I feel like I am piecing together a jigsaw puzzle.
You always start with the edges, don't you? Or at least that's what they say, what the general recommendation is. Find a corner piece, build out the frame from there, then slowly start filling in the middle towards the centre. Works great for a pretty picture. Little different when you're rebuilding a person.
Still, I didn't have anywhere better to start, so edges it was. Round out the general shape. Let people see a frame of what I should be, something they can identify as a person, even structurally fragile as it is. But that leaves the middle, doesn't it? And then you're just rifling through the box, a tile in one hand, selected for no better reason than proximity, running your other through piles of cut cardboard hoping that by the sheer grace of God you'd scoop a matching piece. And then you'd get to repeat the process. Sometimes, you might build a little island, a small collection of connecting tiles, but you wouldn't know where it goes, how it connects to everything else - so it just floats in the middle, waiting for context, purpose. Meaningless without either.
Anyway. You see where I'm going with this. All edges, no middle. Nothing meaty, nothing confirmed. Trying to piece myself back together after the last few months and coming up empty. Moving forward with single-minded determination, but no plan for what to do when I get to the other side. If I get to the other side. Who am I now? I was an actor, but it was all I was, and it ate up anyone else I could have been - and now I've killed it, but too late to extricate anything from its corpse. So, what, I've replaced it with a girl? The girl, potentially, but is that emotion talking, or desperation for a sense of purpose? Either way, building myself around another person is a poor substitute. Wasn't that the whole problem in the first place? Too deep into acting that there wasn't a 'me' in there, and in my efforts to find that long-lost self, I've just put another person there instead. It's not fair, on me or her. I deserve to be able to know myself, to be my own person, to understand what I want and my potential. She deserves to not bear the burden of another person on her back, with all the baggage and obligation and responsibility that brings.
But right now, what else do I have?
G I L E M O R Y G A L A H A D
G I L E M O R Y G A L A H A DLocation: England, California, Somewhere Else EntirelyHuman #5.057 Where Am I Now?
Interaction(s): N/A
When Rosemarie opened the door to her son, the first thing she looked at were his eyes; those baby blues, once lightning-bright and sharp, were now just weary and dulled, and her heart broke. When she saw the stump of his arm, she pulled him into a tight embrace, and began to weep.
Several hours later, Gil sat across from his parents, the three of them huddled close with wine and a fire roaring to their side, both working in tandem to push heat into Gil's bones. The journey home had been mostly inconsequential; his un-tended hair and beard were a long way from his image in the public eye, and the amputation dissuaded anyone who'd double-took. The flight was smooth, the train was quick. It felt surreal to be back here, his childhood home, an only child and his parents. There were red-carpet photos framed and hung on the wall, a much younger and happier (or was he?) Gil beaming out from beneath the glass. He'd noticed a couple of Artie's business cards on the hallway cabinet as he'd come in, and had taken the opportunity to surreptitiously pocket them to be discarded later. One conversation at a time, he thought.
His mother's eyes were watery and bloodshot, supping her wine out of what felt like...politeness? Like this evening really was nothing more than a small family sharing a bottle to welcome their beloved son home. Her sips were small and infrequent and there was still a subtle shake to her hands as she raised the glass to her lips, emotions still frayed, nerves still raw. His father was stone-faced, but whatever stoicism he tried to muster was betrayed by his sunken gaze and heavy hand wrapped around his wife's; the deep pain he felt was clear, to see his only son maimed and beaten and halfway-dismembered. He'd drunk his first glass quicker than any of them, but had declined a second.
The explanation had been broad-strokes and filled with half-truths. Gil elected to leave out the Foundation's involvement, the sabotaged Trial, the entire abduction and existence of Daedalus; these were things he need not burden his parents with, lest they fear ever letting Gil out of their sight again - he knew already that his plans to leave would wound them further than his return already had. Why magnify that pain needlessly? No. Instead, he wove tales of another attack, lingering followers of Hyperion making a final stand, the academy being valiantly defended by staff and students alike but not without collateral; PRCU electing to close their doors until they could once again guarantee safe harbour for those they were founded to protect; the Foundation graciously accepting any who wished to transfer. It was a far more optimistic telling of what he'd truly experienced these past few short months, and artfully constructed of select bits of truths. Gil himself - he was seeking another, a girl (to which his mother had, despite herself, perked up at the mention of), who had gone missing in the calamity, unaccounted for.
