It was hard to see all of our family disappear. It didn’t matter much if we chose to stay on the island or move back to mainland, everyone knew that it would be a long time, if ever, until we would see everyone together again. It would be hard on everyone; our home as we had made it would never be quite as complete. The ships that were to take the islander to mainland were standing out like large pillars of freedom that before all of this happened everyone would have been overjoyed to see waiting. Now they hung like small clouds of doom on what seemed like the horizon to us, waiting to break our family apart.
We were offered a chance at freedom, to live a normal life again, but at what seemed to be a horrible cost. The labs had developed a sort of human serum, that would reverse Moreau’s changes and return us to pretty much the way we were before, save for a few mental scars and perhaps a few more wrinkles but many on the island had decided it was too dangerous an option to take, it had a very high mortality rate and after all this so many of us didn’t want to risk it. Cosmetic surgery was also an option, though that was a fairly longer and more painful option and it wouldn’t have worked for everyone. Certain islanders, like most of the crawlers and aquatics would never be able to undergo such a thing, they had all changed too much for cosmetics to help.
None of the children would be able to change to being human either way… though I always figured they wouldn’t want to be anyway. Why would they give up the gifts and talents given to them by their parents to settle for being just plain human? Their world would have changed perhaps more drastically than our own when we first arrived on the island. It was for this reason why the majority of families decided to stay on the island, the notable exceptions being Angelina and Ambrose, who were leaving their little one behind, and my family.
It may have been a little selfish on our part, but if anyone on the island were able to live normally on the outside it would have been us. On the island I still felt alienated by those around me, friends who I had once held so close I knew had not taken kindly to my pseudo-relationship with Sabin, and especially not to Bill and I.
A long time ago I had accepted my fate on the Island of Doctor Moreau and I even went so far as to embrace it. I would probably have myself believe that I was one of the first, if not the very first, to not only completely accept the reality of the island but take such joy in it. I honestly could not remember a time that I was happier on mainland; the island had been a great uplift on my life. Although I had been imprisoned and enslaved to the sick experiments that Moreau was having us all go through I was truly liberated and freed. No one had ever understood that, or at least I didn’t think they did, so I withdrew feeling like I was an outcast. I eventually stopped trying to spread the joy of the silver lining of the island to people after the tirade in the cafeteria. In all honesty it was probably just fear from the newer islanders present and frustration of the Order not quite working out that made so many jump against me that day, and I had perhaps deserved some of it for my arrogant preaching, but something just clicked deep down and from then on I simply faded into the background of the island. I didn’t belong with the others because I held such sympathy for those being held prisoner in their own way in the labs. I was neither ‘us’ nor ‘them’ and so I could not find real happiness anymore.
That was until I met Bill, Bill Markerson. He had been the sunshine to reach through the dark cave I had crawled into, he was the one to take me out of my depression. He was a guard that had been on the island since day one, he sometimes stood at the gates and other times he had monitor duty or had to watch an islander contained within the labs. He had a truly keen eye and sympathetic ear when it came to the islanders, just not many really cared to talk to the guards. After the whole issue with Sabin I was left quite alone, a lot of the guards would sneer at me when I passed or when I tried to order something from the labs, I had been Dr. Duvert’s plaything to their eyes, and now he was gone and I was alienated from the rest of the islanders. I was a source of great amusement for them and they took every opportunity they could to harass me. As I was passing by the laboratory gates one day a guard had called out to me, he was giving me the usual cat calls and lude comments I had grown to expect when suddenly there was a crack and then silence. I turned around to look finally at what had happened when I saw Bill standing glaring down at the other guard, who currently had a bloody nose and a dumbstruck look on his face.
“Don’t you ever let me catch you talk to Ms. Zyn that way again!” I was shocked to hear those forceful words come from such human lips. “She’s been through enough and it’s high time you all stop treating her like a piece of whorish trash, because she isn’t.”
I could only stare for a time as the dark haired burly guard held such a fury in his eyes as he looked at his partner with the bloody nose. That was where it began, our relationship, an act of kindness to one who was so desperately in need of a friend. From there on in Bill and I would keep in frequent contact mostly through the intercom but on his time off duty Bill would sneak down to my duplex as much as he could.
It had been wonderful, magical and soon we found ourselves deep in love. After while I started being happier, and wanted to visit old friends and interact with more people. Many were confused, but pleased, in the turn around of my behaviour, a few old friends that I had left behind in my seclusion had expressed how they missed the old Awen, that I had that fire and light in my eyes again.
Things were quite happy for a time, but that was only until Bill and I decided to make our relationship known. It was not going to end up like that I had with Sabin and I wanted to make sure of it. Bill advised against it, just because he wasn’t sure how any of the islanders would act towards me. The labs already knew, obviously, and he wasn’t concerned with them anyway. But of course I refused, I was just bursting with happiness and I had to share the joy I had found.
The other islanders reacted just as Bill had predicted, with fear and hostility. A few seemed to be bitter simply because I had a relationship with one of the labs, others tried to guise this with a mask of concern for my well being, but in the end I was once more not accepted. An outcast, the odd ball, no one truly accepted us together, not even after Omar was born.
But that was a long time ago, and now none of it would really matter. We’d be able to go back to mainland, and we could finally start to lead a normal life. It was just a matter of society accepting us. Bill, of course, was still human and quite out of a job now that the Doctor had finally died, and Omar, of all the children was the most human. The parts that weren’t it would be fairly easy to hide. His webbed hands and feet could even be passed off as natural, if a bit abnormal; you hear of these sorts of mutations happening all the time. It wouldn’t take much for Omar to pass himself off as human; he was so close already to being it anyway. I, on the other hand, was going to take a little bit more work.
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