No shouting in space

The host's voice was soothing, even more soothing than the song.

You feel a familiar male hand on your forehead that holds your hair away. The touch of his fingertips is at once reassuring and exciting - like when you'd see him in the mess hall. No, you are not in the slave pens anymore. There's no one in here at all. Just you and him.

You smell something delicious, something nourishing and healthy. You remember food from long ago, but you don't remember this kind of food. Where do you know that food from? You don't feel like going through all those memories to remember. You let those memories slip away. You just want to think about now.

There's a splash and the familiar hand leaves your forehead. A few seconds later, a sliver of light falls from beneath your lids. You open your eyes.

You see a bathe of golden light from above. With the divider of eyelids gone, you see for the first time your true surroundings. You had expected nothing like this, a lush, green, verdant forest. Somehow you had expected to have woken up on a dirt floor in the slave pens, or in the mine with its rough rock walls.

Where are you?

You turn your head to the side and a beautiful creature lies next to you. You stare at it, unable to breathe, unable to move. You recognize this creature, but you do not understand what it is. It eats and moves around as if it has senses of its own. It offers you this new sensation of marvel.

You wonder what is going on. You long to just talk about anything, about history and family and friends, about the way you feel when your friends treat you well, about the way you feel when your life seems to be out of your control.

The creature that lies by you is beautiful, and you cannot deny that it is beautiful. It raises its head and smiles at you.

"I'm not a human," it says.

You look at the table in the corner of the room. Everything you think and feel and every sensation you have right now says that you are a human. You feel like a human. Maybe you had never slept in the host's bed. Maybe you had never washed his clothes or cooked his food or washed his back. Maybe you have never spoken to your friends, the other humans. Maybe you were never born human. You are confused. You don't know what you are or what has happened to you. You had lived a life as a human for so long that you had forgotten what it had been like before that. People had called you their favorite pet, but you didn't know why. You couldn't remember who they were.

Why couldn't you remember?

You reach out and touch the creature that lies by you. Its flesh is strange and soft. It moves to the touch of your hand, not in fear but in amusement. It seems to like you, even though you are not certain what you are.

The familiar hand pushes you away. You turn to look for it. It's gone. The creature that lies next to you is all that is here. You are all alone with it, the creature with golden eyes.

You blink, wondering why you cannot forget that you are not human. The creature with the golden eyes takes your hand before you can blink again. It turns your hand over and plays with the palm. You are used to being fondled by others, but they are all less than you in some way. Men that take you don't usually touch your hands, their hands are often rough. If they have soft hands, they are just men that believe you are a thing, a creature that is less blameless than they are. They hold you with a sense of distance. But not this creature.

Its fingers are soft though its palm is large. It touches the part of your hand that men do not generally touch. It brings your hand up to its face and presses the palm against its cheek. The feeling of the feel of the creature's face is intoxicating.

"Who are you?" you ask, still unsure of what is going on.

"I was the Host," it says, looking down at the creature that lies next to you. It presses its small one on you. You do not know how to tell it this. All you can do is stare at it, not knowing what to say or do.

You had not known about this new dimension before. You did not know that something could be so ornate, so perfect in its form.

The creature that lies by you yawns and buries its face in your belly. Your expression is that of a child who cannot believe the wonder of the toy it finds. You laugh with the feeling of it. You press your hands against its head, and you see that the golden eyes of this creature are human eyes - or rather the eyes of the man who once lay by you. You pull your hands away in terror. You reach out to the divider your eyelids had stood for a lifetime and your hand knocks against it. Your cheeks are wet with tears.

You don't know what to say or what's going on, but you know that it's wrong. You press your hand against the divider over your eyes and you wait to wake up from this fantasy, from a dream that is not your own.

But the eyes of the creature that lies by you continue to be human eyes. The creature is a human, or rather a man in whom the spark of life had been placed that you had once known, a man whom you had once known. You know that the spark of life is gone. You know that this man is gone and that you will never see him again.

You look into the golden eyes. You can see it, feel it, sense it. Life is stirring back in you. You feel as if you would remember anything, any language or feeling or sense of beauty. You long to feel and be and see, but it feels as if the process of life will never return to what it was.

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