Look ma, it's PROGRESS!
Name: Amitai
Gender: While the Golem has always been described in stories as "man-shaped," it is technically genderless. The same applies to Amitai in spite of the male pronouns used to describe him.
Mythbase: The Golem of Prague
Link to a source on the mythbase: 1 2 3 While these three links all tell the same basic story, they differ in many of the details. My best resource was actually a book:
Golem by David Wisniewski.
Link to Fa'e quest thread: There's not much in it other than the story of the Golem and some very basic descriptions of Amitai, but
here. Appearance: The only two things that are absolutely essential to Amitai's appearance are his body, which is made of stone, and the etching of the Hebrew word for "truth" upon his forehead; a visual of those letters can be found
here. If I have to pick a third thing, I'd probably say his size--I've always seen Amitai as big and broad enough to be awkward.
Powers: The only things that are absolutely definite at this time, powers-wise, are:
Superhuman strength: this is partly out of necessity, as he does have to be able to haul his stone self around; however, he doesn't quite know the limitations of his own strength, making him very, very clumsy. This is an "always on" thing.
Invulnerability: due to the composition of Amitai's body, he possesses a certain degree of invulnerability. That is not to say he can't be hurt--while fists and some projectiles may not make a dent, anything that can shatter stone can certainly take a good-sized chunk out of him. It also makes him harder to heal; rocks, clay and cement are more likely to fix any damage he may recieve than casts and medicine. Also, because he's made of stone, he's very, very lacking in speed, dexterity, and agility.
While growth as a reaction to violence does have all manner of potential as a power, it's something I'd be hesitant to use--the last thing I want to do is make Amitai too powerful, but if I can find some non-godmodey way to integrate it, I might. If I did, it would likely come later, once Amitai discovers what he once was.
Personality: Amitai is hardly the imposing figure one might expect a large stone creature to be. On the contrary, he's very much like a puppy--too curious for his own good, socially inept, and as dumb as a jar of mayonnaise. He tends not to get things one is supposed to learn, such as reading and writing--which he has some trouble with even as a teenager--but seems to do slightly better with things of a more instinctual nature. Amitai hasn't been around many people in his short life, but the reactions of those he has met has left him with a kind of quiet, wary optimism when it comes to meeting new people--he accepts that not everyone will accept him with open arms, but he's willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, because he hasn't had much experience with people, he's also more prone to doing socially awkward things--for example, he's got no concept of tact, subtlety, or shame, and he's naive enough to believe everything people say simply because he doesn't know any better. One might find that they can convince him into anything if their argument is good (or even mediocre) enough, and he will happily follow most any direction someone gives him if for no other reason than it's giving him a purpose, however temporary, and there is nothing he wants more than to have some reason to be. In truth, he's happiest when he's given direction, because he's terribly indecisive.
Amitai is really laid back and has a very peaceful nature; there is little he dislikes more than violence, or seeing others hurt. He tends to be physically clumsy and has accidentally injured others in the process of defending himself in the past, so he's taken to running from conflict rather than confronting it. Defending others is a bit of a different situation--he will happily stand between some innocent person (or some person he percieves as innocent, regardless of whether they really are or not) getting beaten up and their attacker, but he will do so only until the victim is out of harm's way, at which point he'll turn and run too, and he will not fight back. He is of the belief that violence is wrong and that it's better to be seen as a coward than tried as a murderer, even if that IS just Zaya's rhetoric. Other things that bother Amitai to no end are confined spaces, easily breakable things, and complex technology--he's hardly a Luddite, he just seems to be incapable of operating anything more advanced than a toaster.
Amitai takes a great interest in everything around him, but he's got a particular interest in architecture and construction. He doesn't quite understand why, but buildings that can touch the very clouds are awe-inspiring to him. Amitai also likes building things--mostly crude but efficient things such as furniture, even if it is mostly confined to repairing things he's broken in fits of clumsiness.
How does the characters personality, appearance and powers and your character relate back to your chosen mythos? The original incarnation of the Golem was a simple clay construct given life and a single purpose: to protect the Jews of Prague. It fulfilled this goal as a one-"man" army, single-handedly defeating those that sought to harm the Jews with its sheer size and the brute strength that accompanied it. Once the Jews were guaranteed safety, it was destroyed. It had lived its short life with a purpose, but without free will.
