It was strange how the mental processes worked sometimes. A living nightmare – only way how Lexi could have described that night she was there again re-living the time of the funeral with the full Christian ceremony.
There was truly no race in the Universe without some religious affiliation, following a certain deity, a pattern of believing in higher powers in order to give their lives meaning. Meaning after death.
Death was for Lexi a distant Universe as their bodies were naturally resilient to the most galactical illnesses hurting the body. If not getting killed in a fight, there was a solid chance they could finish all their life cycles. So their own religion was not about death, but about eternity. Time was lost to them and when the time of the death had come, they were usually aware and prepared to just… to just go. At least, this was the story of those books they have read, Asarian poetry dealing with the eternity as a fact, and at the same time imagining death as a wisdom only open to those too young to parasitize on memories of others, on Asari or other species; than to get fully prepared for the incoming.
As she was watching the crying mother of her lover, stretching her hand towards the wooden black box bearing only a soul of a carpenter who carved the shapes of the coffin, she remembered one of those poems…
Intensity blurred is within the space of the Universe.
I do, however, miss the lack of death,
the remorse felt by Asari at her tenth hundred,
the fiction she dreamt but not experienced
the corrosion of the cells, crippling her shapes,
the collision of static security of an Asari body.
I might be crazy while wishing
to mutate into another species
who changes within the time,
to be a dying plant overshadowed by a stronger one,
to be cared by other living longer than us,
to know how to exist with only one choice in life.
To dream of mortality.
The political and philosophical text was written by Taesha D'Revie in a time of her 7th cycle of life. It was the time of galactical exploration, meeting of new races, experiencing the phenomenon of melting with others apart from Asari, a time when they learned the dry reality of their being – to be condemned to only one shape in the physical reality and thousands on the level of the mental one.
Asari were already placed on the top of the hierarchy by being the first at the Citadel and many cults were created amongst another races, worshiping them. Adapting their religion, beliefs, fascinated by their beauty and power, treated nearly as immortal gods. Now, it is only a distant past, but she remembers how some of it was recalled back when humans entered the space being completely opposite to Asari while resembling their body shape the most.
A sense of nostalgia for philosophers like Taesha was back, Asari reciting the lines about mortality of the aging body, looking at the so-called soft-skin race with amazement and some sort of jealousy.
She was feeling it now, understanding it fully while watching this mourning ritual prepared for her boundmate. She understood where that amazement had its foundation and why it occurred only in minds of those Asari reaching or already being in a Matriarch stage of their lives. She could also understand why Maidens were driven to humans like to magnets more than Matriarchs who were dreaming about their existence but avoiding physical closeness with humans like it was some kind of plague attacking both soul and mind.
The matriarchs were terrified of dying next to them despite within that stage they were the most compatible to die together, aging accordingly and not leaving bones behind them rotting with their love. The softness and warmness of the human bodies, the individuality and creativity of their minds glowing and dying fast as some stars terrified Matriarchs, representing a large-scale amnesia of experience which should have been the saviour for Asari to enter eternity with their own deaths. Melding with humans was for some Asari Matriarchs a distant dream an unexplored universe as there was none a living Asari yet melding with them in her early stage of life and reaching the Matriarch one with that experience in her soul, simply because humans were not part of the galactic community long enough.
She was now a part of the experience, a Maiden truly representing the human meaning of that term, pure and formed by the ones she met, situation she had overcome… She did meld with Victoria and more than once. It felt so natural as breathing, they were synced beyond even her understanding and her own knowledge was incapable of giving her any explanations why she felt so mortal and immortal at the same moment. She was in love before, an intense kind of love but it felt differently, it evaporated faster than it existed. Like with the Mantius, a Turian she was with for nearly 20 years, who she loved deeply then, but… maybe not too deeply. This fast healing process was part of their psychology, as the pre-designed longevity protected their emotions from the crushing effect it could have on another species. The existing knowledge of their own capability to over-live most of their partners enforced the logic over any heart matter threatening their mental stability. It was one of the reasons why Asari were often considered as over-professional, distant and cold after some 100 years of age, and why everybody knowing their race called Peebee an untypical Asari.
It was untypical and she herself felt being different and strange. She felt walking somewhere in-between humans and Asari, not relating to the crying mother and not relating to her past experiences of distancing herself from her own emotions. It just didn't work. She walked away from the burial side, looking around the small park the cemetery was located in. Victoria's hometown was long non-existent, it was turned to a park, protected from any technological progress, a part of the political project to "return to green", neo-green movement, so only the metropolises persisted, modernized and villages were buried underground, only cemeteries used as memorials hidden in forests. It was amazing for her because she could not imagine any better place for Victoria to rest, as humans called. She could see her everywhere around her, the plants, the grass, the leaves on trees, it was a feeling shadowing her every thought, haunting her every step. In a way it was painful, but also fulfilling. She consciously wished to keep it, to not forget it, to sacrifice even her mental state in order to remember it as fresh as now. It was nearly a promise she had given herself and a curse of sentimentality, which caused Lexi to get back to that day too often in her sleep to count the night encounters.
"Let me go Lexi…. It's over…" Victoria's voice crushed the whole state and reminded her mind it was a dream haunting her. Small drops of sweat collected on different parts of her body as she suddenly raised up on a bed, naked. It took her a while to collect herself and realise where she was and what have happened that she was there in the Pathfinder's blanket. She was breathing fast and hardly noticed a movement towards her, hands touching her skin pulling her in a tight and warm embrace.
"It was just a dream, Lexi…. I'm here." Heard she a familiar voice, calming and soft. It was Sara, already dressed in a shirt and pants holding her very near her beating heart. She closed her eyes again, feeling suddenly vulnerable and shaking, realizing she was screaming when she experienced the past again.
"I couldn't wake you up. I was so worried…" Said Sara not letting her go as afraid she would break. Lexi was silent. She kept her eyes close, it felt so different to have, after all those years, not counting the unimaginable six hundred, someone with her, not being alone and not letting anyone close. Having break in relationships. She was grateful Sara was here, that she felt, she could literary feel the vibration and regular beats of her heart, a proof of a living being. The human concept of death, the sudden and dreamt experience the poet Taesha wrote about was now evaporating from her own body, feeling that in reality there was a new person in her life, ready to help her forget, or at least, move on…. And that human was alive, real, material, existent. She moved her hands to Sara's back and embraced her, resting her face still close to her heart, needing a constant assurance Sara's heart was not stopping again. It was a strong heart, she knew it as the Pathfinder's physician, and she loved its regular sound more than ever before.