Work Text:
01 OCT 79 — Professor Anaxagoras has given me a body of uncommon beauty and proportion. I do not dare ask him where it is from or who it once was; he does not take kindly to questioning, and so, henceforth, for the sake of simplicity, I will refer to it in my records as ‘Subject K’ — short, naturally, for ‘Subject Killed’, an idea which did not come from me, I confess, but from the mind of a dear and trusted colleague.
Subject K was once a man, a laborer if I am to guess, for he has that sort of a constitution, hearty and hale yet a touch underfed. His hair is pale and his eyes, upon inspection, are a blue shade not unlike veronicaflowers; I am sure that in his life, he must have been quite admired. Ah, what a pity, then, that he died so young! My own heart does pang when I look upon him, but I cannot afford to be so distracted by the feebleness of my empathy. The good professor does not take kindly to delinquency, either.
How slowly the time did pass in Professor Anaxagoras’s class — even you, ordinarily so fascinated by the theories he described, found yourself frequently bored by the mundane, frigid monotone of his lecturing. It was worse for the others, you supposed, many of whom only attended out of compulsion, not choice, and thus could hardly remain focused as he rambled about the concepts of Nousporism. Abiogenesis, he would tell you all, and at your side Mydei would yawn, though he tried very hard to hide it, covering his mouth and giving you one of those gentle, hapless looks of his. ‘Life’ was once ‘not-life.’
Occasionally, someone might raise their hand, might ask him to clarify meaning or vision, but inevitably they were met with the same response: a blank, pinched look, the professor’s lips pursed into a frown, his singular eye narrowed as he considered the inquiry carefully. By the time he mustered up a response, it was well past the time for anyone to care what it might be, and besides, he spoke in such a winding, insufficient manner that one was only ever left with more questions, anyways.
“I don’t understand what interest you find in Nousporism,” Mydei said to you once, after a particularly dry session in which Professor Anaxagoras had explained the construction of the gaseous compounds he had used in his most recent experiment. “There’s far more exciting research to be done in Helkolithy, and far better professors, at that.”
“You’re only saying that because it is your own discipline, and so you are bound to convert as many promising candidates to its pursuit as you can,” you said. He gave you a sheepish grin, and you rolled your eyes. “You’re better off persuading someone else.”
“It’s not persuasion if I’m only pointing out the truth,” he said, holding open the door to the dusty lecture hall for you, waiting for you to wave at Professor Anaxagoras as was your custom, though he never reciprocated. “I can’t fathom anyone more deserving, more dedicated, but the only Nousporist lab is Professor Anaxagoras’s, and everyone knows he doesn’t accept assistants. You’re wasting your potential, that’s all. It doesn’t have to be Helkolithy, but…you know.”
“Thank you,” you said when he trailed off with a shrug. “I appreciate it, Mydei, really I do, but it’s alright. Studying Nousporism has been my dream since I was young, even if it is a slog at times, and I am willing to wait if that is what it takes. I will wait years upon years if I must, but I shan’t be dissuaded, not by your good intentions or the professor’s bad temper.”
“Well,” he said, patting you on the shoulder. “Let us hope it does not take nearly that long.”
Had he shown any continued skill at prophecy, you might’ve told him to become a Venerationist, but unfortunately this was his one and only divination, in that the very next day, when the two of you made to leave as you always did, Professor Anaxagoras looked up when you waved at him. Then, slowly, with a twisted sort of comprehension dawning upon his sallow face, he held out his hand and motioned for you to wait.
“You can go, Helkolithist boy,” he said to Mydei, who had paused when you had. “I only wish to speak with her.”
Perhaps you might’ve been excited, but indeed all you could think was that you had done something wrong, that you had acted overfamiliar or otherwise offended he who had such peculiar sensibilities. Your stomach dropped, and you glanced desperately at Mydei, as if he could do anything but look at you in return, as bewildered as you were anxious, before you nodded at the professor.
Nousporists did not believe in gods, but you found yourself praying to some unknown entity as the door shut behind Mydei and you were left alone in the great, looming cavern of the lecture hall. It was an entity which was not exactly a deity but would, if you had to guess, resemble one, should you give further thought to the matter; as it was, however, you could only repeat your frantic pleas in your mind and wait, frozen, for Professor Anaxagoras to speak.
“It has come to my attention that you have some notions of becoming a Nousporist in full,” he said. When you were silent, he raised his eyebrows. “Did I misinterpret you? My hearing is keen, but I suppose advanced age catches up to us all.”
“Not — not at all, sir!” you said. “Yes, it was — it is my dream. Ever since I was very young, I’ve wanted to be a Nousporist. That’s the entire reason I came to this university, you’ve always — I mean, I really admire you and your work, is what I’m trying to say—”
“Enough,” he said, mercifully cutting you off before you could continue to stumble and worsen what was no doubt already a poor impression. “Very well. Come with me.”
He was a long-strided man, walking with a clear and distinct purpose, and you felt rather like a little chick toddling after its mother as you raced to keep up with him through the winding, candlelit halls of the university. Even after so many years in attendance, you and Mydei frequently found yourselves lost in the twisted mazes of the academic buildings — sometimes together, mostly apart — but Professor Anaxagoras navigated them with such a haunting, careless ease that you were impressed, having never expected it from him of all people.
“What do you know of the principles of Nousporism?” he said, cutting through the silence with the dulled knife of his voice. He was livelier now than he ever had been in his lectures, and for a moment you were simply taken aback at the thought that these two aspects were of one and the same man.
“Very much, sir,” you said, eager to impress him now that he was giving you the chance. “The foundation is the phrase ‘life’ was once ‘not-life.’ All of Nousporism stems from it.”
“Good,” he said. “Then, assuming the theory is correct, there must be a natural process for ‘life’ to be born of ‘not-life’, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Yes, it’s true,” you said. “Though no one has ever managed to learn what it is…”
You entered a small, dark room, a flickering lamp in the corner serving as the only source of light. When your eyes adjusted to the bleakness, you found that it was all but empty save for an operating table in the middle, upon which a single form lay, the length and breadth of it covered by a white sheet.
“What makes ‘it’ different from you and me?” Professor Anaxagoras said, gingerly rolling back the sheet to reveal a smooth, handsome face, its expression frozen in repose. You gawked at it for a moment, unable to entirely comprehend what you were looking at, and when you understood, you flinched backwards. “‘It’ was once a ‘he’, after all. In this way, death is the inverse of Nousporism.”