Amitai's powers and appearance both mimic what he was in his past life. The only major difference there is that while the Hebrew letters his original counterpart wore were easily erasable, thus enabling it to be easily destroyed, the ones Amitai bears are carved into his forehead. That's not to say that these, too, can't be altered or erased; it would just be hard to do so and even harder to repair, which could make for some interesting plot points.
Amitai's personality is a bit more at odds with the past. While the original Golem had a purpose in life but no free will, Amitai has free will and no purpose. In spite of his ability to think for himself, he still needs some sort of direction in life--he's got the free will, he's just looking for the purpose. Also, while the original Golem was created to protect--and it did so, countering violence with more violence--Amitai abhors violence and is much more likely to run (as much as he is able) from an attack than he is to retaliate or, in most cases, stick around to defend himself. This is a choice his original incarnation never got the opportunity to make.
There are other minor things that relate from Amitai's current incarnation to his past one, such as the interest in architecture and dislike of confined spaces that both come from having his original remnants locked in the attic of a temple until that temple's destruction and the fulfillment he finds in creating things just as he, too, was created. However, he doesn't (or doesn't yet) have any kind of explanation for his interest or dislike for any of these.
Amitai's rebirth also fits in with his legend--Rabbi Loew claimed that "if the Jews of Prague were ever threatened again, the Golem would return." Sure enough, the Jews of Prague were threatened, and the Golem returned.
World: Prague still exists in the 21st century, but it is very different than the way we see it today. Technology has evolved almost faster than mankind can control it, and mankind has spread almost faster than technology can keep up. Major metropolitan cities have spread into giant tracts of land filled to bursting with people and the hypertechnology that is now a part of everyday life, from televisions that wander the streets so that mankind will never be without information to cellular phones taken in pill form so people don't even have to physically dial numbers anymore. Machines have completely replaced the need for human laborers in fields such as construction and assembly. Techno-organic implants--robotic eyes to improve eyesight, cranial chips designed to act as mentally-accessible encyclopedias, even cosmetic enhancements--were once available only to the very wealthy, but have since become so commonplace that almost 70% of Prague's population has some sort of enhancement. In spite of all of these radical advancements, Amitai is very much a hermit, too intimidated by all of these giant, sweeping changes to step outside his front door. More, he is afraid of drawing too much undue attention, worried about being seen as an oddity in a world of oddities.
Society: In spite of machines making certain jobs obsolete, unemployment is still fairly low--the workers who were laid-off were immediately given the option to learn how the machines replacing them worked; people were still needed to repair and maintain them, after all. Crime, too, is significantly lower since certain high-end enhancements were made available for reasonable prices. Entertainment has evolved as well: televisions and movie theatres are things of the past, replaced by holographic 3-dimensional imaging screens and immediate pay-per-view. This has also brought about changes in language: while the primary language in Prague is still Czech, many of the most popular shows holovised come from America and western Europe and are in English. As a result, most citizens have at least a basic grasp on the language, and many are fluent in it. Theatre is all but dead, performed only recreationally, much like Civil War re-enactments.
The general populace is happy, but there are those who are not content. There are groups worldwide dedicated to destroying enhancements in an effort to return to a simpler way of life, just as there are groups advocating enhancement-supremacy. The latter group, first dubbed "Teslans" by the Americans, have a much stronger voice in Prague. Attacks against humans without enhancements and the establishments they frequent are rare, but steadily increasing.
Government: The Czech Republic still operates under a multi-party parliamentary representative democratic republic, where the Prime Minister is the head of government. There are two houses within Parliament: the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. While those with enhancements are allowed seats in each house, there are very few of them, and the Prime Minister, still an elected official, remains human. There are those both within and outside of the government that say "techno-discrimination" is why all of the Prime Ministers since the introduction of enhancements have been human. In truth, it's primarily because the Prime Minister is usually elected from one of the houses of Parliament, and most of those members are enhancement-free.
Religion: While most people in the city of Prague once practiced some sort of religion, recent times have seen a sharp decline in the number of faithful. People have found new deities in their technology and subsequently lost faith in any real gods, but there are still small communities of people who practice some sort of religion, though they are few and far between. Christianity is still practiced, and there are a few churches still operating. Judaism is also hanging on, though there are no synagogues left standing.
