HE IS BOUND BY MIDNIGHT, be-spelled by it. He is out of focus, for despite the strength gained, despite the gift of what he has become, even still, he feels cursed.
Gone is that boyhood giddiness, gone is that fresh joy of purity, for it came with it the understanding of a permanence he couldn’t displace.
He has traded his days in the sun for nights on the run and he finds himself, feet in the sand-littered soil and he wonders if this is a dream, the cross-roads he sees before him.
He’s been wondering if a lot of what he’s been seeing has been real, lately.
He is aware of his ungrateful disposition, how many would KILL for this, for immortality - but he did not want it.
But Richard Gecko would do what he always did: make the most out of everything, spinning straw to gold.
To one side, a world made of moonlight, a castle stretching u p and into the star-scattered firmament. To the other, a world of sunlight, light streaking from clementine-colored clouds.
A hallucination due to hunger - that is what Richard’s scientifically-driven mind tells him.
He will feed and he blinks and the vision wobbles, fetters out, and spills into the liquid shape of something just beyond the horizon.
A star, he thinks suddenly. Stars are dead lights, orbs of burning gas light-years away.
Mankind has not made it to Mars yet - and he is not part of mankind, any longer.