Chapter Text
The looming sense of danger in the least expected places was not something foreign to you. Rather, it was like a shadowy companion, always silent but very much present in the surroundings of your life.
How couldn’t it be when your home were the vast and wondeful wilderness? The land where depending on the day and even the hour, fate would decide if one was pray or predator, who got to live to see one more sunrise and who would be meeting with their ancestors for the night.
Yes, you knew this well. But your dear home had not prepared you for them.
Them with their death machines, shiny like moonlight on a dark lake but that once ablazed spread their unfertile seeds onto your people’s flesh to sow death. Them who wouldn’t descend from their maddened beasts to battle with honor, instead hunting your kin out of pure bloodlust. Them who had paid kindness and welcoming wills with a knife to your backs. Them who had hair like the Sun but were against the beautiful life he fostered.
Them who had the paleness of corpses and seemed bent on creating more like them.
Late but surely, you had come to fear them much more than any of the animals roaming your land. Whenever an animal sneered at you, it did so out of hunger or fear for its young, not out of hatred like they did.
Once they were done killing, sacking, raping, torturing and mauling your people, the kidnappings began. You amongst others were plucked away from the vanishing grip of your dying kin, cold metal bracing your hands before being obliged to walk like ants through harsh stone for days on end before being thrown into cells in the cursed vessel they had come into your shores with.
Those of you who died due to sickness, of poisoned food, of being made to take too many savage sailors in a single night or due to the mercifully fatal call of the waves… Those were the lucky ones.
And the rest of you, what few of you remained, realised it too late.
Their land… was odd, to say the least.
Where you could now see your people’s homes as places to rest and guard yourselves against the dangers that came from living as one of the many children in the bosom of Mother Nature, here it seemed homes were a testament to the arrogance of these people of corpse-pale skin.
They were tall and study, made of stone and the same metal imprisoning your wrists, as if they thought themselves to be as immortal as mountains and thus had the urge to build in their likeness. The pathways from one place to another were crammed, any green hint of Mother Nature’s presence cruelly snubbed under the pressure of stones where their four-legged beasts carried them all over. The very air surrouding their impossibly-big village was dark and pestilent, as if thery were so vile to have an ever-burning pyre of rot and decay spreading the dark smoke that clouded the sky.
Given the impression you had had from them, you weren’t sure these theories were mere fiction.
You didn’t have much time to prove if you were wrong or not however, for as soon as you reached land, you were placed atop one of those strange land boats pulled by what these savages called ‘horses’ to be moved into what you thought would be another cage.
Instead, they took you inside one of those arrogant houses, allowing you to see it from the inside. And finding that your poor opinion of these savage bastards was actually giving them too much credit.
If you had the time and manpower to move stone from deep into the mountains to carve it, paint it and build a mountain of your own, surely you wouldn’t have decided against more cheerful colours? Or proper space to keep all the things these people did without them cramming in like they did? They just seemed to be… sad. Pessimistic spaces devoid of life, where it seemed these savages preferred to surround themselves with poor imitations of the flora and fauna which would surely surround them if they weren’t so bent over snuffing it out.
It was in this dark place that you were sold off to the Grand Berlin Anthropological Exhibition, never quite fully understanding what all those words meant other than a place where you and other ‘different’ peoples would be thrown into cages to be gawked at by these corpses behind cold metal bars.
It took you a good while getting used to the heavy and oily gruel your captors would feed you, but you finally managed to swallow and keep it in your stomach without your bowels warping. The other girl who had been sold off along with you wasn’t able to, the white liquid they called ‘milk’ proved to be too much for her as she soon passed after spending days with a sick scent around her.
So you were alone. You might as well be in a different plane of existence, the sweet memories of your home a blur that felt so far away sometimes you began questioning if they had even been real.
Your captors never truly became benevolent to you, you were aware the despise in their eyes was too deep for them to try and meet you halfway. But some of them, like the wrinkled lady who swept the bread crumbs and thin wood sticks left behind from the people who visited your enclosure, at least didn’t look at you like an animal.
She once caught you intently staring at the embroidery on a lady’s wide skirt and decided to bring you thread, needle and plain fabric for you to experiment with. Once you were able to mimic the shape of one of the flowers that stubbornly grew in your enclosure, the elder woman brought yarn and needles, and so on.
It was actually in one of the quiet autumn days when you were weaving yet another shawl in the colors of your homely wilderness to fend off the cold which was so insisten and nippy in this corner of the world, when they brought… him.