History: The 16th century saw Prague as a city at war with itself, its people divided by religion and rumors of acts of unspeakable violence. On one side were the Christians, who had accused the Jews of Prague of terrible crimes and wanted nothing more than their collective demise; on the other side were those Jews, unable to fight back and counting the days until the angry mobs invaded the ghettos they had been confined to. Rabbi Judah Loew, a leader within the Jewish community, would not stand idly by and watch his people fall victim to these false accusations. Instead, he and his pupils constructed a clay golem, giving it life through the Hebrew word "truth" upon its forehead and a single task: protect the Jews of Prague. Time passed, as time will, and the Jews of Prague began to feel safe within their walled ghetto. The few attackers that had dared to scale the walls had been captured by the ever-growing Golem and turned over to the proper authorities. This did not last long, however. The aggression that had been building within the Christians finally came to a head one night, and they attacked the ghetto only to be faced with the Golem, who had grown enormous in the face of their wrath. It annihilated the mob, killing all those who dared to face him, only stopping its brutal assault once the survivors retreated. It's duty done, it turned and ambled towards the temple.
The next day, Rabbi Loew met with the emperor of Prague, who wanted to know if the Rabbi would next turn the Golem against the rest of the city. Loew claimed he would not, saying that the Golem was created as a peacekeeper and would exist only as long as the Jews of Prague were in danger. The emperor, fearing for his city, immediately guaranteed the Jews' safety, and Rabbi Loew left the emperor with the promise that if the Jews of Prague were ever threatened again, the Golem would return. That said, Loew returned to the ghetto, found the Golem, and reluctantly erased the first letter of the word upon its brow, turning "truth" into "death." The Golem fell to pieces, and the townspeople stored what they could of it in their temple's attic. The pieces were covered with old
siddurs--prayer books--and the door to the attic was sealed, forever shutting in the remains of the Jews' savior.
That was how it was supposed to go, anyway.
Over 400 years later, Prague still stands; Rabbi Loew's temple does not. War, disaster, and progress have caused the site to be torn down and rebuilt upon several times. In the time between then and now, it has been a variety of things--a home, an office building, a library, a grocery--and it is only by fate's indeciperable design that it is once more a temple, a place of worship for those few who still choose to call themselves Jewish. It is not an old building, but it appears as ancient as Loew's temple. It is in dire need of repair, but the only funding it recieves comes from its few patrons; in this day and age, religion is largely obsolete, houses of worship replaced by temples of technology. This is the only synagogue left standing in the city of Prague, but it will not stand for much longer. This is where the Golem's story resumes.
---
Zaya Ruzicka was one of the few who regularly came to temple, but it was more out of a sense of tradition than it was to worship. Who was there left to pray to? People had deserted the old ways of culture and tradition for the new ways of technology and entertainment years ago. Zaya herself was bordering on faithlessness, but still she came to temple every week. She usually touched the shoulder of the crumbling and vandalized Golem statue that stood watch outside the temple, but this week was different--standing before the statue was a cloaked figure, looking up at its lifeless face. Zaya watched her a moment, suspicious, before the figure seemed to feel the weight of her gaze. The figure--a young woman, Zaya could see--offered her a nod and a tentative smile before walking away. Zaya watched the girl, eyes narrowed, until she disappeared from view around a corner.
Paranoia kicking in, Zaya glanced at the statue, making sure nothing was out of place. Seeing nothing more out of place than spray paint--a gift from the neighborhood hooligans--she patted the Golem's statue before entering the temple and taking her seat. The regular crowd was there, spread few and far between, and she nodded at them as she pondered the incident. Who was the girl? Maybe a new sheep for the Rabbi's thinning flock? Perhaps there was hope yet for the younger generation...or perhaps not. She promptly forgot about the young woman as Rabbi Beran cleared his throat, something he always did before he started the week's services.
"I come to you tonight bearing grave news: as you might be aware, the Teslans have grown more violent in recent months, more vocal in their beliefs that we mere humans should lay down all that we are, all that we believe in, to become one of them, some soulless, half-human robot. I recieved a letter, a warning--"
Rabbi Beran never got a chance to deliver that warning, but when the front of the temple exploded inward, Zaya had a good idea of just what the warning was. People were thrown from their seats, and the last thing Zaya saw before unconsciousness claimed her was Rabbi Beran hitting the wall and crumbling downward, just as the rest of the dilapidated temple followed suit.
Zaya awoke to the sounds of muffled wailing and the distant activities of what had to be a rescue crew. She lay there, still stunned, for several moments before groggily assessing the damage. The temple was destroyed and she was buried under part of it, beams and shingles that may have killed her if she wasn't partially shielded by an overturned bench. The wailing grew louder.
