Another boring patrol route. Another day.
Nothing has changed from yesterday, has it?
Not that I'm aware of.
Well, one thing has changed. Today, my useless, never-a-Maximal-within-two-hundred-miles-of-here patrol took me into a snow-covered wasteland. I was cold, I was tired, and I missed my nice, bloodstained, cozy, warm quarters. Why couldn't I just be sitting alone in a quiet place, eating some energon and maybe a side dish of raw meat?
I have no idea why not. I'll just as happily take a quick, short route around the Ark, slag a few Maximals, go back to base, get yelled at for fighting, and spend the rest of the day sleeping.
Black Magic has no sympathy for nocturnal beast modes.
Instead, I'm miles from anywhere, plowing through foot-deep snow that's turning to slush and gathering in the treads of my vehicle mode. Just something else that's going to cause a problem later. I'm going to catch slag for going into the base wet, just to spend a few days in the CR tank being treated for rust.
Black Magic isn't a Transmetal. She doesn't have to deal with rust.
So maybe I won't rust just for being out in the snow, but I have rusted before, and it's painful. Is it a crime to want to avoid any unnecessary pain after being used as a lab experiment for five years?
Now, there's a thought I didn't need to have resurfacing.
I tried to push the thought aside and plowed more strongly into the snow, aiming for every bank of the white stuff I could find, trying to refocus my mind on the pain I was forcing on myself as opposed to pain I had reminded myself of.
It wasn't working.
*I was in such pain. Why was I in pain? Oh yeah, I existed, that was why…*
It really wasn't working.
*The scientist looked down on me. I couldn't move, just stare up at him. Her? No, definitely him. As a matter of fact, number four – I had them all numbered. He disappeared for a few seconds before returning to hanging over me, before injecting something into my circulation system that made everything go black.*
*I couldn't see. Oh, Primus help me, why can't I see? Then I realized, that I couldn't see because I didn't have optic sensors to see with. They had taken my spark out of my body. Oh, Primus, why are you letting them do this to me?*
*The pain was still there. That meant I was still alive, they were testing my immortality yet again. Life itself was a curse, and I knew that I could never escape it…*
*Oh, Primus, why are you letting them do this to me?*
I don't know when I stopped crashing through the snow, trying to forget, but I did. The next I knew, I was laying underneath the branches of a tree, an evergreen of some type, I suppose. I'm no expert on trees. So now, I find myself in my robotic form, looking up through the branches of a green-needled tree, I can see the clouded sky.
Just something else wrong with the day. The sun was something I discovered over a week after I emerged from my stasis pod on this planet, and it was beautiful in a way that someone who had never been deprived of it couldn't appreciate. Those mocking clouds were the straw that broke the camel's back.
I choked, pretending to cough for as long as I could, but to no avail, and I soon found myself pulling my legs up to my chest, sobbing in short gasps. I am so much a child in doing this, I know. But I don't care, no one can see me, I am free to act as I want.
I continued for a few minutes, not quite able to get a hold of myself and realize that I did care about how I was acting. I managed, however, to reduce myself to sniffles as opposed to acting so childish as I did.
*Oh, Primus, why are you letting them do this to me?*
I quickly stopped that thought before I lost all of the progress I had made to that point. At least I had recovered some dignity.
So there I lay, finally quieted and my mind turned off, in the snow. At least none of my demons could find me here, so long as I kept myself still and my optics shut, anything that was hunting for me would walk right past and never even stop to wonder if I was here – a child's security in the depth of night, but a security none the less.
With my optics shut, on the other hand, I missed the shape that joined me in my hiding spot a few moments later. I was alerted to the presence only by a few cold bits falling across my face.
For some reason I wasn't frightened by the other being, nor self-conscience for having been reduced to the sorry state I was in. So I activated my optics is a slow, almost lazy manner, and looked up into midnight black eyes.
A bird perched on the branch above me, looking down curiously at the unusual metallic creature under the tree.
"So… you're the little culprit who shook snow on me?" I calmly questioned the black creature that sat above me. My response was a ruffling of feathers and a head cocked to the side, which it turn landed more snow on my face. White snow that contrasted so sharply to the shining black feathers, making it's presence all the more pronounced in the branches of a tree that had been covered with a light dusting of the frozen water crystals. As if it had appeared in an area in which it seemed so sorely out of place for only the benefit of my seeing it.
"Why do you grace me with your presence, little friend?"
I thought back to old earth myths I had heard of - wasn't the crow an important character in most? Yes, it was. The crow symbolized trickery… and death.
Ironic. Just too bloody ironic. Somebody up there is laughing at me, I'm sure.
"You cannot have me death," I told the bird, "I was not created worthy of you."
The bird looked down on me with surprising understanding, before jumping from its perch and disappearing into the field beyond my vision, dropping one last dust of snow upon my face.
"Good-bye, little friend," I said softly after it. So, not even death itself would accept me. How fitting.
As I mused this, still staring up through the branches, I saw a sudden gleam of light.
The sun had finally pushed its way from the clouds.
The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued
n Dust of Snow by Robert Frost
---BlackLightning '00