003 "It" by Abraxas 2010-05-22
The Avatar walked the avenue. He trekked oblivious to everything except sky - those parts of it free of construction. Only a crack of the moon eked through that clutter man made of the world. While it offered comfort he shuddered at what its degradation represented: the untenable detachment to Nature.
A tugging - it came out of nowhere.
He stopped at a corner and slipped into a crowd. Nobody noticed the intrusion of the Avatar. It had been that way generations. At most a handful of people knew who and what he was. If they believed...that was another matter. Was there a time when the Avatar was important?
A feeling - it echoed up from below.
In spite of their ignorance - or, perhaps, because of it - he was important and his purpose remained.
Traditions were not lost, instead, they shifted as science displaced mystery and men found new gods and monsters to worship. Technology completed their conversion as it taught them to forget how to bend. Where it was not suppressed by society it was considered to be deviance.
Walking with the crowd, as they ambled isolated from each other by their gadgets, he could not help but condemn them - it was as if they surrendered.
"Why, man," spake the voice of the nightmare. "He is the weakest of creation. A failed species."
It was not a dream but the memory of another life.
He was impelled by instinct to enter a subway. A train approached. Alone - he melted through the concrete and landed onto the platform. The train stopped. Passengers shuffled about. The Avatar joined the commuters.
The train crawled out of the station.
Then, slowly and certainly, that unquiet, intangible lure metastasized into a very familiar shape. Their eyes locked. Their bodies drew together. Although they drowned amid a sea of faces in truth there were only two aboard: he and it.
The Avatar and the Creature clung onto a pole. The figure's hood withdrew either by accident or by design. It revealed a face that mirrored the man. Hairless with distinctive tribal markings like arrows seared into flesh. Only the eyes differed - white opposed to his own black. Otherwise it was the same exact face always. He thought it was to mock but the creature kept that purpose to itself.
Seeing it again he was reminded of the rest of the nightmare.
"Why don't you kill me..." "Kill you? Never... I am undyingly devoted to you as you to me!"
They followed each other like night followed day. Now they stood face to face without a word. After ten thousand generations what was left unsaid?
Their relationship was simple. They were indeed devoted to each other in a bizarre yet undying way. Between them the world was balanced...or...should have been. How much of man's fall was its doing the Avatar could not say.
"My stop," Koh whispered - a smile warping it face.
The Avatar followed the Beast with eyes as it snaked out of the station.
END