She was sore in every muscle of her body, but nothing felt broken. She wiggled her toes; they seemed fine, if a little numb. She flexed her fingers, closing them around what she thought was rubble. The cries, not so muffled anymore, reached a crescendo, and then the rubble moved.
"I hear something over here!" Zaya heard, and then there were rushed footsteps and fresh air as hands moved the rubble off of her. "Ma'am?" she heard a voice ask. "Are you in pain? What happened here?" Zaya didn't answer, choosing to watch the rescue team clear the area in search of more victims instead. As the debris was shifted, she was able to clearly see the source of all the crying. Unfortunately, so were her rescuers.
"Jesus Christ!" someone blurted, and Zaya felt a brief moment of hysteric giddiness at the fact that someone, at least, hadn't lost their religion. "What IS that?"
Lying in the rubble next to Zaya, beneath her hand, was a baby that appeared to be covered in stone and spatters of a red liquid--blood, perhaps? But whose? Zaya didn't think she was bleeding. It began to vanish right before the group's very eyes, as if the stone was but a sponge absorbing it. It was crying up a storm and its eyes were squeezed shut, but no tears seemed to be seeping from beneath its closed eyelids. Zaya and the rescue team gawked at what they had unearthed, and as the last of the blood disappeared, Zaya said, "It is mine," and she knew it to be true.
The rescue workers spoke quietly over their heads for a few moments, but Zaya tuned them out, focussing on the infant she had just claimed as her own. "Ma'am," one man said, kneeling to touch her shoulder, "we will take you home. The world...it is ready for technology, and it is ready for terrorists, but it is not ready for this." Zaya quietly agreed as they carefully lifted her onto a mechanically-levitating gurney, pausing for a moment to settle the baby in her arms and wrap them both in a blanket before directing them to a waiting ambulance. The infant quieted as his "mother" held him for the first time. The vehicle drove away from the scene, but not to the hospital.
"What will you call it?" One of the men asked her.
She studied the baby's face for a moment, fingers brushing its face as if to move a lock of hair, brushing dirt away instead. It was then that she noticed the symbols carved into its forehead, and she traced them carefully. They were Hebrew characters, and though the language was considered a dead one, it was still spoken at temple every week. "Him," she clarified. "His name is "truth," and so it shall be; I will name him Amitai."
---
Running errands was much harder now that Amitai was a toddler. He was much harder to hide, for one thing, and he was proving to be clumsy.
"Oof. Amitai, you are too heavy to carry. You can walk--I KNOW you can walk, I taught you--so why don't you carry yourself for awhile, hm?"
Amitai's pout was short-lived as he toddled down the street, the incident almost immediately forgotten in favor of his joy at being outside, even if he was hidden in cloth from head to toe. "Mama, look," he said, pointing at a cat, "dog."
"No, Ami," Zaya replied, "that's a cat."
"Oh," Amitai said.
The pair walked in silence for awhile, until Amitai once more said, "Look, Mama. Dog." This time it was a bird perched upon the rim of a public garbage can.
"No, Ami," Zaya replied, "that's a bird."
Finally the pair came home, only to find that some jerk ("Probably one of those damned teenage robots, I hope they fall in a puddle and electrocute themselves," Zaya thought) had left what appeared to be an air-conditioning unit on their front stoop.
"Mama, Mama look," Amitai started.
"It's not a dog, Amitai," Zaya snapped, putting down her bag of groceries in order to closer inspect this new problem. How was she supposed to move it? She pulled at an exposed coil, irritated--but not surprised--when the unit didn't move an inch.
Amitai shifted his weight restlessly from foot to foot as he tried to figure out what his mother was doing. He finally got it as she kicked the unit, then cursed a blue streak. Amitai dropped his bag--the one that held a carton of eggs, no less--and ambled over to help her. Frowning at the unit, he too found a coil to pull at. This time, however, the weighty device moved. Amitai grunted in exertion as he pulled the unit far enough away from the door for them to get around it. Zaya boggled at her son as he beamed up at her, then pointed down the street at a stray dog. "Look, Mama, dog," he said, then stepped around the unit, opened the door, and went inside, leaving his dumbfounded mother staring after him.
