Elements

I

Earth

I usually put these things at the end, but this is quite important:

This is based on a post by koolkidpage on the becoming human blog. To be absolutely precise, it's update # 38 —if I recall correctly—, post #9079, march 28, 2011. I'm pretty sure I asked for kkp's permission, but if not, please koolkid, tell me. I'll either remove this or let it linger here —if you allow me to—.

(I'm Ely Riverbank)

Pardon my English, it is not my native language. You're welcome to come to my profile to see which one is ;).

Please note this fanfiction does not strive to be accurate since it was written in the spur of the thing.

Disclaimer: I will say this once, and only once; I don't own Being Human and related materials. If I did, I wouldn't have killed off Mitchell that fast because I think he's such a complex character It would be very fun to write for.

The way I see this, this would qualify as a one-shot divided into four chapters just for the sake of simplicity.

Humans are children of Earth.

They grow and change, they die but are reborn. They grow back stronger, hardier than before. Their roots run deep, and bind them together. They have seen out the years as a race, as a species, not as individuals. For though the leaves may wither and die in the winter, brighter and more beautiful buds appear in the springtime, in tande…m with the natural ebb and flow of nature.

~koolkidpage

Earthlings were very much like a spiral staircase, rather than a tree.

But wasn't a tree a perfect analogy, always going up—forwards?

A spiral staircase forever repeated itself, always sound and never at the same points. It sprout up upwards, just like a springtime bud. And just like all earthly things, it was doomed to crumble and fade. It was nature's own way of doing things. Things may fade away into the twilight but they'll remain as a whole—as a species—so long they persevere.

History.

Mankind's greatest achievement. Prowess after prowess, showing off humanity in its prime, with all its might. And yet, despite being so artificial, constructed so to showcase the best and worst, it still managed to look like humanity—humans cannot comprehend perfection for all things they did ended being like them. A growing tree, a staircase into the sky.

The best trait of humanity:

Perseverance.

For when man would fade into obscurity, his work would tower over it, leaving a legacy, outlasting it. Be it his children, his genius or the kind words said to a stranger, man had the bliss of knowing there will be a bit of them behind. They did not despair about their work.

Humanity as a whole was quaint. Beautiful. An incongruous all-encompassing whole, wherein none were the wiser and all were equal in death. Just like the countryside, the sheer variety there was of humans astounded everyone. Earthlings and Ethereals and Fangs and Claws alike.

Death.

Humanity knew the bliss of death. Not so much as that of passing away but that of being able to move on to give way to new life. They did not cling to existence for they could not—however, most of them would attempt to stay beyond their years.

Humanity feared death for they loved the world as a species, they'd top their magnum opus time and time again just to discover, to feel, to grab a sense of what was the world; why did they had to pass away.

Stubborn.

Man was stubborn. Man would grab onto life, refuse to pass on. For Man was attached to the Earth —they were her children, after all— and did not want to waste any moment on her (as a whole), they wanted to discover, and like all children, longed to leave the mother's nest.

That's why multiple obsessions, that's why the ever-advancing technology. The boats, the planes. Travelling all over Earth. It's a way of leaving behind where you were born. Because no man would allow chains to be latched on his spirit. Every man, woman and child would fight to be free.

So people would leave their homeland in an act of stubbornness. And they would stay for generations despite there being natural disasters (1), despite all odds. Man once said: My lands are where my dead lie buried (2). Children of the Earth are stout, and stand their ground, just like trees.

Growth.

Humanity grew, like a tree. Sometimes disasters, calamities and such happened, and it felt horrible, like pruning a tree. It hurt. But they would overcome that, even in most dire circumstances when it would appear Man was overwhelmed. Just like a tree blossomed when coppiced year after year, so would mankind blossom, calamity after calamity.

It did not matter. For Man was born to grow, to etch his branches and try to tickle the sky—Man would try, for mankind held onto dreams. Man was born to sprawl its roots all over the world, just to explore every corner and crevice. And it was beautiful, for the Earth was beautiful. And she let herself be taken by the growth of Man, what else is a mother to do, but to let her offspring grow?

Year.

Every man and woman was like the year. Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Seed, Bud, Growth, Death. Childhood, Teenagehood, Adulthood, Senility. Everything was divided in fours. It was beautiful. Winter gave way to Spring, old Trees gave way to Seedlings, old Men gave way to children. It's a cycle to beget beauty, all time. And every man and woman experiences this cycle firsthand. Old things are made anew over and over.

The times of Man were like the year also. Lag, Log, Stationary, Decline (3). Men were like everything else in the Earth. They yielded and gave way. Like the animals, rivers, coasts mountains and everything in the big, blue orb.

Space.

Humanity was obsessed with space. As Earth was all encompassing so was the desire of her children to flee her. It was only natural for birds to flee the nest. So Mankind grew obsessed with it, wanting to conquer—as birds lorded over the air.

So Humanity would make crafts and go up above to touch the stars—like a nightingale drinking the moon drip by drip—to have them, to possess them. Because humanity longs to leave the Earth and make a world of its own.

Even then, however, Mankind longed for the Earth. After all, what brought everybody to tears, even in the distant future? An image of a blue orb like a spec of dust in space. For a child always longed for her mother.

Humanity is the Earth.

They, like the Earth, spawned; spawned everything else. Fangs may hate to admit it, and Claws and Ethereals may choose to mourn it, but they could not exist without being human first.

Man is all-encompassing.

And it would stay that way until the world was torn apart and forged again.

(1) As I write this, I'm thinking of the Tornado Belt in USA.

(2) Chief Crazy Horse said this. He was an Oglala Lakota chief, who lived ca. 1840 – 5 September, 1877.

(3) This are the phases of a microorganism growth curve, which may be compared with economic grow or history cycles.

Authoress' Place

There it is. Please tell me what you think.

I kind of wanted to include Lucy Jaggat and Kemp or something. There are so few human characters in the Being Human universe that I just edited them out *sighs* to make these much more easy to write.

Edit 11/10/2016: So I finally gor around to it. Please excuse the pseudo-philosopy, I wrote this when I was seventeen. I am actually pleasantly surprised by how well I already commanded the English language by then, since I only had to polish the punctuation for this chapter.