, this strange creature had something new.

Had he been educated or - for that matter - remembered education, he would have recalled an example of opening a box with a crowbar that's inside of it while standing on the outside. Though he couldn't find words to describe it, or anything else for that matter, he felt like that. He felt paradoxical, but all-in-all, in a good way.

His arms and legs were still ploughing the sand, digging deeper and deeper while his eyes burned at the woman. It looked slightly disconcerting, what with the rest of his face like that of a statue. An eeriely delighted statue, nonetheless.

[Allama]

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry if I bothered you," Deidre said, flustered and slightly intimidated by the intensity of the unknown man's stare.  His eyes continued to bore into her unnervingly.  There was something... off about him, something she couldn't quite put her finger on but that didn't seem frightening or negative.  She started to shift her weight a little, about to turn and walk away, but the expression on his face made her change her mind.

"I, um... I don't think I've seen you around the resort.  Did you arrive recently?"