kin of shadows

Shadows - faceless shapes, drifting by like in an ocean of fog. Touch-starved, emotionally neglected. Cold.

The word family has never brought up positive emotions in Caspian. As soon as his horns poked out of his forehead, he was left to his own devices. He remembers clearly, blood trickling down his face and in shock, running to his mother, confused about the things that now jutted out of his small skull.

He remembers her pulling away. Whispering things to others he could not make sense of. Leaving him only with questions. Forbidding others from helping him.

Her face is nothing but a memory, nonexistent - so many faces from his childhood are.

What became Caspian's so-called family in his adulthood was not forged by him. He separated himself from the world, isolated himself into the broken spaceship he made his home.

Only after being horribly assaulted, wasting away on the metal floor for thirty days and thirty nights, shattered as ever, the ship came to life. Its Artificial Intelligence Interface helped the eternal back to his feet, and nursed him back to the books of the living from the edge, where his very mind turned into shambles. A voice echoed through the endless halls, kept him company, pestered him, and made him feel so much less alone.

And he named her Steve.