Shadow Puppets

It's been some time since been able to muster the will to write here.

My cousin has left the world of the living to become a shadow puppet, like the rest of us, an image of his past life reflected in an artificial body that dances on Jovian strings. I tried to make it as painful as I was able-- slashed his innards to ribbons, made a mess of his intestinal tract. I hoped he would take the hint.

Why did I ever think that was wise? He didn't listen. I knew from the outset that he wasn't going to listen, wasn't going to go home-- wasn't going to rejoin the human world if I would not. All the pain I inflicted on him came to pointless cruelty.

It's enough. I'm done trying to match my soul to a body that will never be properly mine, full of hand-me-down parts and artifice. The crescents are back in storage. I don't know that I'll bring them out again, however long my existence is, now. They've done all the damage they're entitled to.

My body, as well, so well-tuned, so able, after all the work I put into training it. I find myself looking forward to starving the ghastly thing.

Surpass all this-- let go of who I was-- that is what I must do: embrace the creature the Jove presented us their gifts in order to see. I'm tired of seeking unity with what I used to be, of echoing myself again and again, of touching what I used to be-- of destroying what I used to love. So tired.

What I was before, I cannot be again. This I must recognize, once and for all.

The answer dances past my fingertips as I browse the markets, buried in the dance of commerce: core structure, subsystems, millions upon millions of ISK in expenditures on bits and pieces, waiting for my means and my will to coincide.

None of the ships to which I'm accustomed to are, in the end, worthy of the technology the Jove gave to us. From ramshackle Matari vessels struggling by on ladar and archaic autocannon to even the most intricate Caldari systems-- there's not one of them that so much as approaches the full potential of the Jovian Wetgrave. In our childish hands these pods have never known anything like the technologies they were designed to interface with-- not until the Sleepers and their fullerenes.

The Tengu dances just out of reach, inferfacing on a level I never knew was even possible until I acquired the training softs, unity of such an absolute degree that forcible severance from the craft causes debilitating shock...!

What I wouldn't give to unite with such a vessel, to take one more step towards becoming what we were made to become, one more step towards escaping from this crysalis.

I know I must be patient. This is far from the final step, and there will be so much to be done and survived. Jude, at least, is here, a feature of my present, of this transitional state, not of the past, not of poor, dead Aria, but of this existence between worlds. That will help.

Strength and support, friendship and that strange, weighty loyalty he carries. And love, perhaps, in time. I can't assume anything; he has his own demons to face, but we can at the least aid one another.

That will help a great deal.