Which lead back neatly as to why he had returned home at all - England was a long way from the west coast of Canada, and in coming back to these shores he'd achieved little else than trading one small island for another. The truth of the matter was difficult to understand and harder to explain, so Gil elected to lie by omission: the girl he was looking for was last seen in the company of another (in a roundabout sort of way, Gil reasoned to himself), and that girl had a father who was a partner in the very same law firm that Andrew Galahad worked accountancy for - the best lead Gil had gotten from his after-hours excursion into the ex-academy's basement and his sub-par computer literacy. So it was with wringing hands and a heart heavier than he had ever known that he came to his father, to ask him to give up information that could cost the Galahads what remained of their livelihood.
Andrew saw in Gil's eyes the same spark that had driven him, many years ago, to throw himself full-bodied at Rosemarie, and he couldn't find it in him to be a good accountant over being a good dad. Gil got an address; Andrew got away with it; and a few days later, with more tears from Rose, Gil was back on a plane bound for California.
| A few weeks from now.
All twisted. Cracked reflection, a splintered spider-web landscape, an imitation of known reality built by someone who looked at the world crooked and didn't quite understand how a straight line was supposed to go anyway, or how it was supposed to connect to another. It gave Gil a headache to look at, like he was concentrating too hard on one of those magic-eye pictures, convinced that if he unfocused his eyes just right, squinted the perfect amount, it might all sync up and make sense. A fool's gambit, perhaps, but no one could say Gil's recent behaviour was anything approaching sensible.
He was woozy from the fall. Had he fallen? It had certainly felt so; his remaining hand throbbed and for a moment a deep fear seized him in his bones, until he risked a glance and realized it wasn't broken, battered, maimed beyond redemption - it was just sore from the scarring he'd undertaken to get here in the first place. With considerable effort, he rolled over onto his back, cradling his aching hand against his chest.
The sky was wrong. A swirling maelstrom on the horizon, shrouded in darkness and everything bathed in a deeply unsettling crimson, beaming down from a moon too large and too full and far, far too red.
“The moon in Ünterland is always red.”
Alyssa echoed in his ears and he whipped his head around from his supine position, but the redhead was nowhere to be seen. Of course not - she'd not joined them, stayed behind with Luce, the pair of them posted at the ritual site. Luce had no choice - the scarring required to get in wouldn't last long enough under her hype-gene to guarantee a way back out - and Alyssa, well, maybe she couldn't bear to leave Luce, maybe she was simply doing as instructed. Either way, she wasn't here, but her words - what little Gil understood, anyway - resonated within him still.
For that matter, no one else was here either. They entered four-strong, but Gil was distinctly alone, and as the realization settled upon him he was struck by a pervasive dread that he could not shake. This was the most uncharted of territories, land that couldn't even be relied upon to remain consistent or play by the rules of Gil's understood reality. Alone here, he knew, meant death, and he might not even see it coming. He might not even feel it as it happened. As far as he knew, he could put a foot wrong, and simply cease to be. Carefully - slowly - every movement calculated and assessed and then made cautiously - he rose to a knelt position, trying to make some sense of his immediate surroundings and seize hold of some bearings.
And then he heard the chittering.
Dad came through. I don't know when I became miserable or cynical enough to doubt even my own father, but for a day or two there I did. I hadn't even recognized it in myself, but the relief - the elation - when he handed me an address made me realize I'd not had faith in him to begin with. How have I fallen this low, that I treat my own parents with skepticism and distrust?
I'm in California now, in Santa Ana. It feels ironic - once again I'm a stone's throw from L.A. and Hollywood, yet giving it all up is what spurred me on this quest in the first place. I left Los Angeles for Dundas Island - then gave up on my apartment to go back to England, and what was my next step? Straight back to California. Preordained almost. It'd be funny if it wasn't so irritating.
All I need now is an excuse to get into Alyssa's estate - estate, by the way, I never would have expected roots like this from such a humble girl - and then I can just talk to her, get her to send me wherever she sent Amma. Use another stone or cast another spell or whatever the hell it is she and that blonde girl get up to, and then I can find her and be done with this whole mess. Put the academy behind us, flee to some corner of the world that the Foundation or Daedalus will never find, and just live in peace. Or I just free her, and let her carry on after her revenge. If that's the case, I'll go home again, catch up on the years in England I missed, forget about Gil Galahad and just be no one instead. Mum would be happy to have the company again, at least.
