Renewal

The end...

He struggled futilely against energy, tendrils wrapping around his non-existent limbs, immobilizing him in middle of the void. "Please, don't do this!" he shouted angrily, forgetting himself for a moment and trying to pull away. "Let me help them! You can't just let them die!"

"It is too late," she said tonelessly, as she always did. "They are at his mercy, yet he has none. You knew this."

A window seemed to open up, its focus a tan desert planet. The entire atmosphere raged, engulfed in blue flame, destroying any living creature on the surface. He ceased his struggles, unable to look away. "No...oh God, no!"

"It was inevitable," she said soothingly, the tendrils now cradling him in their embrace. "There was nothing to be done. Yet, hope remains for your adopted people."

He cursed his inability to cry. "How? They are all dead!"

"They are gone, yes," she agreed, a ghostly hand brushing against his 'face'. "It had to be done. Now all that remains is your punishment for interfering."

"Nothing you do to me will ever make me regret helping them," he snapped at her.

"Regardless, the punishment must be dealt. You did not attract the attention of the Others, yet you would have had I not stopped you. Your options are thus: exile on a deserted planet until natural death, upon which you may rejoin us; exile in solid form amidst strangers until natural death; or permanent imprisonment in the void of non-existence."

"You mean death."

"That is how your kind knows of it, yes."

He looked away from the burning planet. "If I chose exile among strangers...would I remember all of this?" he asked, shuddering as he imagined how his people had died.

"You may, if you wish it."

"No," he decided firmly. "Descend me, then. But...please. Don't let me remember anything," he pleaded. "I don't...I wouldn't want to live like that. Maybe after I've had time to heal, but the pain is terrible and far too new."

"Very well," she agreed. "It will be so."

Pain, tearing him apart, putting him back together, a whirlwind of colors he could no longer comprehend, sounds he could no longer hear, overwhelmed by the mere sensation of touch again. He shuddered, feeling almost unbearable scratching along his left side, and opened his eyes to a blurry canvas, colors smeared together in a frightening manner. His breath quickened as large dark shapes approached, and one leaned over him.

"Who are you?"

For a moment, the words meant nothing. Gibberish noises, incomprehensible, then slowly they settled into words. He searched his mind and shivered when he found nothing. "I don't know."

The shapes pulled back and made more noises, too fast for him to make sense of, then they returned. One shape draped something heavy over him, and the pain of the texture made him whimper as it rubbed against new skin. "Can you stand?" another shape asked slowly, as if sensing his difficulty.

"...stand?" he whispered, confused. "What...I don't..."

"It is all right," the first shape said softly. "We will take you back to our camp, and make you well again."

Strong words, he thought bitterly, but did not know where the thought came from. He stifled a cry as he was picked up, the sensation wholly unfamiliar and yet somehow not. "I'm sorry," he said, not knowing why.

"Just rest, arrom. Save your worries for tomorrow."

A beginning...