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Title: Skadden
Warnings: Respect the rating.
Claimer: Storyline and Skadden are mine.
Disclaimer: Lockjaw species and world and everything are TM & © Allison Theus (penname: beastofoblivion). DO NOT under ANY circumstances use them without her express written permission.
Since Skadden left I’ve been through a lot of life. I’ve learned that there’s good times and bad times and no matter how good or how bad life seems there is always a turning point that you can take if you are watchful enough. I can’t take anything for face value any more and I think that sets me apart from even my own kin.
Not that I don’t ever see them; the other larcets. I see them all the time and Jala, the female who found me after my brush with the other lockjaw, stayed. However she’s particularly interested in a lot of things to which I could never dedicate myself. Things like chasing glimmers for fun and sleeping in sunny patches of forest. I thought I could blend in if I spent enough time around her. When Skadden left I immersed myself in the old culture but after a while it all seemed so… dull.
I missed him. I missed hearing about other planets and life amongst the stars. I missed the way he would disappear without going anywhere and how he would look at me like I’d completely lost it every time I picked up to follow him. I missed waking him up in the middle of the night when I knew I could get the most honest answers, and the way he was always on the edge of being annoyed.
In the end, I never told him. I never breathed a word of his language or let on that I’d heard the conversation between him and the other lockjaw. Maybe I should have and if he ever comes back, maybe I will. But somehow I think I’ve seen the last of my dark friend. He’s become what he wanted to be to me; a memory. A dream, almost, because even now I’m not sure any of it really happened. There’s no one left to tell me whether I imagined it or not.
I know I didn’t dream it.
The collar I still wear around my neck tells me that it wasn’t a lie.
Skadden existed. He had to.
But… even if I can’t prove whether Skadden was real or not, I know now that his kind exists. They exist like shadows, like breaths of wind. They are flickers of thought that pass me in the open fields like silent whispers. Maybe they are there and maybe they are only in my head now, but I just know that somewhere out there are the lockjaws. They’re watching everything like Skadden always thought they were.
And maybe, just maybe, somewhere amongst them is my master.
Sometimes I wonder if he ever found what he set out to find. When he came here I think he wasn’t sure what he was looking for or why he was looking for it. I can’t say whether what he found here was what he was looking for or if it was something he wanted. I’d like to think so; I’d like to think I made a friend as well as finding a pet. I’d like to think that if he remembers me at all, he does so fondly.
I’d like to think he hasn’t forgotten me, either.
I haven’t forgotten the language he taught me and I’ve learned a lot of languages since then. Jala happened upon a group of delta humans a few years back and made friends. They taught us all sorts of interesting things for a while. They used to tell stories about the stars, about other planets and places we would never see. They told them like they knew but somehow I think that they didn’t know even half as much as Skadden had known. The universe didn’t know them like it had known Skadden. To them, the universe was a thing- the Skadden it was a being, a life form to be respected.
The delta humans spoke a lot about life and death and beyond. They talked about things like religion and souls, things I never quite grasped. Sometimes they would talk about a being that was above all others and a place that was better than anywhere else. It was old, they said. It was a very, very old belief with many wonderful stories only a handful of which they could tell us.
Mostly, I think, they liked the idea of being ‘saved’.
They were quite taken with the idea of a light that would save them. When they spoke of the end, they would say things like “a light at the end of the tunnel” and “go toward the light” and I’ve never quite understood what they mean by that. Light? When everything else had gone?
Was I wrong, then?
At the end of all things I found only the dark. When there was nothing else left there was always the dark all around me. When I’d been caged, there was always the dark and when I was taken from my cage it was the Dark that lead me. It was the Dark that spared my life and gave me freedom. All these people seem to think that the light will be there in the end, that it will save them from the darkness. It’s like they think the dark is something to be afraid of and the light is something to be respected.
And you know… It’s so strange to hear people talk about the light like that.
I’m not sure I’ll ever see it from their point of view…
After all, I know it was the Darkness that was my saving grace.
/End Epilogue, Saving Grace/