Few things caused a commotion in this the place where the corpse-people caged everything and everyone they considered odd, interesting and entertaining. So when the shocked screaming reached your ears, you turned to see with the utmost curiosity.
And… Oh. You suddenly understood the strong emotions of your captors, despite the guilt this caused in your mind for you didn’t want to feel the brutish impulse to stare at your new enclosure companion the way these corpses around you gawked at you and your fellow zoo-mates as something alien.
But… you couldn’t help it.
The impulse to look at those long limbs which seemed to have been made from the same puzzle light would make on water, the unnatural height reminiscent of the tales of giants your people told by the bonfires, the broad back you swore could have easily carried an adult man on each shoulder, the blue and gray skin you had ever only thought could be in posession of the night gods themselves and those eyes shining in the way a predator would when stalking your kin during the night…
If it weren’t for the absolute sadness that filled them.
Because, despite the god-like physique, that had been the very first imprint he seared in your mind: the solitude the being radiated was so strong it made you feel physically unwell. As if you had just witnessed despair walk right by you in a humanoid form.
Was it you the only one who perceived it though? It definitely seemed like it, judging by the way the corpse-people crowded around him with faces full of either excitement or terror, either way both mixed with an arrogance palpable in the air.
You better than most knew of that sentiment and how much they seemed naturally gifted for it: the arrogance of having conquered and subdued that which they deemed different and strange. Conquering that which they saw to be dangerous instead of being something… no, someone.
Someone like the being who was being paraded around the Zoo before being pushed into an exhibition of his own amongst the cheers of the corpse-people, too enthralled by their newest victory to realise it wasn’t such.
That man had the look, the stance and the aura of someone who had decided to walk through life as if he already was dead.
Cameras.
That was what the old woman had told you those strange artifacts were called. An instant painting from what you had seen, a way to capture a moment as soon as it occured. An expensive novelty toy the corpse people seemed to enjoy pointing at the newest Zoo resident the way you had seen them point with what you now knew to be bullets back at home.
Despite your curiosity on the matter, you were glad you were not the subject of the dreaded artifact. Though you also felt greatly for your poor neighbour even if he didn’t seem to mind it. That nor anything at all, really.
You had counted the days, seven in total, since his much celebrated entrance to the Zoo. And in all that time, no matter the huge crowds, the visitors, the cameras, the annoyingly poking visitors, no force had been able to move him from the miserable sitting stance he had frozen himself into ever since the moment he entered his confinement. Not even to reach for food or water, nevermind to guard himself from the cruel cold the night brought in this awful part of the world.
“A god perhaps” you mumbled to yourself, peeking slightly from under the small mountain of shawls you had to pile atop of the cushion of hay that served as your bed.
A god. A god fallen from grace then, you decided.
There was no other explanation as to why a being of such otherwordly characteristics would allow these savage brutes to cage him like an animal.
Stories of such things happening existed in the tales your people told: powerful beings who harboured control over the elements, over the constellations in the night sky, who held mastery over weapons only them could handle, suddenly losing the grace of their fellow high beings and being demoted to share the pains and sorrows of those who used to pay their respects and prayers to them.
But that didn’t make you recoil in either fright nor arrogance the way the corpse-people did when looking at the fallen god. Because you knew better: in each of these stories, these gods had been plucked away from the heavens, exchanged their own ever-lasting happiness for the happiness of mankind.
Fire had been brought by one of them, gifting the people with warmth and light. The seas had been gifted as a bountiful source of food. Even dance and song had been given to bring happiness.
As your fingers began weaving a new creation, you wondered which gift had this gentle giant brought forth into the world for which he had been so cruelly punished. If you had to guess by the shades of his skin, he must have been part of those who controlled the skies and the weather.
“I bet his imprisonment is the reason we all burn with cold at night” you mused when the temperatures moved further down only days after his arrival to the Zoo.
You knew someone as powerless as yourself could do little, if anything at all, to change the will of the gods… one only had to witness the direness of your situation and your people’s to realise that. But still, your parents and kin would be rolling in their graves if you dared to be disrespectful to the beings who embodied the will of the Earth.
So you wove a little more, hereby wishing the old lady had given you something to work with that wasn’t the shade of infertile earth, the same dull colour of the gurel the zookeepers gave you each morning. Surely, that was an offense to the gods themselves, to try and give an offer which spoke of nothing but barren land like the one you found yourself into.
“It can’t do” you decided.