---
Amitai was usually oblivious to his surroundings, so he wasn't aware that a group of enhanced teenagers had been following him for several blocks. These kids had more obvious enhancements than most--one boy had a mechanical tail, and another had prongs perpetually holding open his robotic eye. Teslans were known to do this sometimes, stalk and harass those who looked like they might be easy targets. Amitai, big for a child and wearing a hooded sweatshirt and scarf in the dead of summer, stood out like a sore thumb. The Teslans hurled insults at Amitai for nearly a mile, which Amitai mostly ignored; they kept saying "flesh-bag," so of course they couldn't be talking about him. He only stopped walking once they stopped throwing things at him, and then it was just to pick up a stone that had sailed over his head. Amitai waited for the jeering Teslans to catch up, not noticing that they had surrounded him as he held out the stone in a large, glove-covered hand. He politely said, "You dropped this," his gravelly voice muffled further by his scarf.
He frowned as the teenagers started snickering, a few of them mocking his voice in falsetto. The boy in front of him swiped the stone from his hand and immediately threw it at his hooded forehead, frowning as it bounced off harmlessly. "You can't be human," the boy said, "so what kind of enhancements do you have?"
It was Amitai's turn to frown; he had been warned against talking to people. They wouldn't understand, Zaya had told him, they would think him a freak amongst freaks, and people would come and take him away because they didn't know what he was, and then he'd become a science experiment! "I don't," he said, taking a step back. "I have to go, Mama said not to talk to strangers."
"Mama said not to talk to strangers," the boy with the tail mimicked, shoving at him and seeming quite surprised when he stumbled backwards, lost his footing, and fell right on his a** while Amitai didn't budge. The other boys stared in confusion for a moment.
"You
can't be human," the first boy insisted, plucking at the ends of Amitai's scarf. "Show us!"
"W-what? No, don't!" Amitai said as the other boys joined in, trying to distract him long enough to steal his scarf. They were annoying, and he wasn't supposed to be talking to them, and why weren't they leaving him alone? Frustration grew within Amitai until finally he bellowed, "Stop!" and let go of his scarf long enough to shove the first boy back. Amitai never did remember to be careful, and his hand hit the boy's chest with a sharp
crack! The boy flew several paces before hitting the ground back first, Amitai's scarf clutched in his hand.
The other boys immediately stumbled back, ignoring their injured friend for a moment in favor of staring at Amitai's now-exposed face. "You're
not human," the boy with the eye implant slowly said, "but you're not one of us, either. You...you're some kind of
monster or something!"
Amitai stepped back, head shaking and eyes wide, before turning and running as fast as he could--which wasn't very--home. He broke the doorknob, an irritatingly common occurrence, in his haste to get inside, and began searching frantically for Zaya. He couldn't find her, so he hid in the kitchen, curling up in the space between the table and the wall, just in case those boys came looking for him.
Zaya found him there when she got home hours later. "What's wrong, Ami?" she asked, unused to seeing her normally jovial son distraught.
"Mama," he said, looking up at her gravely, "I shouldn't talk to strangers."
Guardian: Zaya Ruzicka is one of the few Jews left in Prague, and she is that pretty much only in name. At 46 years of age, she has seen the rise of the technological age she now exists in, and she doesn't like it one bit. She is firmly stuck in her ways, and no amount of tempting devices to make life easier will entice her out of them. The silver streaks in her black hair might remind some of a badger; her small but somehow intimidating stature and stern, no-nonsense attitude might convince some she is one. Being an R.N. at a human-only clinic in a time where humans are being persecuted against has made her somewhat paranoid. Zaya walks through life constantly on guard, showing the softer--though this in reality, it's simply slightly less harsh--side of her personality only to patients and children.
As is stereotypical of Jewish mothers, Zaya coddles Amitai more than is healthy for either of them. Zaya is all too happy to tell Amitai how to live his life, and since Zaya is really the only constant influence in his life, he's all too happy to follow her sole direction. Because of this, Amitai has become something of a Mama's Boy, taking Zaya's word as law and all that is right. While some may see it as Zaya abusing the power she has over Amitai, Zaya sees it as means to keep her son out of trouble.
