Trance
I haven't slept. I can't. I lay awake tracing every possible timeline, every possible action and I can't find a single one that doesn't end with me watching my best friend die. I try to stay positive while I help Rev but I already know the outcome of every test we do, it will all end in failure. With so many possibilities why can't a find a good one, a happy one?
I can't look at Harper, every time I do I see his future, pain and death overwrites everything we have right here and now and I can't bear it. When he looks at me I can see that he believes that I will somehow pull the magic out of the hat and save him and that tears my heart into little pieces knowing that I have failed … or that I will fail.
Taking care of him has been a trial from the day we met. Because he's always in the middle of things I've had to learn to read, to shift the possibilities so much faster than I ever did before. I knew this wouldn't be easy but I never dreamed it would be so very, very hard.
Tyr
I can't care. I won't care, I mustn't care. He's just a little scrap of a kludge and his death or his continued existence should have no affect on me. But it does. How can a creature so small, so annoying threaten everything that I have created? How can something I should despise matter so much to me that I would mold my desires to include it? What is it about this child who shares but the most miniscule portion of genetics with my kind inspire me? Certainly he has proved his courage, his tenacity but these can be called the reflection of stubbornness which is not a desirable quality. And yet I feel for him as I might a brother or I shudder to admit, a child of my own. I would not have him die like this, better that he should have fallen in combat with these creatures than to endure the agony he faces daily. I must pretend a little longer that I have not a care as to his health, hide that I despair of his inevitable death. And so I run and it takes me nowhere, not even from the chidings of my own mind that warns me I should never have allowed myself to care.
Rev
I can feel his despair and his pain. I can smell and hear the young of my kind as they kill him slowly, a little more each day. I hear the high pitched screams of the larvae and it cuts across my nerves like a hot knife. I believe that Harper can hear them too, though we have always believed humans to have inferior hearing I have witnessed him tilt his head as though listening and then I hear the children of my kind. Their voices grow louder each day as Harper's light diminishes. I know the medicine will not help for much longer just as I know that the pain he feels grows stronger. I also know that he takes the medicine not only to kill the pain but because the motion of the children inside distresses him. Divine how could this be? Why is it that those who deserve your blessings most are the ones who seem to get the least? I am sorry if I seem to question Your divine will but must my punishment also include the guilt of knowing that my kind are once again to blame for the torture and death of someone dear to me?
The child Trance is working herself near to death trying to find some manner of cure and I know it is taking a toll on her trying to stay positive when we both know there is no happy ending to this story.
Grant me the serenity oh Divine that I may accept your will.