Outcasts: A Shared Life, A Shared Love

Chapter 1 – Prologue – His Name was Adam

"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you." Friedrich Nietzsche

There was little to stir the air in the forest. It was heady with the thick scent of the leaves that had fallen to the forest floor. The scent had an odd allure to it, smelling of autumn and heralding the call of winter to come.

Adam's large bare feet made a distinctive crunch as he walked further into the forest wearily. He pulled his jacket closer about his body. Once, the chill would not have bothered him. He had traveled for miles, years ago across the tundra and arctic wastes, leading his father into the oblivion that was the polar regions of the world. Now, that was a distant memory, and he was grateful.

He stepped to a large oak tree in the middle of the forest. The air was still. There were no bird calls or any noise.

A lone tombstone was there, lit by the broken sunlight between the leaves above. A very solitary place indeed, but it seemed to fit the owner, at least as far as Adam was concerned.

He reached out a great hand and gently wiped the debris and leaves from the top of the top. He squatted down and replaced the candle in its red glass holder and struck a match, igniting it, making the air briefly smell of sulfur before he tipped it to light the candle.

He then straightened the red glass returned to the candle, walling in the flame. He watched it a moment, passing his hand over the flame a moment, feeling the heat.

"How are you father?" He asked softly, regarding the marker. He stooped and used his finger to clean the inscription carved into the stone.

Victor Frankenstein

b. 1793 d. 1820

Aged: 27 years

Scientist, husband,

father, brother,

GENIUS

May he know love in

death more than

he did in life.

"I really wish you could have known love the way I have come to know it. I loved you, in my fashion, and I think you loved me in yours, though it was an alien feeling to you. You never understood compassion or caring." He sighed. "Do you remember when you were hell-bent to destroy me?" Adam smiled a little.

However, Adam soon tired of the game and turned south. It was on this merry chase that he had come to the Basque country. He knew Frankenstein yet lived, but he had stopped in Geneva, the birth place of Frankenstein, and then Ingolstadt where he laid a small rose on the grave of Elizabeth to the horror of Frankenstein who could not understand why the Creature felt remorse.

Frankenstein had remained at the grave, weeping, as Adam left him, their confrontation over for now. He moved quickly by night, moving south until he found more mountains in the form of the Pyrenees. Having been "born" in Switzerland, mountains and cold air had an appeal to them he could not describe.

Adam had continued to read and then he found a woman. Not a deformed, wretched creature as he was, but a beautiful girl, whom he helped bury her family who had been murdered before he arrived. It had been a few days for they smelled of rot, but the deserved to be laid to rest, and so the Creature had buried the dead, much to her gratitude.

The girl had puzzled him and had come with him. It was then he started to realize what love was. While he had loved his father and been rejected, the beautiful little angel whom walked at his side neither feared nor hated him. She was a puzzle and he grew to like her as they made their home outside another small town. The like turned to love as the girl found work at a bakery, allowing them to have a daily supply of day old bread, fresh churned butter, and cheese from the baker's wife.

The money she had made allowed them to repair their home, slowly. Adam was good with his hands and he took pride in the work he was doing, building shelter for his young mate whom was an angel on earth as far as he cared.

They had had their own trials and eventually married, again to his surprise that she would allow him near her. She did care for him. She had done something, no one had bothered to do before, known the man, not the shell that held it. She loved listening to him read to her by candlelight after she worked. She had to rise early, but came home in the early afternoon with her bounty, which always made him smile.

The villagers cared for her and assisted in small ways, sending her home with small beer and wine to drink since the water was traitorous at the best of times. So they had come to be accepted by all, though the villagers were leery of his grotesqueness, his wife, they accepted freely, even with her own deformity, and they did all they could for her.

His beautiful angel. He smiled a little. She had been his bridge to become more human.

Victor had told him he would never have a place in society, never have a mate, and never be free. It was all lies for Adam was now all those things.

Adam looked up from his moment of solitude. He had heard a twig snap and he turned to face whomever had come upon him his eyes narrowed at being disturbed from his reverie, but then his look softened and he cocked his head to the side.

"Come then." He said softly. "I have someone I want you to meet."