A million questions brimmed in your mind — whose body was it? How had Professor Anaxagoras come across it? How was it preserved in such flawless condition, untouched by decay and rot, as if it were merely trapped in slumber, not kissed by death? But one glance at his firm, cautious expression made you falter, for suddenly you recognized this for what it was: a test. If you showed any fear, any uncertainty, then you would prove yourself unworthy of the designation of Nousporist. So, swallowing down your hesitation, you banished your alarm and nodded at the professor.
“Death is ‘life’ becoming ‘not-life,’” you said, and when he smiled — only slightly, but surely — you were heartened to continue. “That’s why ‘it’ is different from ‘us’ — it isn’t alive. It can’t think or feel or understand, not anymore. It’s no different than a statue.”
“Very good,” he said. “So what would it take to restore it to its original condition? That is the basis of the experiment I want you to take over for me.”
“What?” you said, because everything was moving so fast and you could hardly comprehend it. A part of you — and not a small part, either — was still on the first floor, leaving the lecture hall with Mydei, unacknowledged by the professor yet again. So what did it mean, this entire concept of taking over his experiment? What was he saying?
“Make ‘life’ from ‘not-life,’” he said. “That is my condition, if you are serious about Nousporism and wish to join my lab. Resurrect this corpse, and turn ‘it’ into ‘him’ once again; only then will I accept you as worthy of working alongside me.”
“When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!” (Ruan Mei, The Origin of Species).
“He wants you to bring a dead body back to life?” Mydei said incredulously. Of course, to he who was so interested in the study of anatomy and physiology, Helkolithist as he was, the very thought must have been nothing short of blasphemous, but you could only shrug in the face of his shock.
“Nousporism is that kind of a field, after all,” you said. “I know you must view it as a sort of desecration, but that’s not exactly the case. The body is being used for advancement and progress. Isn’t that something that its owner’s spirit should be proud of?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said. “How are you supposed to manage that? Such an impossible condition he’s given…you’d almost think he doesn’t want you to succeed.”
“He would never do that,” you said immediately, in what he would, if he knew, likely dub a reflex. “Why would he go to all of that trouble in the first place? He could have just as easily ignored me. I don’t argue that this is meant to be a test of the utmost difficulty, but certainly it is possible. He would not have asked it of me if it weren’t.”
“If it is possible, then why hasn’t he done it himself?” Mydei challenged. You sighed, because he always was such a contrarian. It had been optimistic of you to expect him to take this victory at face value, not when he was so prone to this — this — this arguing, this fault-finding.
“Perhaps he is simply too busy to dedicate the proper time to research,” you said. “Such undertakings are not light, after all.” He opened his mouth to argue again, but you gave him a withering glare, cutting him off before he could. “You might be happy for me, if you were so inclined.”
“I am,” he said. “Really, I am. Wasn’t I the one who said you deserved it, before the professor even took note of you? I just didn’t expect it would come about in such a manner.”
“I didn’t, either,” you said. “But this is a rare opportunity. I cannot let it go, even if it isn’t the most favorable. Professor Anaxagoras has extended me his hand, and so I must endeavor to take it.”
“Alright, alright,” he said. “I won’t speak against it anymore, so don’t be angry. Tell me about this dead body of yours.”
“You’re incorrigible,” you said when he burst into a fit of laughter right afterwards, ruining his contrite image entirely. “It’s quite strange, actually. I can’t figure out what must’ve happened to it; it’s in entirely perfect condition, at least based on my preliminary examination.”
“Is it a man or a woman?” he said.
“A man,” you said. “Oh, Mydei, you’d gasp if you saw it. I can hardly believe how beautiful it is. He must’ve been so charming when he was still alive.”
“Beautiful isn’t exactly the first word I’d use for a corpse,” Mydei said, wrinkling his nose. “Or the second. Or the third.”
“I didn’t think I ever would, either,” you admitted. “But like I said, this one is odd. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, dead or alive. It belongs in a painting or a story, not an operating table or lab. Actually, it makes me quite sad whenever I happen to glance upon it; I don’t think he was any older than you or I when he died. What a horrible life he must’ve led, to end up like that, without a single person there to mourn him.”
“It’s a shame,” Mydei said. “Well, maybe his second life will be better than the first.
“Second life…” you said, trailing off in thought before giving him an earnest, worried look. “So you think that I can do it, is that what you mean?”
“Naturally, I don’t think anyone can do it,” he said, but then his brow furrowed into something sweet and pondering. “It violates the very basics of Helkolithy, wherein that which is dead must remain dead. But, if it is possible, if it can be done…then the one to manage it will definitely be you.”
07 OCT 79 — I cannot quite fathom where to begin in the resurrection of Subject K, so I have instead thrown myself into the careful and methodical categorization of the body. Perhaps this is ultimately an exercise in redundancy, but at least it wears the guise of productivity, and so I do not feel nearly as guilty as I would’ve, were I wasting my free time simply reading textbooks.
It is dead and yet undying at once, which is an inexplicable thing to say but is true nonetheless. Sometimes, I can delude myself into imagining the rise and fall of his chest, the beat of his heart beneath my palm — but, then, the skin of the corpse is cold and it is motionless in a way no man ever would be. I have never heard of anything like it, not in all my years of study, and none of the books I reference describe such a phenomenon. Ruan Mei, Ratio, Screwllum, Yang…if none of these great minds have encountered something like this, what does that mean? Doubtless Subject K is special; I wonder if Professor Anaxagoras understood this when he chose the body, if that was why he chose it, or if it is a mere and happy coincidence.
Without fail, you would cough upon entering the lab where Subject K — as Mydei had jokingly dubbed the corpse – was kept. It was dark and dusty and matched Professor Anaxagoras’s dour countenance exactly, but for someone like you, who was not yet used to such conditions, it was a valiant fight to accustom yourself. Yet you persisted, for if you could be vanquished by dank air and dim corners, then how could you ever consider yourself a proper researcher?
It was eerie, being alone in that room with only a body to keep you company. You liked to pretend that it was a sleeping man instead of a dead one, for it comforted you a little to think that there was someone other than mice and spiders huddled in floorboards alongside you as you pored over the various journals Professor Anaxagoras had left opened on the desk he had bequeathed you in the handing over of the lab. Once or twice, you considered begging Mydei to come and sit with you, you even came close enough to asking him for a favor with that intention, but at the last moment you grew wary and simply told him to make dinner for you, if he was not opposed.
