Take A Sad Song
Page 1

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A purple haze conspired to separate the tangible pallid rock and rubble within range of Chiana's feet from the rest of the perceptible world, from time to time releasing darker shades of the surrounding mountains or the occasional traveler from its ether. Crunching from the steps of her own solid black boots upon the rock pathway was only occasionally mingled with an emerging sound. And recently her thoughts ventured from haunted reflection to the present fitfully and seldom.

Looming from the mists ahead, sharp rock escarpments approached from the mountain she trailed upon to tower on either side of the pathway, their gate the lack of anything visible beyond. To one side a dead tree trunk zig zagged to twice her height. Chiana stopped and trailed her gaze over it once she stood beside it. Instead of the scraggly but rustically colorful trees in the images Chiana had seen before coming to this world, this warped and half petrified ghost signified the devastated lands she found.

Exactly what had happened she had yet to learn but it was clear some ecological disaster occurred, probably a particularly severe example of the impacts that regularly upset this dwarf planet named Rhobos. Equally evident was that for whatever reason, its people had not recovered as before, leaving her to wonder among little but the occasional dead, dying or suffering survivor, whether people, their husbanded animals or the wild life. Her immediate suspicion was that the relatively recent decision by these peoples to cede control to the Peacekeepers was not unrelated.

While the destination was not exactly as advertised, the horror of the scape she found herself within was cushioned somewhat by an unfamiliar inability to keep herself focused in the present and a little too much familiarity with finding herself in unpleasant circumstances.

Walking away from the tree, the contact with cooling sweat reminded Chiana of how loose her half cloth and half leather pants had become. Once the pants were snugly fit to her normally petite and meticulously trim form. But through difficulties as well as her own recklessness, she had lost so much weight over the past cycle and during her travels to this world that she found herself feeling lost in her old clothes. That should be alarming her as well, she thought. But after a while she had quit caring.

The mountain she had come to this world to climb and the views it offered almost certainly hadn't changed. Chiana continued along the path into the haze without hesitation. She hadn't taken the arduous journey by ticket, stow away and theft across countless solar systems or withstood worse deprivation than she had known she could bear to be turned away now. Just why she needed to make this journey was largely a mystery to her as well. Many times she had compulsively pursued some urge to go places, usually a frivolous whim to visit some dangerous supposed pleasure destination but sometimes for deeper reasons she couldn't articulate to herself. Either way it usually resulted in another close escape from another traumatic experience. This time the motivation was so deep but inexplicable that she felt like a helpless captive to her own obsession.

Over a slight ridge the path turned and descended slightly, becoming a path of dirt on a gently sloping hillside. Ahead of her the haze lessened to reveal that she now walked in a wide mountain valley. Just for a moment her attention was snapped to a cry howling from a distance, perhaps somewhere among the distant twiggy forests and folding hills leading down the valley on her left or perhaps among the shadowy mountain walls looming a greater distance to her left or towering to her right. Another cry allowed her to gauge the distance better and finding it a safe distance away, Chiana's thoughts soon swept into a tide of memory.

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Steeply inclining and switching back a few times to climb behind a water fall and reach a higher ledge on its opposite side, the path was again making her aware of how weak she had become. Gasping and slowing to a weary trudge, Chiana weathered the hike in a dismal fog of fatigue and barely noticed the splendid drama of the water fall or the nearly surreal view of the valley and mountains from the natural proscenium.

Somewhere on the way her hunger had stopped gnawing but she still felt it as a numb presence. Long ago she'd had to become used to managing it but one thing she never managed was the hunger of loneliness. What she managed to have of family, friends and lovers alike always involved longing, loneliness or both even when around them and soon or later, usually sooner, she was left literally alone. That hunger ached inside far more incessantly but she didn't know how or when she would find any relief.

If she could have had her way, she would be running back to John Crichton for the umpteenth time. Once she'd enjoyed his company and he had dubbed her "Pip" which he said meant she was his "favorite traveling companion." But he must have hated traveling. She'd longed for him as a lover, cared about him as a friend and accepted the distance of an uneasy surrogate sibling for his sake. He didn't need her, hadn't wanted her and often simply tolerated her. Time and again she remained starved for some real friendship as she trouped along after him through a horror after another. He spared an embrace only at a few of the more horrible moments but his life, heart and mind was consumed with Aeryn, wormholes, Aeryn, Scorpius, Aeryn and maybe a few other things not including herself. And Aeryn.

Time and time again she finally tried to leave. The memory of one time threatened to slip her grip on the present again. How insignificant she had felt to be sitting on her knees, trying to say she was finally leaving while he faced away with his back to her, tormented by his problems, barely hearing her and certainly never thinking to suggest it even mattered. He had his own problems, she told herself again. She tried not to feel wholly unwanted as she left, but inside she was crushed. That was not as crushing as running back beaten, abused and unable to find safety because she had been his friend only to find herself his accessory if not in his way again.