Writing samples: One dark and stormy night a figure wrapped in a dark cloack approaches you. It is Airi, who has traveled from Gaia to find your Fa'e and take it back with her to Fa'e HQ. What are your Fae's reaction to this and do they want to go with her? Also, what does the Guardian think about it, as he/she will now have to abandon their world to come with the Fa'e child? Feel free to NPC Airi or just describe interactions after Airi has left you two alone.Zaya quietly shut the door after the departing visitor, slowly locking it, deliberately stalling to give herself time to think of something, anything, to assuage her son's upset. With a heavy sigh, she turned to track her son down, knowing exactly where he would be--"change" didn't seem to be a word in Amitai's vocabulary. Sure enough, he was where he always was when he wanted to hide from the world: wedged tightly, awkwardly, in the corner of the kitchen between the battered old table and the wall. She didn't go to him immediately, instead preparing a cup of tea that she knew she wouldn't drink, that she made just for the comfort of the familiar act. Zaya cursed the self-heating cups that had replaced most teakettles as she ran out of ways to waste time. Already-steaming mug in hand, she pulled out her chair and settled herself at the table. Amitai, knees drawn up and head buried against them, said nothing. It disturbed Zaya more than she cared to admit to see Amitai, always so carefree and oblivious to the world around him, understand so much.
"What do you think?" she finally asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence.
"I don't know what to think," Amitai replied. "I don't understand it, any of it."
"You said you understood, and after you made that poor little girl explain it so many times in so many different ways, I should hope that you do. What don't you understand?"
Amitai seemed to chew on that for a moment. "Does this mean I am Fa'e and not Amitai?" The conversation with that girl--Airi, he reminded himself--had been awkward at best. Like most of Prague's citizens, Amitai spoke a small amount of English. Zaya spoke considerably more and was able to act as a crude translator, but the sizable influx of information had been too much for his limited mental resources to handle and he had resorted to smiling and nodding after awhile. All that had really made it through were "beings like you" and "Gaia" and "you won't be alone there." That last one had stuck with him most. Though he had been all too happy to recieve a visitor, he almost wished he had not. Amitai was not accustomed to having his world turned upside-down.
"Of
course not. You are Amitai, and you will always be Amitai. You have always been...special, different; unique. Now there is just a word for it."
"Did you know?" Amitai blurted out. "Did you know I was this "Fa'e" thing?"
Time stretched uncomfortably as Zaya thought how to answer that. "No, I didn't," she finally said, "but I should have. I...this guardian of Airi's, the woman she mentioned. I saw her the night you were born." Zaya held herself stiffly as she prepared for the inevitable request for the story of his creation and was almost disappointed when it didn't come.
"There is nothing for me here," he said instead. "I do not go out because I am different. I do not meet people because I am different. I...would not be different there."
"Have you decided, then?" Zaya would have been surprised if he had made such a monumental decision so quickly when he normally floundered over the smallest of choices.
"No. Just saying...I would not be different there. You would, maybe."
"I would, maybe."
"Do you want to go?"
"Ami, this isn't my decision to make."
"You have lived here forever, and you have never lived anywhere else. Would you be--"
"Amitai, listen to me!" Zaya cut him off harshly. "This is not about me, this is about
you! You aren't a child anymore; in fact, you're closer to an adult. It is about time you started making decisions of your own."
Amitai pressed himself closer to the wall, cringing in the face of his mother's tirade. He didn't want to make decisions--he didn't like to. It was so much easier when other people told him what to do, because then he wouldn't be stuck weighing the options until the opportunity passed him by. But...she had, hadn't she? Hadn't she just said that this decision was his to make? Thoughts whirled within his stone skull at a turtle's pace, which was at least twice as fast as normal.
Should I? Shouldn't I? Hey, that girl had WINGS on her head! Is that normal there? What if..."Do you think we will like it there?" he finally asked.
Zaya visibly relaxed, lips curling into a slight smile. "Do you think we will?" she countered.
"I think..." he started, trailing off for a moment before he, too, began to grin. "I think we might, yes."
Zaya beamed at Amitai, leaning forward to press a kiss above the letters upon his brow. "Good. I will go pack."
Amitai watched her go, staying in his hidey-hole for a few moments before rising to his feet. That dopey smile was back, returned as easily as if it had never been gone in the first place. He looked around the kitchen as if committing it to memory, nodding to himself before picking up Zaya's untouched mug with the intention of putting it in the sink. It only made it about halfway--the fragile circuit-laced ceramic broke within the grasp of his clumsy fingers. Amitai stared at the mess on the floor for a moment before sighing and shaking his head. "I hope this new world is sturdier," he murmured, going to get the broom.
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