With the colder and shorter days, the visitors who before crowded the Zoo’s stony paths began to dwindle, and with them the small bits of colour you had seen thrown around: jellies made of fruit a child had dropped, a feather from the hat of a visiting lady the wind took away, a piece of chocolate forgotten on the bench close-by to your enclosure. After all, you being alive against all measure proved nothing if not your stubborness against unfavourable circumstance.
So collecting you began, and dyeing followed afterwards. Frogging as well, since you needed so much wool to cover those wide shoulders, so you began undoing one of your previous creations which you had used to cover your body from the icy night.
Luckily, the Zoo had allowed you to keep some of the color of your people as well, they had to since apparently it was this what had initially drawn visitors to you aside from the warm depth of your skin and the rich night of your hair. To them, something ‘exotic’, to you a piece of the world you had grown to know and which looked farther and farther every day that passed.
Still, you began undoing them as well. The carefully carved wooden beads, the soft and colourful feathers, the mutedly clinking bones, the vibrant cord and thread of your clothes undone to become part of the shawl you had begun to create.
After weeks of having the fallen god be the intent object of the lingering crowds’ attention, it seemed your working hands had attracted some interest onto you once again. So much so that some visitors even began to throw colourful rags into your enclosure as to continue to provide for the continuation of your creation.
‘An exotic show of the quaint work of the indigenous!’ you heard announced by the Zoo heralds. You didn’t fully understand the meaning, but you didn’t like the tone nor the looks of your public.
You hated to have a public in the very first place. You fought hard to keep your work an anonymous piece for it was not for show, it was a prayer after all. A prayer for the kind god who despite the cruelty he was being subdued to every day, simply stayed still in his misery.
And it was this misery which inspired the continous movement of your fingers as they wove images of the happiness you had lived through before the corpse men plucked you away from it. The fabric would tell him of the birds singing in the sky to bid the Sun farewell, of the fish shining brighter than any jewel the ladies donned around their necks, of the bounties your people had learned to gently coax from the earth, of the sweet-scent off the plants your hands had caressed since infancy.
You wanted to share what could still bring a smile upon your face. Perhaps it could also bring some solace to him in the middle of his penitence.
Picking the lock was easy work, after having seen the zoo staff do it so many times already.
Your bare feet braved the stone path which threatened to burn them cold if you did not hurry. You were lucky your enclosure was so close to his, having arrived to the Zoo so close to one another. They only stopped right at the gate of his poorly-given home as you recalled something you hadn’t considered in your haste.
Words. Could he even speak your tongue? Understand it even in the slightest?
Ever since your kidnapping not a soul had had the good will to learn your people’s words, your thoughts, only forcing you to the will of theirs and to learn the ugly sounds that didn’t speak of the Earth like yours did.
“Well” you thought to yourself “A god is a god no matter where one is in the world”
Perhaps those had been the words of your village’s spirit speaker, unconsciously registered. So you acted on them.
A shy, cold hand gently tapped on his enclosure, respect tinting the gesture.
Back at home, it wouldn’t have been you the one to call for the god’s mercy. That had to be done by someone whose connection to the spirits had been proven to be strong and unwavering. And you couldn’t deny you had cursed the heavenly will when the kidnapping happened.
Perhaps an offer could shift fate’s will in your favour then.
Despite the promise made to his father, Adam found hard to keep on living as himself. As a matter of fact he didn’t believe he had done so at all.
Surviving would perhaps be a better suited word for what he had been doing throught these years.
He had tried. By the good God, had he tried.
He walked for days on end after Viktor passed away in the middle of the cold, white desert that was the North Pole until the sound underneath his heavy footsteps wasn’t the deaf crunch of snow and ice, when his eyes began seeing the flat red lychens and the towering heights of the very first tall pines and their homely smell. It wasn’t long until he found a solitary home and a small village short after.
It wasn’t long until he was chased away with bullets and arrows, new burn marks on his arms and face.
It would be the first time of the many within the two years that took the so-called freak-hunters who got on his tracks. Even that one last time with the hunters ended up in the exact same way: with him knowing both extensions of pain and of his over-induced healing which he didn’t know where even possible. And which he truly wished he hadn’t come to know.
By the time he was thrown into his own personal cell inside the ‘Zoo’, any hope he had had been depleated from his body.
He had known cruelty against his being due to his looks from all of mankind and due to his origin from his very creator. But to know he was nothing but merely another in the long list of humanity’s collection of freaks and monsters they used to feel like the masters of the Earth… that had been a new type of pain, seared deep within his heart and his very soul.
