I dragged him from the light. Thrashing all around, trying to kick my legs out from under me, struggling to break my hold. To make me let him go. But it was no use. My hands gripped tight on his forearms. Surprisingly tight for their size. Barely making it half way around the cords of muscle there. But still he was in my grasp and I pulled him away from that light and into my dark place.
I pulled and pulled, and the light grew fainter and fainter until that tiny speck on the horizon disappeared altogether. When that happened I knew we were by ourselves in my place. He fought at first, but after realizing that escape was improbable his body gave up.
We were alone in the dark so I let him go. I hoped to see some spark of that fire that had cursed and twisted away from me so violently at the start. But he just curled his legs up to his chest and turned away from me. I listened to him breath for a long time, his breaths broken up by the shaking in his body. He was so cold without the light. And then I spoke.
I mean you no harm
He did not try to answer me but I heard in the pit of his mind what he would have said were he not so afraid.
Take me home
What is home?
The shaking stopped momentarily and he turned to feel me leaning over his body trying to understand this strange word home. It had a pleasant feel to the tongue, but no memory ever brought back to me had prepared me with its knowledge. The man feeling me crouched there flipped back onto his side and resumed shaking.
WHAT IS HOME?
I insisted. How could there be something I did not know? Something I had never even heard or guessed of. Not some snippet of a thought either, but a fully rounded idea.
WHAT IS HOME?
I tried and tried. But something had broken deep inside him. His kind was not made to spend much time in the dark. That was left to a harder people. Much harder than these soft-shelled kittens. I caught two or three random thoughtlings. Hearth, which made me think of a warm fire thought I had brought to me four centuries past. Friends, I understood the word, but not the feeling behind them, a feeling of safety. And Family, a word as new as home.
What is family?