What would the professor think? How could he accept an assistant who clung to a Helkolithist out of fear of her own experiment? Subject K was yours, so you ought not to be frightened of it, and you doubly ought not to be so reliant on someone whose philosophy was so opposite to your own. You had to learn to stand by your merit, and so you did not dare ask Mydei to stay by your side, knowing he would relieve you too well and thus would stunt your development too thoroughly. So, instead, to ward away the complete and total seclusion of the lab, you took to speaking with him: Subject K.
“Good evening,” you would say when you entered, smiling at the table through your coughing fit, a stabbing pain in your throat and lungs, tears welling in your eyes. “I hope you have been well in my absence, Subject K.”
Of course he did not answer, he very well couldn’t, but you imagined he might, if he had the capability, say something like this: I have been well, yes, albeit a little lonely. And what of you?
“Hm,” you would say, and then you’d launch into a recounting of your day as you settled in your chair, lighting your lamp and arranging your things around you. “Today was not so horrible. Mydei said he would leave dinner at my house for me, so at least I have one less thing to worry about and can spend longer here. I am near to a breakthrough, I have complete faith…do not worry, you will be back soon, and then Professor Anaxagoras will be forced to acknowledge me.”
Sometimes, you would complain to him, for few were as sympathetic of listeners as he was, and even fewer could keep secrets quite as well as he could. Perhaps no one in the world existed like that, and indeed there was a sort of freedom to this: you could speak as you wished without fear of judgment or reproach, and you abused the privilege, laying every petty grievance at his feet as you updated your records.
“Professor Anaxagoras has asked after my progress again,” you said once, punctuating it with a particularly harsh stroke of your pen. “I don’t know what to tell him. You are the same as ever, which in and of itself is a mystery, but one I am no closer to solving than I am to bringing you back to life.”
He continued his slumber, that pale-haired figure, unwitting of your distress, and with a sigh you got out of your chair and began to pace. What would it take? What were you missing? You could still hear Professor Anaxagoras’s clipped voice ringing in the back of your mind — ah. Not done yet? Such a pity. A disappointment, that was what you were, though he had not said as much. You had been entrusted with such a task, and instead of proving yourself capable, you had only served to fail repeatedly. How could you ever become a Nousporist now? If you were Professor Anaxagoras, you would never accept yourself, not after so many botched attempts, not after so many chances left unfulfilled.
“What if I ruin you?” you said, a new fear striking you as you pulled Subject K’s covering down his torso, taking his limp hands and moving them so that they were folded over his stomach. Such large hands he had, the skin worn and rough, littered with cuts and callouses, but arranged in such a way, they seemed princely and fine, as if clasped in wait. Despondency rolled over you in waves the longer you stared at him, imagining him rotting away, lost forever to worms and flies because of your own ineptitude. “I might ruin you. Oh, I will ruin you, I will ruin this experiment and you will become just another mound of dirt in the ground — I never should’ve accepted Professor Anaxagoras’s offer, I never should’ve believed I could do it — how you must hate me! If it were him, if it were anyone else, you might already walk amongst us once more, but instead you are here, trapped with me as your only hope.”
You did not know when the first tear fell, only that suddenly, you were kneeling with your face in your hands as you began to bawl, heaving and fitful. You could not do it. You could not do it. Why had you ever dreamt of becoming a Nousporist? It was too difficult, it was too difficult, you did not know how anyone managed, you should have given up long ago. You should’ve listened to Mydei, you should’ve become a Helkolithist — well, you still could, couldn’t you? But the thought of going to Professor Anaxagoras and telling him you were giving up was the most agonizing thing you could conceive of, so you allowed yourself only one more minute of tears, and then, wiping at your face, you straightened, brushing off your knees and arms.
“My apologies,” you said, adjusting your clothing so that it sat just so, professional and gathered once more, as if nothing had happened, nothing at all. “Let us continue, then, shall we?”
“The Lament for Khaslana” by Sunday Oak
Work Type: Painting
Medium: Oil on canvas
Measurements: H 182.9 x W 155.6 cm
“This picture shows the dead Khaslana from Amphorean mythology. He is surrounded by lamenting sea-nymphs. His mother, the tailor Aglaea, made wings out of wax so that she and her son might escape from the island of Okhema. But, overcome by pride, Khaslana flies too near to the sun, the wax melts, and he plunges to his death. This is Sunday Oak’s most famous picture. He belonged to the generation of Penaconian artists that was influenced by Belobogian Impressionism, but Oak devoted himself to the historical and literary themes of Lushakan artists such as Mikhail Char Legwork.”
There was something held under his tongue. You found it many days into your research, when you had given up hope and resorted to simply gazing at his face, willing him to give you some answer, some clue, one hint or several about what you had to do — if not the entirety, then at least the next step. His face belied nothing, not at first, but the longer you stared at it, the louder that persistent nagging in the back of your mind grew, that insistence that something was off, something was wrong about him. It took you a while to realize what, but then, in a flash of clarity, you understood: his mouth, his pretty mouth, curved into an unnatural crescent, just shy of a smile.
“Forgive me,” you said, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, your fingers itching with discomfort before you took his cheeks in your hand, prying his jaw open slowly, cringing back as you prodded about in the dry cavern, trying to remember to breathe so that you did not faint. You were somewhere else. You were a Helkolithist. You were in the library with Mydei. You were anywhere but here, doing anything but this. “Forgive me, please, forgive me—”
There it was, a stone the size of your thumb, gleaming crimson with an intrinsic fire that no ruby or garnet could ever hope to possess. You did not dare pull it from him, not when you recognized it immediately from the illustrations in one of Professor Anaxagoras’s journals: a philosopher’s stone, which did not, as was claimed in the myths, grant eternal life, but which did, according to the professor’s research, have extraordinary preservative properties. You did not yet understand how it worked, but you were sure, as you gently nudged his mouth closed, that this was the reason why he remained in such perfect, pristine condition.
But for him to be exactly as he was at the moment he had died, the stone would’ve had to have been placed right then, pressed under his tongue with precision at the very second he passed away. What did it imply? You didn’t want to think it, not of a man you had always so admired, but you could not stop your mind from ending up at that natural conclusion: Professor Anaxagoras had — he had — Professor Anaxagoras had —
You could not even make it to the wastebasket by the door; you threw up on the floor, hunching over as your stomach spasmed, gripping the edge of the table for stability. You counted to five — one, two, three, four, five — and then you pushed yourself up, wiping the corners of your mouth and your fingers with a handkerchief you produced from your pocket.
Then you retrieved a mop from the corner and began to clean the sick up, scrubbing at the stone until your hands were raw, as if that could do anything, as if this was something you could ever possibly hope to efface.
