Lament, little Pochteca

Previously

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...

Shunned.

That was the word she had been searching for. The emotion and feeling that she now felt over-encumbered by.

She felt shunned.

Driven away from a place she had never before been, and by people she had never before met.

Worst of all...Shunned. By the one person alive that she did know.

It felt cruel. Perhaps that was only due to possessing only her own perspective, but how could it not be cruel?

Awakening in this cold new system, alone...A body that is not her own. And with no one to turn to except him?

Then to be turned away?

She tried to release a deep and somber sigh, it fit the occasion, but instead all that came out was a long harmonic chime.

Oh right...Her vocal chords were all replaced now...That only capitalised on her emotional pain, making it spike.

Maybe it was her fault...Some part of her was so desperate to cling onto this body she couldn’t bear to lose it. To go back to...What was there to go back to? She couldn’t .

Adailia Pahtoris stopped, realising that for the past few hours (or days?) she had been blindly following an intuition. A silent com.

She glanced up, the cosmic glow of distant nebulas and pockets of Void illuminating her right human eye and the socketed slits on the left. Even with her calculative mind she stopped to stare in awe at the brilliance of it all. Somehow being apart from her previous Tenno body, no longer being fully organic. She felt a deeper respect for things of nature...It was as if a curtain over her eyes had been lifted and now everything was so much more...real.

But why did ‘real’ have to hurt so much? To have this curtain lifted. Was she an abomination? To be stuck between human and...machine. Why couldn’t she just focus on being one?

Pahtoris didn’t expect anyone to answer her question.

But they did.

“RAPT IS YOUR MIND MIND. ENSNARED BETWEEN BRANCHES OF MATERIAL AND IMMATERIAL.”

A harmonic chorus of voices, cacophonous yet somehow beautiful, called out from the inky blackness of the void behind her.

”THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU. YET I DO. I DO.”

She felt every hair on the back of her hair stand on end suddenly. As if she were reacting to a surge of electricity that had just coursed up her spine, the Sentient-Tenno spun around; yet try as they might to find the source of the voices, they always seemed to be lurking behind her.

No...That was incorrect. They were...

...Inside her head?

”CONFUSION POSSESSES YOUR MIND CHILD. FEAR FEAR CLUTCHES AT YOUR HEART HEART. ARE YOU AFRAID-AID?”

She knew she should have been. She knew at the very least she should feel perturbed by the amalgamation of voices that now cried out in the back of her skull...Yet somehow amidst this she still felt calm. Tranquil even?

“..Who...are you?”

Pahtoris’ tone was soft as she responded to the chorus of voices. At first it was met with silence, then at once they all replied in unison again:

”FOR NOW, A FRIEND-END. APPROACH THE BECKONED HAND-AND, TOGETHER WE STRIVE TO BE MUCH MORE MORE.”

Secretly the voice in the back of Pahtoris’ head was pleased. She didn’t a thing. The plan could still continue as intended.

“I...I will. Point the way..?”

Pahtoris began to glide through the air in the first direction that came to her mind. She wasn’t a fool, she knew a lie when she heard one. Time around Apophi had taught her that...

But what better did she have to do? Aside from these voices she was alone after all.

Surely...

...She could be allowed to make at least one friend..?

...

...Surely...