Thick fog, rocky debris, dead foliage and petrified trees did much to obscure whatever clicked in the distance.
Gil had been walking for...he didn't know. No way to keep track here, the sanguine celestial body that hung above him never moved, his watch was cracked from where he'd fallen (he still wasn't sure that he had, but the timepiece was broken either way), and they'd left behind their phones. There was no sign of Ellara, Lorcán, or Aurora; Gil just hoped they'd landed together, so at least someone would be able to find Amma and rescue her. Gil was resigned to his end. A small, awful part of him welcomed it.
The clicks moved from one side to the other, and Gil paused. He wasn't sure how it had crossed over from his right to his left, but it had, and yet he'd seen nothing ahead, nor heard nothing behind. But he was absolutely being followed, observed; the clicking was regular, rhythmic, keeping pace and never drifting closer or farther. Frustrated, exhausted, scared, he leaned against a tree, and looked up at the blood moon again. The soft red glow bathed everything in unearthly light, and details were easily lost in the dark. He'd strain his eyes before he caught a glimpse of his stalker, and he could only assume that if it had meant to kill him, it would have done so already. He took a long, measured breath, steadying his nerve.
"Come out." He announced in the direction of the soft clicks, receiving only a few rapid-pace chits in return. Gil pushed himself off the tree and pointed. "Show yourself. I know you're there."
"This one wants you to know she is here."
The blood in Gil's veins ran ice-cold.
"Come out!" He demanded, doing his utmost to sound brave. The mounted blade Ellara had insisted he wore on his stubbed arm felt inconsequential. "Or I shall force you out."
"Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck..." the chattering response sounded like rattling laughter. "You are...brave, for one so weak, wounded. Would have been killed-slain many times over, were this one not watching..."
There was a long pause; Gil wasn't sure whether to parse the statement as a threat, or if he was simply being condescended to by his invisible prowler.
"So you're protecting me, is that it? Or just guarding your next meal?
The chittering moved softly, circling in on Gil, and he did his best to follow it.
"You are scrawny meat. Would not sate this one's belly-hunger. No, you came here looking-searching. To rescue someone. Noble... foolish."
"I've been called worse." Gil said, the chittering getting ever-closer, but its source still unseen.
"Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck...yes, this one believes you. This one would help."
There was the faintest outline of something...humanoid. The fog parted around a feminine shape, but something wasn't quite right; the carmine light of the moon glittered off of iridescent wings, and Gil realized that while this figure had been human at some point, that must have been a very long time ago. She came further and further into view, and Gil studied her with a morbid curiosity.
Large black eyes sat beneath a pair of twitching antenna that sprung from the bridge of a human nose, and dominated the face that proceeded to split open at the jaw into paired mandibles, clicking and chattering over a maw of molars and canines and a tongue. Shapely curves were encased beneath a mottled-gray carapace that slotted and parted neatly at the joints, intersecting tidily without giving up an inch of vulnerability across the entire exo-skeleton. Hands and feet ended in chitinous claws rather than the keratin nails Gil possessed, but there was dexterity there that belied the vicious points. And of course, those glittering, translucent wings, bursting elegantly from slits in her back, paper-thin and segmented like stained glass, flickering and twitching in the scarlet moonlight. She was magnificent and terrifying and alien and human all at once; Gil was petrified as she approached, cautious, wary, but deliberately presenting herself as decidedly not a threat.
"W...why?"
Her mouth curled into an awkward smile, the mandibles pulling back to show lips and teeth and gums.
"This one wants-needs rescue too."
She's not there. Her father knew I was coming, though - I dared not ask how. Undoubtedly he knows about my dad's help, but it does neither me nor him any favours to admit it aloud, so it will remain unspoken.
I asked him where I could find Alyssa, but he just deflected. Said she wasn't anywhere she could be found, whatever that means, but asked why I was looking for her. A fair question - looking out for his daughter. But I don't know what overcame me. I told him everything. The whole of it, nothing omitted, nothing undersold. The straight truth, from the start of the semester up to the Chernobog attack. And he just...listened. No disbelief, no incredulity, not even a single question. He just sat there, and I spoke, and he believed me. And then he told me where to start looking - where to start looking properly, he said.
What the fuck is a Jäger?
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