CM 15

Chimerical Machinations 15- A New Life

"And I want a moment to be real,
Wanna touch things I don't feel
Wanna hold on, and feel I belong."
-Johnny Rzeznik

I felt tempted to just stop writing here, end the story as is. Perhaps talk about how my life held the same constant boredom except that now I was more aware of it. Even worse off would be to lie and say that I was captured only to skip ahead in the story to when I finally met back up with Bethelon again. But I realized I would be skipping ahead important facts and information crucial to understanding what happened.
I was a bit ashamed ditching Bethelon like that. True, I could have told him something, made a plan, whatever. But when I walked out and (essentially) changed allegiances with the Axioms, I was doing it for myself. Ever since I came to Mirr people had been doing things for me, directing me. It was like I was just along for the ride with no real sense of personal purpose. When it all clicked in that one moment I knew I had to do things for myself. True, it sounds selfish enough; to be egotistical to forgo others, but- it just felt right, ya know? Like it felt just. Almost as if Bethelon deserved it.



I should continue- no, I need to continue.



...Funny, how even though he removed it, it's still hard to...

Oh, right.
Reference point.
Makes things simpler. Thanks.

After leaving the inn and walking a-ways with the Equine I told him the real story. Well, a condensed version of it; I was a Newborn and wanted to know what Axioms really were. He looked at me with a bit of disbelief and wondered why I knew those terms. I told him I was stuck with an Orion for some time but I still wanted to hear an Axiom's side to the view of the world.

After two days I saw, and after three, I followed.

Their world view was of preservation, and while appearing to be a group of scared and shunning old men (especially the council...jeez...) was actually just deeply devoted, like-minded individuals who wanted to keep the world as it was; stable, no major conflicts, and no main affiliations. Their task forces were far more organized than anything I'd ever seen. It felt like being a part of something comprised of a mix between a social worker's office, a shipyard, and the FBI. Their goals were as noble as the Orions, but the Axions had more of a forward way of thinking, in my opinion.
I can't recall most of those first few weeks as they flew by without too much incident to me. A few assignments to prove loyalty, one small building project, and a think something about singing around a campfire later I ended up in front of The Council. They shifted in their seats, uneasy about what I going to choose to help full-time with. I knew their fear of Newborns was solid, if not a bit edgy. I decided to go on a small project of my own at their expense.

"Historian," I told them.

Soon I was wearing a set of light-blue robes that touched the floor (I never really get used to wearing them, and I changed out of them as often as I could in public and elsewhere) trying to organize what had to be the world's messiest library. I mean, it was messy. As if the last time they had tried to organize they got bored after a half-hour and started throwing things around just . This didn't bother me; as hard as it was to make sense of all the stacks of papers, books and other such things, it actually helped me.

I was looking for lineage.

I spent weeks, months trying to get a basic grasp of how genetics worked in world of animal-humans. It sucked. Honestly. Trying to get birth records and family trees from nearly every possible town was a very daunting task (and gave me quite a few stares and raised eyebrows). Often I would have to correlate what was in the Axioms' library with the family of town a certain piece of information came from. Double checking came in handy, as I wasn't able to finally comprehend how mixed species had kids.

In a word, confusing.

In eight words, more chaotic than the state of the Library.

I kept trying to make a formula that pretty much nailed it down. It's too hard for me to explain, so let me break it down in simple terms. If the mom was a cat as well as the father, chances were high it was going to be a cat. If, say, a horse and a cat had a kid, it could be a horse or  a cat. Say a cat from a horse-cat family had a kid with another cat who was also from a horse-cat family. Even though the parents were cats, they still had "horse" in them, and the chance of a horse kid would be raised. Occasionally this would work back to grandparents; one family had two dogs for parents with the mother's father being (what appeared to me to be) a cardinal bird. Imagine their surprise when their second kid came out with a beak. Of course, species in only the main part to deal with. Color also makes its way into this confusing equation. Their first boy was a dog with dark red fur.  And of course, your "freaks of nature" get in there too. One family had one first-generation lizard. Six generations, a lizard kid is born.

Now you see what I mean? Confusing...

The reason why I was going through this headache-inducing task was because I was looking for my family...and possibly that of NoS, who seemed to have more behind him that the basic "guy-on-a-rampage" feeling.
So I borrowed one chalkboard and devoted it to finding my past. I placed my name near the bottom and started to work my way up. I looked through all those family and town records, trying to find any missing relatives, smudged pages, scribbled out faces, any hole which could explain my existence. There were a lot of dead ends. A lot. Made me wish I had coffee when I reached a dead-end at ten-fifteen in the morning...or at least strong aspirin.
I kept hearing myself murmuring out loud, having discussions in my head, as if explaining them to an imaginary person would help me sort them out. Then I would answer my questions, and sometimes I would see things from a different angle. Other times, it did nothing. Least it didn't hurt to try. One night at about three in the morning I slumped my head down on my desk ready to fall asleep.
"Just sleep. Forget it. Tomorrow." I was too tired to make comprehensive sentences.

Oh, come on, you've almost got it, don't wimp out now , my brain seemed to say.

With my head starting to throb from lack of sleep I snatch a piece of chalk, ran to my chalkboard and made several slashed without care.

"THERE! FINISHED! I DON'T CARE! FINISHED!" I immediately curled up on a large pile of papers and slept.

I picked myself up much later that day, the sun almost showing noon. I gingerly held my head and looked at the mess I had made of all my hard work. One slash had cut off a piece of a family tree that felt like it was somewhat close to what I was, two almost made a skinny "X" near the top left, and four others looked like a hastily scribbled "II". I started to erase my destruction when I looked more closely. The two that made the "X" weren't a letter, but actually pointed to two different papers I had stuck on the edges of the chalkboard that had different forms of my confusing formula. The "II" was actually the roman numeral for "2". Connecting the quick curves from last night to the carefully laid out branching family tree made everything fall into place; Equine father, Fellxian mother, Fellxian and Aves and Droggith and Laz. Maybe it was my sore head, but everything seemed to fall into place perfectly! By changing one variable here, adding a few percentage points there, and it all worked, no holes, no gaps whatsoever!

"Yeah, that's gotta be it..." a new question occurred to me, and I laughed out loud.

Where in the world was I going to find someone like them?

My answer came to me about, oh, three weeks later in the form of being kidnapped.