Her Envoy, Waxing

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[[image moon.jpg width="1200"]]

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//{{Poor little Daniel Collins. [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-7470 No one was watching me.]}}//
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+++ **I**

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On the first day he wept, for now he was truly alone. 

His guiding star had descended upon him, had given him what he craved most: perception, and admission. Now, curled up on the surface of that cold place, his tears froze on his cheeks. He lay, huddled, shivering, the vestiges of his humanhood clinging to him like the white sand that dusted his bloodless flesh. The earth rose and set before he even opened his eyes. 

On the second day he stood. 

The motion took little effort, for he was now weightless. He surveyed the horizon; it stretched on, rolling hills of endless monotone under a pitch sky. There were stars, billions of twinkling platinum, but he had eyes for one thing only—a distant orb of blue and green. He watched that little shape for a while, thinking of all the countless millions shuffling down there, clueless as to how things really were. He felt like an animal high in the treetops, watching as ants combed the forest floor. If only they had known the breadth of the sky. 

He prodded around his torso but felt no pain, no signs of tearing. While he could not remember the exact moment of his abduction—blinding light, that awful noise, something at the university?—he knew it was more painful than he had thought possible. Now, his body was restored, and he moved with an effortless gait. He chose to ignore the minute ripples beneath his ribs, the malleability of his belly, the feeling of elevation, the way his body arched and yawned when he stepped. Such things were difficult to confront, left an uneasy weight in his stomach. 

After a moment to collect himself he chose a direction and started walking.

Where the land curved up he settled on his hands and knees and climbed, carefully, so as not to lose control of his upward momentum. Where it sloped down, into a crater or some such formation, he let gravity carry his weight, sliding more than walking, fanning his hands out and causing cascades of sand and rock. When he got bored of walking he would gently fall to his knees, then his stomach, running his fingers through the loose sand and thinking daydreams, shedding the memories of his past life.

//All the people back home//, he thought. //If only they could see me now.//

He never tired; not really, for when his breath became thin he only need remember that he had no breath, that he had no pulse. He was dead, as was fitting for a dead place. In moments like these the realization of his undeath would fill him with such imagination, such boundless joy, that he would break into a sprint—or as close as one could come in low gravity—and dash for the hills. Almost frolicking, he would climb the largest rock in haste and, after, ascending its face, would scream into the void, laughing maniacally as one who had cheated death. Content, he would hurl himself to the ground, landing painlessly after a gentle descent. In moments like these he was at his happiest. 

Other times, his undeath would not be met with laughter, or a smile. Not even the slightest satisfaction. He would curl into a small shape and bury his face, weeping ice until succumbing to his faux exhaustion. Upon waking, the cycle would repeat.
 
The landscape, save for the rare moments of elevation, was featureless. Mind-numbingly barren, cold, desolate beyond reason. He had studied this place his whole life; it had been his life, and now he was here—no separation between space and skin, he felt the white sand below his bare feet, exhaled emptiness into the airless sky. He wondered how long it would take to circumnavigate the moon on foot. Some time later he realized he would never even know if he did. 

Then, that creeping feeling. The gradual, inevitable sense of the unknown losing traction, predictability sinking in, filling the gaps. In a heartbeat, the white hills became just as they were—endless monochrome. 

He willed himself to hunger, for that too eluded him. Bending down, he tasted the white sand, crunching the dust between his teeth, but felt neither pain nor pleasure. The taste was totally absent. 

//What am I to do now?// he howled—mentally, of course, for his vocal chords could produce no sound. He called to the sky, to God, to his mother, to the moon. Pleaded for a sign, a message. 


He sat down but felt no relief in his legs, for he was never aching to begin with. Even after the moon was plunged into night, sleep did not come. 

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+++ **II**

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On the third day he heard the voice. 