14 OCT 79 — ‘Subject K’ is such a clinical name, is it not? It feels so detached when I am speaking to him and must refer to him as that. And to think it is short for ‘Subject Killed’...such a cruelty, poking fun at his unfortunate state! I ought to have chided Mydei my colleague for the suggestion. No, no, it cannot do. I will give him a different name, a better, more apt one.
He is like a tragic hero from old. I am quite sure, now, that there was some foul play involved in his death, foul play that Professor Anaxagoras no doubt had a hand in, but I do not dare confront anyone, not as of yet. I am frightened, and besides the philosopher’s stone, I do not have enough proof — only a strange feeling, a protectiveness over his body, as though by bringing him back I can defend him from whatever happened to him in the first place.
Mydei My colleague did suggest, upon learning of this experiment, that perhaps his second life would be better than his first; that perhaps I could, in this way, save him from his horrible fate. How did he end up in Professor Anaxagoras’s clutches, anyways? Maybe it is that he was once like Khaslana, flying too close to a sun meant to burn him, always meant to burn him…
Khaslana. Yes, that name is familiar to me, I saw him in a painting once, his golden, winged form, his fine, seraphic features. Ah, now that I think about it, he was not so different from Subject K, was he? Well, perhaps it is fate, then, that even their names begin with the same letters. Henceforth I will know him as such, as Subject Khaslana — or, if I may be so informal, as simply Khaslana, like I would if we were close and particular friends.
“I worry for you,” Mydei said, and then you felt it, the ghost of his palm against your cheek, traveling to your shoulder and shaking you until you awoke, blinking up at him and wondering when you had ever fallen asleep in the first place. “When was the last time you slept for an entire night?”
“Hm?” you mumbled, your mind slow and groggy from exhaustion. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know?’” he said.
“The night is the only time I have to myself,” you said. “Thus, it is the only time I have to spend with him.”
“Him?” Mydei said. “Who? Do you — have you been courted, really?”
“Courted?” you said, and now it was your turn to give him an incredulous look. “Whatever do you mean? I speak of Khaslana — er, Subject K, as you know him.”
“Khaslana?” he repeated. “You mean…your dead body has a name now? And you are losing sleep because you are…spending time with it?”
“I don’t know why you act like he’s a puppy I’m raising,” you said. “It’s a genuine scientific undertaking. Professor Anaxagoras has already asked after my progress twice, and each time, I’ve had nothing to show for it but a few textbook articles that I thought might be of some relevance. Of course I have to spend time with him. How else will I figure out how to bring him back?”
Suddenly, it was as if every bit of compounded exhaustion you were feeling was suddenly thrust upon Mydei, leaving you light, leaving him overburdened. He raised his hand as if he might touch it to your brow, but then he did not, he only ran it through his hair and closed his eyes, like you were some great disappointment he could not understand how to fix.
“Very well,” he said. “If this is what you think is the best path, then of course I will believe you. Shall I leave dinner in your room once again?”
“If it doesn’t trouble you,” you said, and he did not seem angry, but you could not help wanting to tip-toe around him anyways, for although you had never once seen Mydei snap, that did not necessarily make him incapable of it.
“It doesn’t trouble me,” he said. “But in exchange, please promise you will rest.”
“I can’t promise that,” you said, which made you feel pitiful, but you could not bring yourself to lie to him, to give him that empty reassurance. His face fell, and how peculiar it was, that you were growing more and more tenured to Professor Anaxagoras’s dismay, but Mydei’s still brought you to fumble for an explanation. “He only has one body, Mydei, so I have to proceed with the utmost of diligence. What if I ruin it?”
“You are the one who is still alive. There will be other corpses, there will be no shortage of them, but there can never—” Mydei broke off with a heavy exhale, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Never mind.”
The callousness was so unlike him that you were visibly taken aback, which caused his eyes to widen, too, but he did not move to reassure you as he once might’ve. He only waited as you gathered your thoughts and your things, carefully placing each book in your bag before clearing your throat.
“There may be other corpses, but they won’t be his,” you said. “He is the one I have been trying for so long to resurrect. I don’t care about the others, Mydei. He is the only one I want to bring back.”
“Grandfather’s funeral was today. Mama has been crying and crying since we left the parlor, but when I looked at him in his casket, I was just a little curious. He didn’t look any different than when he would sleep on the sofa-bed at home, though when I tried saying that, Papa told me to hush. It made me very angry that he did that, but Mama was already close to tears, so I decided I would be good this time and listened very quietly.
“When we got home, I asked my uncle why it is that dead bodies resemble sleeping ones so greatly. He is always more willing to answer my questions than Mama and Papa alike. Both of them are so unreasonable, I am cross again thinking of it! But my uncle is different, he always tries to think over my questions and answer them seriously.
“He said to me, ‘Darling, it is because death is not separate from slumber — rather, it is a form of it, the eternal kind.’ So I asked him what eternal means, and he said it was some vast quantity beyond my imagination. I said — greater than one million? He nodded and said — many, many times greater.
“‘So if death is only a form of slumber,’ I said to him, because of course this new fascination he has introduced only made me more curious, ‘So if it is a form of slumber as you say, then could you not bring someone back as easily as waking them up?’
“He squinted at me, can you believe it? The thought of me confusing him! Well, he squinted at me, and then he sighed out his response the way Papa might, which would’ve made me cross again but it is not as offensive, coming from him: ‘You sound like a regular Nousporist.’
“A Nousporist! I have never heard of such a thing, and I tell him as much. He pats my head and tells me that of all the people in the world, only a Nousporist would ever ask as many questions as I do — although they are praised for it, where I am scolded.
“‘You would make a right proper Nousporist, thinking of it,’ he said, and now I am entirely taken with this idea of a place where I can ask as many questions as I want without Mama crying or Papa yelling or my uncle sighing at me. So I will be a Nousporist, then! It is settled, and in truth I feel a little relieved to have this plan for my future, since I have been unsure until now.” (Unknown Author, “A Girl’s Diary”)
“Khaslana,” you said. “This is what I have named you. Are you opposed to it? Do you know the story? It’s an old Amphorean myth, so there are nearly as many versions as there are stars in the sky. I guess you may have heard it, but heard a different version than the one I know.”
You moved your chair so that you were sitting beside him, propping your journal in your lap and continuing to take notes as you spoke idly, boredly. It was comfortable, the easy conversation, and more than a little unfamiliar, too, for you were used to your audiences cutting you off before you could complete your thoughts. Khaslana never did anything like that; he listened to you kindly, silently, without coldness or boredom with your rambling, winding ways.