How could he possibly try to live amongst people who seemed to worship despair and hatred like the most fervent of believers?
His head hung low, eyes half-lidded in a permanent state of sorrow from which he decided not to walk away from, but to stay and let it consume him, his soul and thought at the very least since his flesh would be left unaffected by it. But at the very least, he could remain still, away from their spectacle and their horrid obsession for controlling those which did not resemble them.
And so he remained, unmoving as a statue carved from the cold air that snuck its insistent claws through the harsh gates of his seclusion. How many days or weeks passed in such manner it did not matter to him. After all, he knew better than most that a year in the world stood nothing against a second of the most despairing solitude.
But that night, when that soft voice called with foreign sounds from the gate, shy and almost reverent. He just had to get his head up to see.
And what he saw… who he saw…
Warm and deep skin in the shade of the beautiful hills the flowers and forests called home, a long cascade of black which had been decorated with the soft colours of nature in it’s purest form, in feathers more colourful than any spring, in stones which held more history than any diamond ever could, complete with eyes in a deep black which shone as bright as the starry midsummer skies and held just as much warmth in them.
But what struck him the most were those features.
He had seen works of art on his never-ending travels, paintings and sculptures masterfully depicting the most exquisite personifications of what ‘enlightened’ men such as his maker had found to be the highest expressions of human beauty. And Adam had of course recognised a repeating pattern in the aspect of all of them: the same rendition of soft droopy eyes, the small nose and lips at the center of it all.
So it was no surprise nothing had prepared him for the beautiful features donned by his confinement’s nightly visitor. He couldn’t even begin to describe how different and graceful in their difference they were. It was as if he was witnessing soft whispers that spoke to him of the sun murmuring foreign tales through leaves of trees he had never seen, of rivers singing tales of peoples living across the large blue seas and of animals his mind would never be able to conjure telling their adventures in a foreign land which might as well be magical to him.
Her lips parted ever so slightly, only enough for the singing words of her ancestors to come through, marvelous in their mystery.
Adam realised she seemed to be calling for him.
His dear Elizabeth had been the one to first deem him a pure being, with a curiosity so present it could only be equated to that of a child. And he knew he was not going to make her words seem faulty, so he stood up and approached the small object of his inquiring mind as slowly as his monstruous form allowed him to.
Adam was ready to see her recoil as soon as he stepped into the dim light the moon had so graciously gifted them for their unplanned rendezvous, but there was not a single dollop of fear neither in her expression nor in her body’s silent language.
If anything, he could swear he saw sheer and unadulterated awe replect onto those orbs of pure onyx.
Her mouth moved anew, something in the tone of her foreign words told him she was calling to him. And by the gestures of her extended arms, he could understand she wanted him to receive the bundle she was holding.
“No…” his voice came out raspy, like sandpaper on a crude log, so long had he gone without using it “I cannot… accept it”
The realisation that she did understand the world ‘no’ atrung a pained note in Adam’s chest. Yet, despite her comprehension of denial, she persisted, her foreign tongue getting ever-so-slightly firmer.
When he tried to insist on his inadequacy to welcome an offer of any kind, she persisted albeit in another way. She simply laid down the bundle by his side before making her exit, leaving the gate unlocked.
The message was clear to a stunned Adam: ‘you’re free to go if you please, and to take my gift with you’.
Adam recalled a few children’s tales amongst the myriad of books he had read through his lone journeys, stories of fantastic beings who hid themselves amongst the trees and flowers. They would employ their magic to hide themselves amongst the common men but it wasn’t as powerful as to fully conceal their true nature: their features and eyes would be the first to give them away.
“A fairy” Adam mumbled to himself, his voice raspy after weeks of not ushering a sound.
However, he closed back the thick metal gate, the heavy iron feather-light in his strong hands, out of his own volition. His will was not on escaping, already a pariah to mankind he did not want to add to be a fugitive to the dreaded list of adjectives men had plastered on his forehead like a target for them to hit.
Perhaps before, when his father’s death was still too fresh on his mind and his drive to conduct a life with the goal to find good in the world was what moved him to wake up with every sunrise. But as of then, he truly only wished to be left alone, to live in peace and not have his existence chased like a plague.
If remaining in a human zoo to be stared at like an exhibition on monstrosity was better, he was still figuring out.
While he decided on that matter, he decided to observe her a bit more intently.