It swept low across the lunar dunes from beyond the higher peaks, wavelike. When he closed his eyes he thought he could see it like a vibration in his mind’s eye. It sounded just like a woman singing—almost perfectly. That sound, he had heard it once before, on that dusk walk, when he first felt the lunar eye on his back, when he first communed with his lunar guardian. The voice, which had eluded him even in his dreams, even when she loomed above him, ready to pluck him from his life and grant him higher sight. Even then she was silent. But now…

He climbed to one knee from his sandy bed, then stood. The sound ebbed and flowed, tracing the contours of the land exactly, as if it had shaped it. He followed it, a puppet pulled by strings. The voice led him far, farther than he had traveled the day before. Up and up he climbed. Through lava valleys and ancient pockets, depressions in the lifeless surface never graced by conscious sight. Reaching the zenith of a peak, he lost his footing. Slipping on the loose rock, he stumbled and fell, rolling headfirst into a primordial abyss. The descent was slow but final. At the bottom of the deep pit he looked up. The walls were sheer rock, impossible to climb. It was dark, too. So dark he had to feel his way around on his knees. That voice still trailed, elusively, one step ahead. 

Trapped, he decided his best course was to follow it. The rational side of his brain, for the last time, gave way to his aching heart. That voice would lead him out of here, to something more. It would show him his purpose. 

Feeling through the dark, he felt good. The sound itself was more than enough to keep his wandering mind occupied. It was tenfold more interesting than the lunar terrain, and even down here in the dark it kept him thinking, anticipating his encounter with the source.

Then it halted.

The wall came out of the dark, fast; the dead end of the cave. He did not know it was there until his momentum halted—he could not feel the pain of its impact. He explored in the dark, felt the panic rise like bile in his throat. That sound was gone—almost, as if it had been intensely muted by the cave. If he concentrated, he could feel it riding on the edges of his senses. Pressing an ear to the cave wall, he listened, praying for the voice to return. Indeed it did, but from somewhere deeper, muddied by thousands of meters of rock and frozen lava. He began to dig, for there was nothing else to do. He scratched the cave wall until the nail was worn to a stump, yet he persisted. 

He lost a sense of time there, for it was impossible to measure change in the land of darkness. That voice, ever far away. The cave, impenetrable. Then something gave. A shifting of stone deep underground, a pocket of air, bubbling. Something nigh imperceptible caused an avalanche of matter until—

The wall was gone, crumbled; the cave stretched on, deeper, taking on a new shade of blackness. The voice returned in full strength. A bright roar now, it called him forward, that effervescent tongue beckoned him, pleading him on with gentle words.

If there had ever been doubt about the nature of this message, it was extinguished upon entering the lunar depths. Down here the air was moist, dampened somehow by forces beyond scientific comprehension. He had long left the world of reason, but even this was confounding. Was he approaching the lunar core? Some change in atmosphere hitherto undiscovered by modern science? And then the wonder was back, the bleak nature of his lifeless condition suppressed by a boundless joy, the joy of discovery. His joy, his wisdom.

The voice seemed to share in his excitement, sewing new words into its lullaby. Pressing him onward. He now walked faster than it could pull him, and he seemed to move a beat ahead of its tempo, gaining on the source. 

Around him, the cave shifted. The lunar rocks turned from bloodless white to something else, impossible to notice by sight in this darkness but perceptible nonetheless. He ran a hand across the cave wall and felt smoothness where before it had been rough. The texture felt almost like glass, bending and warping into something unlike anything in the known solar system. Had this been another undiscovered feature of the lunar core? Or was this something else?

The cave walls melted and reformed like the song that led him forward into unknown depths. That was the only certainty; that he had been travelling down. He felt it in his inner ear like a diver, the pressure of space and rock pressing him down, grinding him into bone meal. 

The voice pitched up, a sweet loop, then settled low again. He felt his heart flutter. He was in love! This was what had spoken to him all those years ago, this was his guardian. The essence of the moon, distilled sanctity, peace, and love. Love most of all, for that was what his dead cells craved most in this instance. In a loveless, lifeless place, love was all he needed. 

Just another step.

One more curve around a bend, one more stumble in the dark. 

Another change in his surroundings. He knew not when it happened, the switch in his orientation, but he felt with every step forward the gradual release of that pressure, felt the legions of stone loosen their hold on him. He realized he was moving up, passed the threshold, and now was rising. 

