|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
She had been beautiful, once. THat was how he preferred to remember her--not as the broken and abused wreck that most often danced behind his eyes.
She'd been a dancer too. Her body--limber and petitte--was graceful as she defined the smooth movements that made her a favorite. 'Watch me, Legato! Watch me!' she called to him, her melodic voice spilling over like pebbles falling out of a jar.
And he had watched. He watched with his eyes as she lept into the air, silloutted by the twin suns of the planet. And he watched in his mind as she was torn apart by the angry ravagings of the humans. They made her into something ungly and repulsive so that even her mother turn away, emptying the contents of her stomach onto the dry sand of Gunsmoke.
Legato had seen her in his mind, screaming out for his help. He'd thrown down the spoon--still filled with pudding--and started towards the door. He never made it as the meaty hand of his father clenched over his forearm. 'Do not leave those dishes on the table for your mother to clean up! If you're done, thank her and put them in the kitchen.'
An iron hand, that was what his father ruled with. He could still feel the bruises he tended to wake up with and nurse for weeks. He always took what he was dealt by his father. Today would have been different had the man not lead him to the kitchen and struck him with the back of his hand.
Legato remembered. It was his fault--the fault of that human--that his siter had been torn apart by beings little better than wild animals. Those humans.
She had been so beautiful. He'd loved her, taken care of her, beat her up, told her stories, and did all the other things a good brother was supposed to do. She'd loved him too, in a carefree, beautiful way. She took very little seriously, not even their special gift. He could remember seeing the glint in her eyes as she lifted a stone without touching it, or how she laughed when he had someone lift the stone for him. They would compete like that--she would always win.
He didn't know how they'd found out--was she too careless once? But it didn't matter. What mattered was that they--the humans--were afraid of what she could do. And they tore her apart for it. Her beautiful dancer's body became the vehical for all sorts of abuses. She'd tried to resist, but she was so young an afraid. Her big brother whould have saved her, but another set of humans blocked him.
He hated them all for her. She would have hated them too, if she'd seen what they'd done to her--the burns, the blood, the ugly marks scarring her skin. Even without closing his eyes, he could see her wide-open frightened eyes, her hair and ears burned almost completly off, her clothes rent by ugly gashes, her blood dripping down her elegantly long fingers and being greedily drunken by the dry sands of Gunsmoke. No one else had been willing to touch her destroyed body so he had gathered her up, holding her together agianst his white jacket. A hand, severed almost completely drapped over his shoulder. Her burned head resting in the crook of his arm. A leg folded up on itself, bending at unnatural points. And they believed they did this for the good of their community. For their protection. He considered laughing at the thoughts running through their heads.
To think that these creatures--pitiful, unworthy things--thought that they and they alone had created Him. As if He were a thing that they could use--a created tool. He would not be surprised to find that He had created them. But could something of such perfection create beings so imperfect and flawed?
He looked at the hand that he had not been born with and clenched it. She was a pile of bones now, shinning white as the sun carressed what was left of her body. Her bones were as dry as the planet now. Whatever pity he had felt for the pitiful humans had evaporated with the moister from her body and the bodies that he had later laid around her.
he ran his fingers over the foreign left hand and thought that it was prehaps like touching Him. Only, touching Him was like stroking the barrel of a gun--cold, deadly, powerful. Exciting and sickening...and almost like remembering her.
She had been beautiful...once.