“I suppose the story doesn’t matter as much as the ending, which is always the same,” you said. “He flies too close to the sun, and then he falls to his death. What a fool I have named you after! I am sure that is what you must be thinking to yourself, but that is not why I have dubbed you as such. Well, really, it’s a silly reason, I’m almost embarrassed to tell you…”
Khaslana did not say anything, and when you glanced up from your notes on one of Dr. Veritas Ratio’s papers, you found him as he always was, smiling slightly around the philosopher’s stone tucked away under his tongue, his body cold, his face set.
How had Mydei done it the other day? You extended your hand, patting Khaslana’s cheek, skimming it along his neck so that you could take him by the shoulder and shake him. Gently, barely, afraid of hurting him as you were, but you still did it, you still shook him as Mydei had shook you, out of some childish hope that maybe, maybe it would be enough. Maybe you had wasted your time thus far, maybe the secret really was just this, maybe all you had to do was beg him to wake up until he did.
But Khaslana did not stir, and eventually you gave up. Heat flushed your face, and you shrank back into your chair, hugging your journal to your chest and laughing miserably, wretchedly.
“How could you have allowed me to do that?” you said. “Now I look a greater fool than Khaslana himself.”
What would his laugh sound like? You figured it would be a handsome noise, musical and rich, befitting his stature and expression. You wished that you had already succeeded, that you had already brought him back to life, so that you could make these jokes and listen to his amusement in full, instead of relying on your imagination, which could never properly capture reality in any meaningful way.
“I don’t think Khaslana was a fool, though,” you said finally, your voice meek and downcast. “Who amongst us would not keep going, were we in his place? How could he ever be satisfied with the mediocrity of the clouds when the grandeur of the sun was within his reach? I cannot imagine which is a worse fate, failing in the pursuit of that greatness or contenting yourself with mediocrity. Well, I don’t know. If it were me, I would never accept either option.”
You paused, looked up at Khaslana, and then smiled yourself, your lips forming the same crescent-curve as his own mouth. Perhaps you were biased in loving that old story, when the rest of your classmates had preferred more romantic myths, but it was not such a bad bias to hold, or so you thought.
“They said he was terribly beautiful, which is why in some myths he was the sun’s lover, instead of just its victim,” you said. “They paint him as they paint angels; there is no other symbolic meaning for why I gave you this name. It is only because you are the only man I have ever met who comes close to resembling him.”
21 OCT 79 — Something of an idea is forming in my mind. I must consult some papers which our university does not hold copies of, so I have sent mail orders and eagerly await their arrival. Until then, I must continue as I have been, with what materials I have had access to thus far. Of course, I am too nervous to do anything to Khaslana himself, not when he is so delicate, so rare, and so I have resorted to finding little dead birds to experiment on. There is no small amount of these creatures, they are perpetually running into windows and doors and finding themselves in such a mess! I apologize to them when I find them, and then I cradle them in my hands and bring them to the lab.
I must work quickly on the little birds, because they do not have the philosopher’s stone preternaturally slowing down their decay as Khaslana does, and so they go bad quickly. Thus far, I have not managed anything, but I think that I am growing closer and closer to a potential solution, although I am loath to write it down in case it does not work and I am left looking like something of an idiot.
Maybe it is a strange comparison to make, but in a certain manner, Khaslana reminds me of those little birds. The bones of his face are exactly as fragile as those of their wings; the strands of his hair are as soft as the down of their chests; the slope of his nose is not unlike their beaks, just as straight, just as small. I wonder what he would look like with the wax wings of his namesake….if only I had the time, I might fashion a pair…but alas, the day is only so long, and I spend much of it in the lab as it is. I have other priorities, that is to say, and so I will have to content myself with picturing the ‘Lament for Khaslana’ and pretending that it is him in that hero’s place.
“Wait,” Mydei said when your lecture was dismissed and you shot out of your chair, preparing to hurry to the lab, to walk down the hallways you had long ago memorized, your feet traversing them without reliance on your mind’s commands. “Hey, wait!”
You had not realized he was talking to you until that second dictation, barked out with a sort of desperation. Furrowing your brow, you turned to look at him, because you could not fathom why he might be asking you to wait for him, and when you saw how crestfallen he looked, you did falter.
“Yes?” you said. Your response seemed to embolden him, for he moved so that he could stand beside you — you had not realized until he did how long it had been since you last walked like this, and somewhere deep within you, something like sadness brewed. You buried it, though, because what did you have to feel sad about?
“Why do you keep running off?” he said softly. “Is that body so important to you?”
“He is,” you said promptly, because of all the halfwitted questions he had ever asked, this was the most halfwitted of all. Was Khaslana so important to you? He was. Undoubtedly he was.
Mydei shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, like he was steeling himself against something, and then he took a deep breath. You watched him curiously, passionlessly, finding yourself unable to understand what he might mean by.
“Am I allowed to see it — him?” he said.
“What?” you said, and his encouraging grin felt akin to the first peek of sun through cloudcover, a dawn breaking through the fog of your mind. Momentarily you thought to yourself, what am I doing? Really, what am I doing? But you pushed these thoughts aside, because if you gave in now, when you were so close to the end, then you would never forgive yourself.
“I want to see what you’ve been working on,” he said. “You don’t tell me much when I ask, but I’d like to know. This experiment is important to you, and you—”
“Okay,” you said, surprising even yourself. Professor Anaxagoras had never explicitly forbidden visitors, and anyways the lab was under your jurisdiction now, so his opinions mattered little, but you had never considered taking anyone to meet Khaslana. For one, you were not so beguiled as to think that another person might not be appalled by him; for another, the thought of anyone else coming near him made you feel distressed. You wanted to keep him in the lab forever, safe from that cruel world which had killed him once, which would surely, if given the chance, kill him again. But Mydei was not anyone else, was he? He had always known the truth about the experiment, the body. Mydei did not want Khaslana to die again, not anymore than you did. So you did not mind as much, not if it was him, and you nodded to affirm this to the both of you. “Yes, I can show you, and explain it if you’d like.”
“As long as you are willing,” he said.
“I want to,” you said, and you meant it genuinely. You really did want to. “It’s not so complicated, really, but you have to understand a little more than just the basics of Nousporism that we discuss in lecture…”
You spoke the entire way to the lab, explaining the things you had written in your journals, what you had read and reviewed and pored over for the past few weeks, the minute details of Khaslana’s body and even the philosopher’s stone under his tongue. Mydei took it all with a level, quiet calm, interjecting with questions only when he truly did not understand. It was nice, and you wondered if this was how it used to be, if he really had always been so straightforward without your noticing.
