Wanderer

Chapter 3-1

3

Dash was careful to support Sal as they headed back to her room. He could feel her body trembling, feel how she was bordering on collapsing, and he wanted to get her sitting down. She said nothing as they walked. He simply offered encouragement, murmuring near meaningless words to keep her moving.

To his relief he managed to steer her into her room and to her bed. Once there she dropped into a sitting position, body slumped and head down. He sat beside her, placed his arm around her shoulder, and said nothing for a while. She sat unmoving, unchanging, showing no awareness of his presence. Finally he spoke.

“Sal, I wish I could help. I wish I could make things right. I wish I could help you back to how you were before. But even if I can’t, even if you never change from how you are now, I will always love you.”

She surprised him by looking up, smiling as she met his gaze.

“I know you do! I felt it when we were joined, when we had the gift of Unity. I know exactly how you feel. I am incredibly grateful for it.” She reached out, touching the side of his face gently. “Oh Dash, I wish I could let you see what I have seen, let you know what I know. The Universe under Unity would have been an amazing place, an incredible place. It already was in entire galaxies.”

“I believe you. I believe that’s what Unity showed you. I’m just not convinced it told you everything. I remember the feeling of it taking me too well.” He shivered, then shook his head.

“I know. Unity knew. You have to understand how much that hurt Unity. It felt the pain and fear of everyone brought into the wonder, yet it had no choice. It couldn’t stop. Standing aside would have left those people suffering their entire lives instead of for a short few minutes.”

Dash replied non-committally, wanting to keep her talking. He took great care not to show the horror that memories of the Taint invoked in him. Sal provided example after example of amazing tolerance and cooperation between very different species. Dash was even drawn into some of the stories, but before long a single thought always returned — the people in the stories had done those things because they were forced to, they had no will and no choice.

Finally Sal became sleepy. She yawned several times, lay down on the bed and dropped into a deep sleep almost immediately. Dash sat with her for a long time, just gazing down at her face, seeing the woman he’d fallen in love with without having to struggle with the partial-stranger she’d become.

It would have been easier if she’d become a true stranger, one who was arguing the benefits of the Taint without any good reason, but her words had an honesty and power that moved him even as he found it hard to reconcile those ideas with his own memories. Sometimes she even had him wondering if maybe, just maybe, he was misjudging the Taint.

Yet when it all came down to it, the Taint had taken people’s will away. Whether or not they suffered, whether they then felt it was the best thing that had ever happened to them, their freedom was taken, and freedom was a priceless commodity.

He pulled a blanket over Sal then eased himself down on the bed, careful not to wake her. He hoped sleep would come quickly… but he was still lying, staring at nothing, for a long time before it finally caught up with him.