Chapter Text
Looks to the Moon felt like she should have remembered something when she first saw the creature wandering about her corpse.
She stared. It stared back, its eyes as big and black as hers were. She doubted that was the resemblance she was thinking of, however. A slimy little thing it was, though calling it little might have been hypocritical; in her current state, she wasn’t much bigger now was she? And much unlike her, this creature had the freedom to move about. Not that she could fully grasp the joy of trekking through a world as broken as this one. But, an animal it was, and so it fought for its survival.
She greeted it. It continued to stare. Of course, it wouldn’t understand. Or if it did, it had no means of responding.
Her neurons floated in the air lazily, not much in terms of entertainment or company, and barely functional as a means of data storage. She supposed having a creature other than herself around was a nice change of pace.
Or so she thought, before the creature jumped in the stretch of water between them, jumped out, and pushed its wet face against her. Her umbilical pressed against her back painfully as she was knocked back.
“Please stop it!” she called out. But still, the creature either didn’t understand her distress or didn’t care, as it climbed over her, knocking into her neurons in a way that made her head spin. And then, it landed straight on her umbilical. The rusting metal scraped against the wall with a ear-shattering screech. Moon was knocked into the water as it yanked her back, her loose wires retracting angrily as she was plunged underwater. Not that this was something she wasn’t used to, but the creature was still there, clinging onto the metal, trying to scramble out of the water. Moon’s vision filled with white for a moment as one of the few wires still connecting her to her lifeline broke under the tension.
She raised her arms to try to grab something, anything, to pull herself out of the water. It wasn’t like she would run out of the oxygen, not with her neurons supplying her with all she needed, but the way her exposed wires were squished under her body, the way the umbilical still screamed with the effort to pull her back up, something that it hadn’t been able to do for who knows how long… She wanted out. She had to get out. She wasn’t sure which way was up.
Her right hand made contact with something, and she grasped at it. Her hand wouldn’t close properly, and she could hardly pull herself out, but now that she had located the ground again, she could orient herself, she could…
The umbilical straightened itself suddenly, shoving her out of the water. She slid across the garbage, stomach to the ground.
If she had nerves, they were all aflame. Almost like when…. No, she couldn’t quite remember. Perhaps that was for the best. She couldn’t imagine that anything causing such agony would be a very nice memory.
She still couldn’t see, not with her face pressed against the heap of trash that had once been a part of her.
Once the pain subsided, she finally pushed herself up, only to find herself facing the same creature from before. It was holding something…
No.
“Do not eat it!” Moon yelled. She doubted that the creature understood, but it must have heard her, at least, because it dropped the neuron in alarm.
“Go! Just… please go. You’ve done enough already. Please leave me be.”
When the creature just stared, she tried clarifying her message by making shooing motions with her arms, and then giving it a little push towards where it came from.
The umbilical made a snapping sound, yanking at her again. She flinched with a shout, and curled into herself. The creature flinched back as well. For a moment Moon thought it might leap at her again, but instead, it crawled back into the water, looking back at her with those big, shiny eyes. Then it swam away, and just like that, the intruder was gone.
If only she could survey the damage. But when she tried to turn her head, the ache worsened. She sighed, holding onto one of her neurons, feeling it pulse under her fingers.
“Good riddance,” she murmured, though she couldn't pack any punch into it. Perhaps she could bring herself to hate that creature once the pain was manageable enough to let her think clearly. She had endless time to learn to manage it, after all.
Or so she thought.
That night, when she drowned, the umbilical tore from her back.