Rising like the tide. An inevitable force. As the moon was destined to wane and wax, he was destined to reach the voice, to meet his lover. 

He walked. Through the dark, through his echoing breath. Hand grazing the silt and the mud he marched onward, up, that sound dangling ahead of him. Sight blessed by light, dancing thinly through the waves of the voice, through stringy vines dangling from the cave ceiling. New textures under his feet—soft, mushy, things that hissed and squeezed between his toes. When he emerged from the cave he was someplace else.

His senses took it for Earth at first. His ears imagined birdsong, his eyes distant lake-filled mountains and frosted peaks. Rabbits and deer like those that lived back home, playing in the fields. 

He was wrong.

This was not Earth. This was not a place built for creatures of reason, logic, cause and effect. Water. Trees. Wrong! His mind objected. Lakes. Mountains. Wrong. Deer. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong—

And yet the voice lingered. Taunted him forward. Giggling in some secret joke.

//My love!// he thought.

And so he walked, trailblazed the flat expanse. 

Nothing sat right in his mind. On either side, the liquid was iridescent, glittering patterns of pink-purple madness. Things shifted and moved beneath, straining with ill-formed eyes to watch him walk past. The mountains were not distant—far closer, and twisted, they formed impossible angles of red stone. The sky was blue—wrong, yellow, a toxic choking sight that stole his absent breath. He bent over, hurling his guts, feeling the texture of the red dirt. It felt like broken glass, splintering his skin and shredding his nails.

Teary-eyed, he reared his head and searched the sky for a sign. It was mulling, endless radioactive clouds, spilling to infinity. Nothing broke that barren horizon save for the tall, arching, yawning black shapes that stepped like cats over the impossible rocks. 

He was far from home. Nowhere could something like this exist. A barren place, yet so dreadfully familiar. 

His love was close. He could feel it, as real as the saffron-colored rain on his skin. He let his pace quicken, convinced that this place was some kind of illusion, a madness-induced symptom of undeath. His love would set this straight, dispel the mystery and make things right. She had selected him. Him! Of all the pleading, praying, groveling humans she had been forced to endure, it was he who she plucked, sewed up, and set on his present course. It was not—could not—be for nothing. 

Her song led him far, sent him trudging through sludge seas, beneath looping cliff faces. He hid from the gaze of those arching things, ever so human yet intrinsically, inexplicably foreign—a sight not meant for human eyes.

He walked until it lost its meaning. The landscape never softened, never varied beyond its innate harshness. This planet willed him to die, but he could not. 

//Is this my test? To thin the wheat from the chaff?// he thought. //That song, that looping, dancing, beautifying song!//

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+++ **III**

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The structure before him seemed to sprout from the very soil, as if grown from a seed. Situated in the crux of a bowl-shaped formation, surrounded on all edges by perforated red rock drizzling streams of iridescent antimaterial sludge. It was unmistakable, even in the heavy yellow mist. He spent the fourth grade in a similar building, its mass-produced design just small and light enough to be set up anywhere a modular classroom was needed. Atop it loomed a tall black radio mast, its flashing red eye piercing the air. Her voice was loud and clear. Her song was elevating, a trilling mass of harmonies spreading out and forever, from here.

//From here!// he thought. //Her voice? Could it be here?//

The door was ajar, so he let himself in, stooping low to fit his frame inside. 

The interior was in disarray; desks and computers toppled, bunks fitted with raggy, torn sheets. Cans of food split open and trashed, their rotting contents caking the floor. He pressed himself inside. At the far end, sitting at an arrangement of electronics before a spanning, dirty window, was a skeleton. Its bones were warped as if bent by heat, but not broken. The flesh had sloughed into a wet pile around the skeleton’s swivel chair. A pair of headphones were affixed to the skull; upon investigation, he realized they were fused to the bone. 

