Quietly she sings to herself, her eyes distant and dim.
"Soap and water..
hang my heart on the line..
scour it down in a wind of sand,
bleach it clean to a vinegar shine.."
Memories cross the hyena's mind. Half a billion years have passed since the reality she was formed in was torn apart, but the days are still so clear.
A young girl with sharp green eyes, dressed in perfect white. She runs along the pavement, along side a red brick building, lines of the slowly decaying stone having made beautiful pathways in the solid black below her clipping shoes.
A drawing, childish, but with some skill nevertheless. A hand, out stretched, opened at the wrist, a dozen metal wires to move the fingers. A happy laughing face with bright eyes, and fur the colour of silver, or so the silver crayons at least made it look. She showed that drawing to the class. She entered it in the art show. She gave them her dreams.
The girl walks along, looking down and following the patterns on the ground. The class snickered. Some were really quiet. What had she done wrong? She entered her drawing in the monthly contest, but it didn't get chosen. She thinks it was really good, how could her dreams not be good? She got a few comments, and she didn't understand.. what was wrong with it again? They couldn't tell her, not at that age, and nor did she know, and the teachers said nothing, and looked the other way.
A grunt, and she looks up, out to the shadow she casts on the wall. The image goes blurry, a surge of red, a sharp pain, and she doubles over onto her knees, an arm around to her back, her hand spread across the searing pain. She watches a rubber ball bounce off as she hears the scattering footsteps of a few more agile kids. She doesn't turn to look at them.
"Daddy's a dark riddle..
Mama's a handful of thorns..
You are my little kite,
caught up again in the household storms.."
A young woman with grease covered hands closes the hood of a car. Her metal claws click against it as she smiles at the vague reflection of herself in faded red paint. The last bits of digital electronics have been removed from the car, quite contrary to anything else in her life. Its a completely analog vehicle, which is all it needs to be.
The hyena is digital, she's all the control her car really needs. She slips into the driver's seat and looks to round chrome gauges. The door to the house opens, and she looks back for a moment, but she starts the engine anyhow...
She thinks back. A month ago, interviews.. a week ago, a letter.
"Dear Miss Lysette Baden Mitza,
We regret to inform you that you've not been accepted to Metz University.."
Every place told her that her grades were fine, if unspectacular in some areas. But she didn't participate in a single extra curricular activity, she didn't have any letters of recommendation. She never participated, she just did what she needed to do, and focused on what she wanted to, whatever was required for her to continue on forward.
A shout from afar, and a growl from her, her fingers grip the steering wheel, and with a sudden jolt, the tires squeal, and she drifts off into the morning light, away from everything, off to find her own path. Her eyes focus, and bits of green text cross her vision, little lines and vectors superimpose across the world. This time, she doesn't pass the signs for the Army Space Corps..
"Daddy's a dark riddle..
Mama's a headful of bees..
You are my little kite,
carried away in the wayward breeze.."
A yellow star turns red, and blisters out into the horizon. Its ludicrously beautiful, horrendously spectacular. Captain Lysette Baden Mitza, Bioengineering, Medic, stripes and stars and pointless decoration on a olive green space suit. As much as she's been told not to look at the sun, its okay now. It doesn't matter anymore. The blue planet below turns red in large swaths as internal forces break it apart, no longer held back.
None of it ever mattered. She doesn't even bother to grapple back down onto the planetoid. She got to do what she had wanted, ultimately. She perhaps stepped closer than any one person to being something other than just a 'man', so to speak. She gave up everyone else, she went a million miles away, she wanted to start everything anew, abandon it all and just ride the waves and direct herself among them rather than fight to stay in one place and drown herself.
The waves of red and yellow grow closer, and the green interposing her vision disappears in a haze of static. Her arms quietly open, and embrace oblivion, those last threads perhaps severed years ago. She only has herself to mourn for, though it doesn't matter - in moments, there will be no one. Her reality will have come true.
The hyena drifts slowly in from the station, quietly singing a song only for herself. But she projects, regardless. She doesn't stop it, but she stopped being aware of it. Her dreams touch Kehari, the first person she's ever really touched besides herself.
~I'm not a bad person... I don't hurt others myself... sabina was happy to have that happen to her.. She was gleeful, even as she sobbed.. she loved it, when I bound her.. when I let her fall into this torture.. Its okay to.. she'll cry, but its okay.. We need this.. That's all there really is to it..~
She glides back towards home, quiet grapples, slow drifting.
~I have to keep my grip on things.. I have it.. I know what she needs, I know what I need.. Was it that, that brought her to question what we had?.. Look forward.. but, what if it doesn't include what I need now? I need my vixen.. as much as I need.. what my vixen needs.. Its okay, its okay.. We *have* what we need, right in our grasp. I'll make sure we do.. I'll make sure it gets better, regardless.. and I'll make sure I'm the one who controls it.. so she doesn't have to think that it controls her.. No, I control it.. I control everything, anything! Or at least, it doesn't control me.. And for her, I control, so she can be as free as I am.. It will all be okay, it will just be a part of everything else, nothing more..~
Thoughts bleed through the air as she slumps finally against the amber field, a soft shiver trailing through her. She licks sticky fingers quietly, and rests awake, her thoughts drifting endlessly..