“Here we are,” you said, opening the door for him, feeling a sudden and girlish nervousness. What would Mydei think? You did not know, and you weren’t sure if you wanted to know. What if he told you that you had been dramatic in your recounting? What if he considered Khaslana to be painfully average? You could not bear the former, and the latter might shatter you. Still, you led Mydei in after you, and you decided that this once if never again, you would trust him.
“I can hardly see anything,” he said, and on your left, he began to blink rapidly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light. You lit the lamps for him with a soft chuckle, and in the candlelight, he appeared all but spectral, shadows flickering over the planes of his face, deepening in the angles and paling along the edges. Then you motioned him over to the desk; he tiptoed towards you, taking each step carefully until he was peering over your shoulder at the flock of birds propped up neatly along the wall.
“I’m still too worried to do anything to him,” you said. “So whenever I have an idea, I test it on them first, just in case. Good thing, too, because as you can see, I haven’t been very successful yet.”
“Where do you find them?” he said.
“Ah, just around,” you said. “They’re not exactly in short supply.”
“I see,” he said.
“But you’re not here to look at birds,” you said. “You’re here for him. Khaslana.”
Mydei did not move from his place by the desk as you swept over to the center of the lab, where the table and the body were as undisturbed as ever. You murmured your typical greeting under your breath, for you did not think Mydei would take kindly to it, and then you removed his covering with as much tenderness as the brusque motion allowed, revealing him to the world once more.
“Come closer,” you said, beckoning Mydei over. He had gone white, whiter than usual, but still he trudged over, though he remained nervously behind you, looming over your back like an enormous shadow as he looked upon Khaslana’s still figure for the first time. “Isn’t he the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
“I didn’t realize how dead he would look,” Mydei said, his voice turbulent with unease. “I mean, he’s really just a corpse, isn’t he?”
“He’s not dead,” you said, looking up at him, stroking his arm to soothe him — and then you were overcome by how warm he felt, his skin blushing beneath your petting in a way Khaslana’s never could. “He’s just sleeping, and I will be the one to wake him up.”
He looked rather like a puppy, his eyes large and trusting, an agreeable tilt to his head as you continued to hold onto his arm, because you could not bear to let go of his heat just yet. So animated was he, a furnace in the cool of the lab, and you looked at Khaslana even as you clutched Mydei, wishing that it was him who had this vitality, wishing it was him who stood beside you.
“Do you want to touch him?” you said, and you did not wait for Mydei’s response, your palm moving from bicep to forearm to wrist, interlocking your fingers over his and guiding him to lay his hand against Khaslana’s cheek, holding it there in a gentle caress.
For a moment, none of you moved, and you began to shiver, because you could feel the blood spiderwebbing beneath Mydei’s skin, his pulse, every minute twitch of his muscles, the sound of his breath and the fever-pitch of his hand in your own — yet it was not him you were so consciously aware of. It was Khaslana you attributed these things to, Khaslana whose ardor you could suddenly conceive of with an aching closeness. Khaslana, Khaslana, he was alive, you could sense him begging to be freed from the confines of his slumber, Khaslana was waiting for you to save him from that which had been done unto him. There was no one else, there was no Mydei, there was only him, only Khaslana, you could feel it. You could feel it. You could —
Abruptly, Mydei wrenched his hand away from you, and without another word, he turned and left the lab. For a moment, you did not react, did not even comprehend what had happened, but then you startled, spurring yourself into action and racing after him, calling his name over and over.
“Mydei! Mydei, come back, please, Mydei, I didn’t mean to scare you—”
There was no answer. Mydei, who had always waited for you; Mydei, who had always listened to you; that Mydei, he did not respond. You stood in the doorway for you could not say how long, and then you closed it after you, collapsing into your chair and hugging your knees to your chest.
“You are the only one I have left,” you said to Khaslana’s slumbering form. “Please wake up soon. I am so lonely…”
“Abiogenesis, the idea that life arose from nonlife more than 3.5 billion years ago on Earth. Abiogenesis proposes that the first life-forms generated were very simple and, through a gradual process, became increasingly complex. Biogenesis, in which life is derived from the reproduction of other life, was presumably preceded by abiogenesis, which became impossible once Earth’s atmosphere assumed its present composition.”(Veritas Ratio, Encyclopaedia Intelligentsia).
You stared at the small thing in your palm in complete astonishment, tears welling in your eyes the longer you gazed upon it. The bird blinked at you, and then it chirped, ruffling its wings cheerily as it hopped about before pecking you slightly, ostensibly famished as it was.
“You’re alive,” you breathed. The bird chirped once more before pecking at you again, a little more demanding this time; you ignored it in favor of clamping your fingers over its wings and tearing off towards Professor Anaxagoras’s office, taking the steps two at a time in your haste.
You had done it. After all of the meetings he had called you to where you had had nothing to show, you had done it, you had resurrected this songbird, and soon would be Khaslana. Khaslana! He would be alive, he would be a person again, he would be yours and you would never be as lonely as you were now, as you had been for some time.
“Professor Anaxagoras!” you said, bursting into his office, out of breath from how fast you had run, hardly even remembering to knock. He was sitting at his desk, a pair of glasses low on the bridge of his nose, and he hardly looked up from the papers he was grading to greet you.
“What is it?” he said, and to anyone else, even to you on another day, it would’ve seemed unnecessarily curt, but as it was, you were too dizzyingly overcome with intoxication, too inebriated on your own success to care
You held your hands out before you proudly, brandishing the bird and waiting for him to say something. He narrowed his eyes at it, took off his glasses, narrowed his eyes even more, rubbed his shirt along the lenses as if to clean them, and then put his glasses back on, poking the bird in the chest before leaning back.
“You’ve brought me a bird,” he said. “Why have you done that, exactly?”
“Not just any bird,” you said. “A dead bird.”
His countenance shifted; suddenly, it was dark, malevolent almost. “What?”
“I did as you asked, sir,” you said. “I have resurrected this bird. I have made ‘life’ from ‘not-lie’ — now, I only have to replicate the same experiment on Khaslana — on the body you gave me, and then…”
“Vain girl,” Professor Anaxagoras hissed, and then he was snatching the bird from your hands, holding it up fearfully to the light. “Vain, arrogant, imprudent girl, you were never meant to succeed!”
