The Calling (7) : A beautiful melody drift on the air from somewhere far away. The vocals are in a language you don’t quite recognize, but feel somehow familiar to you. Something about the song calls to you, but no matter where you go, the song seems to sound the same distance away. The longer it goes on, the more emotional the song becomes--and the more emotional you become. Something about the song is possessive and consuming, like it’s all you can think of. Something resonates in you as the song crescendos, and the feeling is at its strongest--be they good, bad, anything, but suddenly the song fades, and there’s only an emptiness inside of you. The feeling of loss is strong, and can leave someone feeling emotionally numb. Someone out there was calling to you, and you couldn’t find them.
Ochre wasn't sure when he started hearing it. It was a slow night for draining -- he hadn't gotten more than a few dregs from the people who were already tired at the meteor shower -- and he was considering just giving up on it entirely. He didn't need his quota. He didn't care if he reached the minimum necessary for that week or not. He looked at the orbs in his hand, limned in purple and violently restless, and shrugged at them.
He could do something else with his time, he knew. A while ago, he and Prehnite went to one of those weird hole-in-the-wall bars, and it sorta felt like he had a friend for once. It reminded him of when he and Porsha would go out and run errands, and they'd have lunch, and talk about whatever, no pressures at all. But those days were gone now, Porsha was gone, and he didn't know why.
When Ochre decided he'd given up on energy draining, he simply sat where he was. The sidewalk had a bench that was close enough, probably designated for the bus stop. Some ad on it talked about a dating app, and while Ochre wasn't familiar with it, seeing it hit him a little violently. It had been a couple years, and Slate's already small friend group dwindled to nothing. He didn't want to go home, er se, but he didn't want to face the lonely state of his life.
He sat with a sigh. "Wow, this is kinda lame," he told the streetlamp next to him. "I guess they call it 'all work and no play'." But he couldn't play without friends.
As he sat, legs crossed and torso relaxed flat against the bench, as he spread his arms out on either side of his back, he looked at the stars. Were the White Moon lonely, too? So many of them patrolled alone. He was usually running into knights or senshi on their lonesome, and they'd try to defuse the situation by talking to him, but they seemed scared to engage. Maybe if they had more friends, they could more confidently stand up to their enemies. The Negaverse was, well… Not the greatest, after all.
It used to be, though, back when Xenotime and Umber were around. Umber was always the one trying to do things, awful things, but they were things the Negaverse liked well enough -- things that brought them energy and starseeds and recruits. First it was Sandrine, who was now some lunatic that went by Haüyne, and then there was that subway attack, and those starseed records, and his recruit… Ochre didn't feel much like being Ochre anymore, reflecting on that. He gave a vague look toward both ends of the street, then let his senshi guise melt away. It didn't help much of anything, but he felt a little less pathetic when tears crawled into the corners of his eyes.
He and Xenotime, they had this thing, this song, and Xenotime was the one who started it. Well, Porsha did. Slate didn't know if it was a real song or something she made up. It traveled the household back when Umber was still living with them, cooking for them, and sometimes (okay very rarely), when Slate was up early and his brother was alone in the kitchen, he'd hear Shale hum it. Maybe he'd caught it once or twice, and his brother would stop as soon as he made a noise.
He played it on his violin once. It wasn't a hard song, and Porsha would smile and laugh and clap for him whenever he'd do it. That was a lot of fun, and an easy way to get her to smile after his brother went off on his own. Then his brother disappeared, and Slate would sit on the kitchen counter playing that song, wondering when his brother would come home. If he would come home.
But Shale never came home. Shale would never come home. Now Porsha was gone, too, and he assumed they reached the same conclusion.
Slate felt a little cold, shifted to cross legged, wrapped his arms about his middle. He couldn't remember it all, but he started to hum as much as he recalled.
He knew they weren't going to make it home. Umber was dead, his recruit didn't know what to make of it, it messed up Xenotime pretty bad, and she left not long after. Maybe she was fighting in Europe, somewhere. Maybe someone starseeded her, too. Slate wiped his eyes and kept humming.