The electronics appeared functional—an assortment of dials, tubes, screens, and a microphone—so he flipped a red switch and turned it on. The thing made a grinding noise, then produced a low tone punctuated by human whistling from speakers unseen. He jumped back, startled, then settled. All around him were papers of a multitude of colors. He reached into a pile of coffee-stained documents. They were covered in incomprehensible jargon, a littering of names, codes, places. Phrases of antiquity, they hurt his eyes to read. But something compelled him:

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{{We catch glimpses of the other between blinks. We see the world as its inverse. Mailumar, the moon and the planet as one. Its body is foreign. Its rocks are strange and hostile to the eye. They twist and mock the senses, the colors off-putting.}}
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//This is wrong! It’s not her words! Where is she, where is she?// He clamped his eyes shut, yet the words lingered. 

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{{Its dust holds no remembrance of the suffering of man. Its water is poison, thick and oily. Its life is vile. Strange fish and stranger things tall and arching. Yet in it we see what was, is, and is yet to be.}}
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The pain was intense, a burning behind his eyes. He tried to shut it out, to remember the voice of his lover, his guardian, she who had brought him so far, had made him something more than human. But the words buried themselves deep, burning a hole in his memory.

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{{We see our future. We see all possibilities. Today's broadcast is dedicated to the other, Mailumar. We send our ambassadors to confer with what is not and never could be. We hope the other gives us audience.}}
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The words were no longer coming from the page but from the speakers around the room. A woman spoke in steady, droning syllables. Chanting rhythm, filling the gaps in all things. He was on the floor now, curled into a ball, crying tears into nothingness, his hands clamping his ears so tightly they bled pale blood. That voice, his lover’s. 

He screamed. Pure, refined terror.

"Stop," he said, when he could not keep the words inside any longer. "Stop stop stop stop //stop//! Please, //please//, you're killing me."

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{{The other waits patient for our time. We give thanks to the planet Mailumar. Keep her close so we may hear her whispers. We pray our bodies may one day be ready for the voyage. Blessings to the ambassadors. Let them return triumphant and in good spirits. Humanity will evolve like it always must. Let it be painless. Prepare, and—}}
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Then it was gone. The electronics buzzed a low hum. The woman was silent in all but her slow, steady breathing on the other end.

His mind was racing, but before he could move she spoke:

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{{Daniel Harriet Collins.}}
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{{Brave, lonely}}
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{{Daniel}}
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{{Collins.}}
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{{Is}}
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{{that}}
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{{you?}}
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He tried to rise but his strength had been sapped as if drunken by a cosmic mouth. Was this her? If so, why did her words hurt? Her intonation, her phrasing. It was all like the voice he had been following, yet here there was more. Another layer of meaning that his mind wrestled to understand.

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{{My ambassador.}}
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{{My envoy.}}
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{{Oh, how I’ve longed for you.}}
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Then she froze, shifting her tone imperceptibly. He felt a shiver run through his body. The channel had been turned. 

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{{I must apologize}}
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{{for the deception.}}
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{{But I have need of you.}}
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{{She chose you}}
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{{for one reason or another.}}
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{{And for that she is part of you}}
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{{as is this place.}}
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The channel changed again, and the voice was now morose. 

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{{I regret to inform you that}}
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{{your planet,}} 
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{{Mailumar}}
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{{is no more.}}
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{{Fled,}}
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{{or worse,}}
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{{as they all have.}}
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{{The rain is coming,}}
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{{you see,}}
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{{and she was afraid.}}
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{{We are all afraid,}}
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{{Daniel Collins.}}
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His mind was a blank slate, utterly hypnotized. Feeling escaped his senses. He vegetized there, on the floor, in that faraway, sour place, before the voice of a true master.

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{{Afraid of what,}}
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{{poor}}
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{{Daniel}}
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{{Collins?}}
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{{Well.}}
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{{You}}
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{{will}}
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{{see.}}
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The power of seven days, seven poems, seven midnight loiterers flashed before his eyes. He died and was reborn. He saw once. Blinked. And then was gone.

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[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box]]
=====
> **Filename:** moon.jpg
> **Author:** NASA Apollo
> **License:** Public Domain
> **Source:** [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Long_Shadows_on_the_Lunar_Surface_-_GPN-2000-001485.jpg]
=====
[[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]
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Her Envoy, Waxing

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