“What?” you said. “But you said that if I didn’t, you wouldn’t allow me to work as your assistant?”
“It was a test!” he said, and then he opened the window and cast the bird from it without even waiting to see if it could fly. You shrieked as it fell and he began to pace the length and breadth of the room, his face in his hands. “A test, you simpleton, I wanted you to accept your failure. I wanted you to learn from it!”
“But isn’t it better that I have succeeded instead?” you said, genuinely confused at his reaction.
“Who are we to decide who lives and who doesn’t?” he said. “Who are you to go around bringing people back from the dead at your whim? No, it’s not any better. It’s worse! I only wanted to see how you might react when faced with an impossible task. The moment you accepted that it was too difficult for you…I would’ve taken you as my assistant then and there. Irresponsible, mindless, laughable girl!”
“You ought to praise me!” you snapped, struck by a sudden flash of irritation. So many nights you had spent laboring away, so many days you had wept, all out of fear — fear of him! Professor Anaxagoras, who had held your dreams in between his careless fingers, who had dangled them above you like bait on a fishhook, and now he was saying it was for nothing? Now he dared to say that there had never been any risk, that you had never needed to care about him or Khaslana or any of it? “What I have done is impossible, and you — you —”
He grabbed you by the shoulders and glared at you with such frightening intensity you almost cried out, though you knew that no one would hear you and, even if they did, they would not dare venture into his office to see what was the matter.
“It is impossible for a reason!” he said. You shoved him away from you, and he stumbled backwards, though he remained uncowed. “Do you think there aren’t people I wish to bring back? But we cannot go about acting like death is unnecessary, like we are the ones who allow it or don’t. You have to understand that!”
“You say that I cannot resurrect people as I will,” you said. “But how am I any different from you, professor? I know what you did to him.”
“And what, exactly, do you mean by that? Pray tell,” he said.
“The man in the lab,” you said. “I found the philosopher’s stone under his tongue. You killed him, and you preserved his body at the very moment he died. How can you say that I am in the wrong for restoring life, when you take it away for nothing but an experiment that was never supposed to succeed in the first place?”
Professor Anaxagoras did not say anything for a long while, before, all of a sudden, he burst into laughter. You watched him warily as he cackled and cackled, tears streaming down his face, the sheerest joy that you had ever seen lighting up his demeanor as he howled without acknowledging you until, finally, he exhaled in defeat.
“Oh, you really are an imbecile,” he said. “I went to the hospital and asked the head nurse which patient was the closest to death. She took me to the room of a laborer sick with consumption and told me it was him; I asked the man if he cared what happened to him once he was gone, and he told me no. So I instructed the nurse to place the stone under his tongue as soon as he died, and to call me afterwards. I didn’t kill him — he was already dead.”
“I will bring him back,” you promised. “I will not fail him.”
“You will do no such thing,” Professor Anaxagoras said, and there was no hint of humor left in his expression, not any longer. His grip grew gentle, but his words grew steelier as he took you back by the shoulders, impressing his seriousness upon you through the force of his hold. “Listen to me. Promise you will destroy that body tonight. Destroy the body and your research and never speak of any of this again. I will take you under my wing, I will teach you everything you need to know about Nousporism, but you have to promise me you will do that.”
“Very well,” you said, your tongue heavy with lead and lying. You did not know if he believed you, but you continued anyways, even as he took one step backwards and then another, incredulity etched across his face. “As you wish, Professor Anaxagoras.”
28 OCT 79 — Professor Anaxagoras is waving Nousporism in front of me as if it is some great incentive. He tells me he will teach me, but what is left for me to learn? I have made ‘life’ from ‘not-life.’ I have touched the philosophy’s core, and I have come back unscathed. He cannot take this from me. He cannot take Khaslana from me. Khaslana, who is the only one I have left…I will do it. I will bring him back to life. This I swear, here and now: I will definitely do it.
He is larger than a lark, so I will have to adjust the measurements. That accursed professor! If only he had not cast that bird from the window, I could’ve been exact and precise in my work. But as it is, I must estimate using the bird’s brethren. I do not think I have much time before the professor grows suspicious and comes to check on me — I am not as much of an idiot as he claims. I know he didn’t believe me when I swore I would destroy all evidence of my research, so I must work quickly and bank on his continued underestimation.
I would like to practice on a few more of the smaller creatures before daring to touch Khaslana, but again, I do not have the time for it. Even now, I write this in haste, for I am ever wary of the professor’s impending approach. I must simply have faith in my theory, in my experiments, in him. He will wake up for me, I am sure of it. He will wake up for me, and I will never, ever be lonely again.
Khaslana’s eyes, when he opened them, were no longer the same shade of veronicaflowers that they had been in his death. It was the first thing you noticed, that where once there was blue, now there was gold, as warm and incandescent as lamp-light, framed by the black flutter of his lashes. His hair, too, had darkened with the stain of alchemy, the pure white soiled by the resurrection, softened into a glistening cream shade. Yet beautiful he remained, and if anything, he resembled that mythical Khaslana even more now, forever touched by the eternal sun of his undoing.
“There’s something under your tongue,” you said when he gave you a wide-eyed, panicked look. You tried to sound reassuring, so that he did not shy away from you, and you must have succeeded, because instead of flailing about he simply waited for you to continue, watching you while taking fast, sharp breaths. “Can you open your mouth? I can remove it for you. You won’t be needing it anymore.”
He dutifully obliged, parting his lips and allowing you to press your middle finger against his tongue, nudging it out of the way and pinching the philosopher’s stone between your index and thumb. Carefully extricating it, you held up a glass of water to his lips, pouring it down his throat and watching to ensure he swallowed each drop.
“Are you able to speak?” you said. He scowled in thought, but you waited, giving him the time to consider it until, finally, he coughed and rasped something out.
“Who are you?” he said. The words came out slow and unhurried and scratchy, but now that he was alive, you had all of the time in the world to do with as you pleased, so you did not rush him.
“I’m the one who brought you back to life,” you said, offering him the glass of water. He took it in shaky hands, the contents sloshing about as he raised it to sip on, but the more he drank, the steadier he became, until he could hold it without wavering in the slightest. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Back to life?” he said. “I was dead?”
“For at least a month, yes,” you said. He lifted his hands, flexing his fingers experimentally, blinking at the way they bent and then straightened again. “Do you remember any of it?”
“No,” he said. “It’s as if I’ve just awoken from a long dream, the contents of which I can hardly recall. Even my life from before is growing dim, and I think I am soon to forget it entirely.”
