Humanity Prime. Bruce Mcallister

and brown fear rises bubbling, and lavender adds brownness even greater, and my soul acts in the only way I know.

      I pull the lie from its burrow in my soul, mold it with red of remembered rage, and throw it out as a wounded female ioe would throw it out.

      The five bodies slow their advance, stopping nervously in soul.

      I add brown of motion, and two of the bodies begin to move back—toward the bigshinegray of the greater lie.

      Having forgotten to breathe, I suck quickly on the stem—but hold the lie tensely and strongly.

      For a moment I imagine I have won the struggle. The five souls are red, brown and solid gray in their fear of my lying image—whatever their understanding of it is.

      But suddenly a flashing line of light leaps from one of the five bodies, and my shoulder is struck with the pain of hot talons.

      Using my twisted left hand, I cup a breath of water and wet my eyes—only to see that in the webless hands of four of the five bodies lay small gray objects.

      Another line of light leaves them, and the dryness around me trembles, but no pain comes.

      Then the next light brings with it a pain on the side of my face—not such depth of pain as in my right shoulder, but enough to nearly blind my face’s eyes.

      And now I understand how all my forefathers’ forefathers died, how an animal may die without the touch of talons or the slow crawl of sickness. I touch dim distant visions of small hard objects: one used by forefathers’ fathers for killing food; one used by one man to kill another; and finally, leaping from dimness, many hard objects of a million sizes—used by my distant fathers to kill the fathers of these...these scalesouls, in a million struggles in a million places.

      And I see the truest truth, and the deepest brown yet:

      The consoling light of the future is gone forever: the wrong bigshinegray has come; and there will never be a right bigshinegray. I and my kind are the last of my forefathers’ fathers’ blood, and our deaths will be the end of praying times.

      (Then die. You want to die, to join waterjoyup and screamdeep and their fathers and all lines of blood in the darkness of body’s loss. Die.)

      But something else bothers my soul. Under my body is lavender, the euyom, and if I die her death will come too. The lavender soul has offered me many good things, moments of brighter comfort, veins of touch against aloneness.

      (You wish to bring death on her, when no euyom has ever wanted death as your kind always has?)

      My own soul’s sarcasm makes my answer a shout, and sadness becomes the crags of guilt as I realize the euyom has been listening to me, willing to offer her life if I wish to choose death.

      My body begins to quiver, and in a moment my rage gathers hate as its current. I hate these killers of finest dreams, killers of forefathers’ fathers and mothers. (Just as you hate the boy named fishsinger, killer of one mother.)

      My single soul raises its pounding talons of brown, and I give the five souls my screaming hate.

      And something different happens. The souls of the five darken and become...become fewer.

      I wet my face’s eyes quickly, to find in seeing that only three scalesouls remain upright. And those that are upright are swaying and stumbling.

      The two bodies lying on the dry ground are as still as rocks.

      At first I understand none of this. But understanding comes: When first I cried out in dryness, thinking myself blinded, the violence of my soul’s darkness killed millions of the tiny invisible souls around me. Now I have thrown an even greater violence, swollen with hatred, at the five scalesouls....

      With pink of confidence I scream again—but pink is not red, and my hatred is weaker this second throw.

      So I need more feelings, colors and darkness. I bend my soul to images of death again—mine, my kind’s, and most intensely the death of lavender’s hues. And then I vomit my fear’s hatred a third time, crashing on the three souls remaining.

      Two bodies leave their uprightness and fall to motionless silence.

      Then I scream, as another light hits my left tail.

      The body of the last scalesoul turns and moves quickly in a bouncing manner toward the smooth gray form behind it, just as an ioe would turn tail and flee.

      My soul awakes with pinkest joy, and lavender wobbles under me in sharing.

      The pinkest joy confuses my sense of proper action, and instead of killing the last scalesoul, I choose a proud image, weave it with further bright pride, and send it babbling to the fleeing soul:

      I, yes I, am one of them: pale smooth hairless scaleless upright fellow of the line of my forefathers’ blood!

      The soul disappears to eyes and soul by entering the bigshinegray, and in the next moment harsh thoughts rise in my mind: “The wrong bigshinegray shall carry its lone surviving soul back to the big red-yellow object; but then it shall return here with a thousand bigshinegrays, all of them fatally wrong, with light to kill your kind!”

      No action can change my error. The scalesoul is out of my reach, and besides, sleep is beginning to enfold my soul as the pains in my tail, shoulder and head suggest the deepest sleep.

      Lavender has already turned herself and is moving toward the sea again. She offers no answers, nor consoling colors to keep the dark browns of sadness from me.

      I stop her at sea’s edge, turn my head, wet my eyes and look up at the endless blue around.

      The bigshinegray rises on frantic tails of light, growing small and smaller to face’s eyes as it finds some tiny hole and disappears.

      The swarming begins inside me. Thoughts mumble, then shout, then roar. They raise my head even higher, enter my throat with their peak of roar—

      And my throat begins to rumble, becomes a rattle that shakes my head and pounds against my own soul’s bellowing hatred.

      For the first time in a million days one of my kind is speaking in the oldest way—using flesh of throat to show the oldest hatred, the oldest violence, the desire to kill flesh with flesh, souls with bodies....

      And I know now that I will begin to wait. Perhaps I will die before the day arrives, but I will wait and wait for the scalesouls’ return, for the day I will kill or be killed.

      I enter the water, and enter sleep.