What seemed like an eternity later, her painful relationship by default with D'Argo finally ended painfully with D'Argo's death but John's life had some stability and safety and he had his Aeryn and a child. Chiana felt even less wanted and was entirely irrelevant. Although John was prepared to unquestioningly accept her continued presence and insisted she could make a great aunt and friend for his children, there was little doubt that one day one of them would be telling her that as a problematic influence, it was probably better if she would leave.

Finally Chiana had left without much need or desire to return again, although it had taken a surprisingly assertive and persistent console from Rygel to help her cut the last of her battered bonds with her past on Moya. As she did, she found she couldn't accept Rygel's offer to continue with him in his endless efforts to maintain his rule of the Hynerian Empire. To her surprise Rygel had told her that he was pleased because he was certain she could now find a path of her own, something he made sure to point out that she hadn't had for cycles. All that between complaints of how he was being left under-served as usual.

The past was over but it was not forgotten. Lately it restlessly prowled her famished mind, waiting for moments to dispossess her consciousness, leaving her no true rest or sleep. Somewhere behind the falls nearing the top of the switch back trail, her numbed legs dropped her to her knees and she sat in place, gasping for breath.

A roaring water fall and the rocks weaving under its crest and around the cavity the path wound through was barely noticed. Instead the sloping cavity was a sloping access repair tunnel on Moya, trickling water was dangling wires and the roaring water the din of the ship and pain inside as she sat, on her knees, behind John. In enough pain of her own, feeling more pain from feeling for his pain, knowing he was even more tried than usual, thinking of his red ringed eyes and hollowed expressions, she needed desperately to get away from this or at least to get some noticeable acknowledgement that she was alive. No, he wouldn't and she told herself he couldn't, because he still had his own problems. Maybe she was needed, she told herself again. But this time her needy heart ripped too deeply under the bandage of hope and she would run, only to barely manage running back again.

Gradually the urge to continue overcame her exhaustion and she struggled back to her feet. The urge that kept her going wasn't the same that carried her back to John Crichton. She had no hope any longer, not with him or anywhere, and she was certain the reward if any would be fleeting, a setup for more hurt and emptiness. She was always left wanting.

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"Naahh!" Chiana wordlessly cried as her foot came up from whatever it had wedged beneath with a wet, crunchy material giving way to an assault of putrid smells. "Ennng, mph, angh, frell!" she continued when she hobbled forward a few steps then looked down and back and saw that the obstacle laying half in the path was a twisted, rotting corpse of some live stock creature just as horrid to see as smell.

Earlier in her life she might have searched the corpse for anything remotely edible if she were very hungry. Despite being pretty sure she hadn't been nearly as needy before all that she wanted to do now was yell, whimper and push herself faster and further away from that scene. Was there such a thing as too much horror? Is this what it felt like? Her mind tried to find some cohabitation with the easily overwhelming feelings charging in her mind, heart and soul lately.

"Came here for the sights yeah" she lectured herself as soon as words could tumble out, "so, so you want to watch where you're frelling going? Paid -paid! Oh I paid. For, for these eyes so, so, frelling use them!"

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The searing pain of having her eyes removed was almost as bad as the pain she had endured from the unexplained after effects of the unexplained abilities her own eyes had freakily developed. But as her blinded eyes were ripped from her and surgical suction siphoned away her unseen tears, Rygel hovered within view and stoutly remarked, "It will be good hm, if dangerous, to have you at last able to move around without troubling me. You won't be as much use to me in a game of chance, but at least some unpredictability will be reduced. And good riddance to those freakish things." His words tore but his froggy hand patted hers, the only whisper of empathy to her plight ever suggested by anyone. Her laughter cracked.

Again her laughter cracked as arns later, her new eyes were used to see herself in a reflection. These replacements also had their own weird abilities as it seemed she was seeing energy emissions even through walls. Potentially useful, but then so were the earlier things. None were relevant to her. Relevant was the person in the reflection. Some one- some thing else's eyes sat in her face, reptilian slits garishly glaring where once her large obsidian pools gazed. D'Argo's strong, large hands rested heavily on her shoulders as he looked over her and smiled. "New eyes," he remarked, "I'm happy for you as well. At last it's over. You were very brave," his gravelly voice turned gentle, "I'm very proud of how you handled that, Chiana. At last you'll have your sight back and we can do what we had been wanting. You'll need it to find me when I keep getting lost in the fields."

Chiana's chuckles blended with his and she laughed to bury the burn of wounds inside. Neglected and festering, the wounds from abuses, fears and needs she'd suffered well over a cycle weren't important enough to so much as interrupt the plans of any of those she loved until finally she had crawled back to D'Argo's bed and his plans had required her to have reliable sight. Now her surgically violated body stared back with eyes alien to her instead of her own. He was right she told herself, she had been spared from blindness and would be useful to him instead of a tragic inconvenience to everyone.

"New eyes!" she keened in genuine joy over unmendable pain, all unable to express as they would once have in the eyes that used to be a part of her.

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