He took your hand and held it to his cheek, which was so warm you nearly sobbed, running your thumb along the firm bone without worrying about whether it might shatter. Closing his eyes, he leaned into you, and this did make you pause, because you hadn’t expected it — though it wasn’t unwelcome, exactly. The sweet kiss of his breath against your wrist made you feel unreasonably flustered, so, tentatively, you used your other hand to comb your fingers through his hair, trying to distract yourself but ultimately only worsening the effect.
“You aren’t distressed by your amnesia?” you said. “Don’t you miss the people you used to love? Don’t you wish you knew who they were?”
“I cannot miss what I don’t know exists,” he said, and the unimpressed flatness was your first indication that he was lacking something a bird would never have in the first place, your first indication that you had not brought ‘him’ entirely back, whoever ‘he’ had been before his death. “I should, right? There are people in the back of my mind, begging to be remembered, but yet I cannot manage it, and it does not hurt me as it should.”
“You were a laborer,” you said. “Sick with consumption. That is all I know.”
“A laborer,” he repeated. “I know nothing of it, but it seems a miserable existence, if I died so young.”
“It was,” you said. “I am sure it was, but you will never have to go back. I will take care of you. Your life is mine, my greatest experiment, and I will defend it from the world if that is what it takes. I promise you I will…Khaslana.”
“Khaslana? Was that my name?” he said.
“I don’t think so,” you said. “But it is the name I gave you in the absence of any further knowledge, and I have grown used to it.”
“Then it is better,” he said. “I will keep it as a gift from you. Khaslana.”
“We should leave,” you said, because suddenly the blankness in his eyes made you more nervous than awed. You had brought back something, but whether he was a man or not, you were not quite certain, and leaning towards the negative — which begged the question of what exactly had you created? “Khaslana, the professor may yet—”
“Can’t it wait?” he said. “I have only just stepped into this realm of living for the second time, and I am so numb to it all, it’s like the world doesn’t exist — except for you. Your hand is the only warmth I have felt since you roused me from my slumber…everything else is freezing, and I am so unsure…”
Before you could reconsider, you embraced him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and holding that shell of a man — because now you knew for sure that he was not whole, that you had only managed a partial success and left the greater piece of him to rest, either in peace or in agony — close to you, his bare chest against the material of your shirt, his hair silky where it grazed your neck. With a soft, nearly inaudible whimper, he wound his own arms around your waist, clinging to you tightly as the gooseflesh along his back finally faded.
“What have you done to me?” he whispered. “I wasn’t supposed to come back like this, was I?”
“I don’t know,” you said. “I was going to run more trials before I attempted anything on you, but Professor Anaxagoras commanded me to destroy your body and my research alike, and Khaslana, I could not bear it. I could not bear the thought of discarding you like that, and so I gambled, and I supposed I lost. I brought only this piece of you back, but…”
“But?” he said, nuzzling against the hollow of your throat in a manner that felt like an instinct more than a proper and conscious decision.
“But some of ‘you’ is better than none of ‘you,’” you said. “Even if it was the smallest fraction of ‘you’, I could not bring myself to regret it if it meant I could have that fraction with me forever.”
He lifted his head only slightly, batting his eyelashes at you, and then his arm snaked from your waist to your chin, which he held without any real force, gazing at you contemplatively. You did not dare move, and anyways his other arm was still around you, so you waited to see what his next action might be, finding that that aspect of unpredictability was nearly as exciting as it was agitating. You did not know what he would do; you did not want to know, either. You just wanted him to do it.
For a while he only studied you as you had once studied him, carefully, methodically. Then, with a brazenness that could only come from someone so overeager and long-deprived, he brought his lips up to meet yours, the hand on your chin moving to your neck. He tasted a little like how you imagined death might, but this was not a bad thing — it was coppery and minty and sweet, so sweet you did not ever want him to pull away, although of course eventually he did.
“I am a little more alive now,” he said as he caught his breath, and then he kissed you, again and again and again. “And still more, and even more.”
You had been standing before him, but he pulled you into his lap so effortlessly you forgot how weak he had been mere minutes ago. It was gone, all concept of that earlier man, who had been debilitated and puny. Now he was neither man nor decrepit, and when you adjusted your position as best as you could in the midst of his searching, searing lips and their quest for your own, you brushed onto something hard that drew a gasp from the both of you.
“I didn’t know you could still—” you began, which only made the pink of his face darken until his cheeks resembled twin apples. “I mean, I wasn’t expecting it to — to feel so—”
You broke off, because you found no value in continuing, and instead ground into him again. And perhaps he had lost his soul in death, but he could still understand pleasure and shame as well as any other man, so he did hide his face in the crook of your neck even as his hips bucked up into yours in response.
“I’m sorry,” he said in an endless refrain as he continued almost frantically, like he might wither back into death if you made him stop. “I’m sorry, is this — is this what it’s like to be alive, it feels so wonderful, thank you — thank you for bringing me back, thank you for letting me — I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
You wanted to tell him that you should be the one apologizing, but how could you? When he was bare save for the thin sheet his body had been covered with and he was so intent on proving his existence, how could you not allow him? You had never felt this way, and briefly you thought — might it have felt nearly this nice if it had been Mydei against you? Your old friend, who had not spoken to you in so long, was surely frightened of you now, there was no other reason for the continued avoidance…you wondered if it would have been anything like this with him, with a man instead of a monster beneath you.
Then Khaslana’s fingers sought permission just below your navel, helping you out of your pants, pulling aside the lace of your undergarments when you did not resist, and any thoughts of Mydei, of anyone or anything, were all forgotten. You did not care that Khaslana was a monster of your own making when he pushed inside of you, too overcome by the size of him; you did not care that his eyes were gold and empty, that his hair was stained and he tasted like death. You did not care for any of it, you only knew that he was alive and he was inside of you and he was yours. He was yours and he always would be, he groaned as much against you, and you — you did not say it aloud, but you could not deny that you thought about it until you could think no longer, the world turning as white as the sun when you came around him and collapsed into his waiting embrace.
“Khaslana, my Khaslana, how beautiful you are; how tender is your flesh, warm and flushed with vigor; how golden is your blood, now that it flows unfettered; and how terrible you are, too, a man — if you can even still be called that — returned from the dead without soul or mind, a heartless husk of a thing. Oh, Khaslana, how you frighten me so! Yet I love you, I am sure of it, for whenever I do think of destroying you as I ought to, I find I am unable.” (Unknown Author, “Letter to a Cherished Experiment”).