Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Four (section)

===A Beautiful View===


Venus sat down on one of the iron chairs on the observation deck, staring out into space.

An arc of comets soared by the planet on distant tails.  The whorls of the Eye spun ominously in the vast distance, like tainted blood circling a drain.  Fenris’ moon was a brilliant white disc in the sky, pouring empty light on the snowfields below.  Above, the polarizers blotted out the sun’s deadly radiation, leaving it a blue-white spot in the dark of space.  Undimmed by the sun’s fury, the stars burned, beaming their multicolored light into the Fang.

Venus was entranced.

A faint noise from behind caught her ear.  The footsteps and breaths…Jake.

“Hey, Venus,” he said softly.  They were alone.  “What’re you doing up here, all by yourself?”

“Just thinking.”  She glanced back at him.  He blinked as he realized that she was wearing her mirrored sunglasses, but not the usual pair.  These were just two-way mirrors, they didn’t block light from outside.  Was she not wearing contacts?

“Well…I won’t interrupt, if you want to be alone,” Jake said.  He turned to leave.

“You don’t…have to,” she said faintly.  He looked back.  She had extended a hand, and was sitting still, smiling faintly.  “Come.  Sit with me a while.”

He smiled back, settling into the massive iron chair alongside her.  “What are you watching out there?”

Venus looked back out the window.  “Everything.”

“It’s pretty big,” Jake chuckled.  “Wonder why the Salamanders didn’t have a gallery like this on Prometheus Station when we were there.”

“They’re pragmatists.  This isn’t very safe to build.”  Venus sat still, staring out into the void.  “…They should have done it anyway.”

“It’s gorgeous, all right.”  Jake looked out into the darkness.  Space was supposed to be dark, wasn’t it?  He had stood on the top of the Palace once, at midnight, and stared upwards.  The sky had been a dull, blank grey.  Here, the light from below, above, and all around was so bright.  Between the points, dots, and swirls, though, there was nothing.  Empty blackness.  So much of it…all the way out to infinity.  The ugly purple bruise of the Eye blotted out one corner of his sight, but the rest was a mosaic of glorious color.

“Mind if I stay here a while?” Venus asked.

“Of course not, we’re just watching holos and looking at the puppy pictures downstairs.”  Jake slid his arm across the back of Venus’ seat, expecting her to settle back against it.

She stayed still.  He glanced at her.  Her eyes were fixed on the spectacle.  He looked back, trying to see what had enraptured her so.  Nothing was changing.  When he glanced at her once more, he noticed her lips were moving.  Very little, but they were moving.

“I can’t hear you.”

She blinked behind her frames.  “Uh…was I talking?”

Jake nodded.  “You were.  Or your mouth was moving, anyway.”

“Sorry.”  She pulled her glasses down the bridge of her nose, folding them in her hands.  “…Can I ask you something personal?  Please don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

Jake sat up.  “Sure.”

She turned her glowing eyes on him.  “Jake…I’ve never asked you this.  Why did your father refuse to enter the Mechanicus?”

Jake cocked his head in surprise at her totally unexpected question.  “Well...shit, I think…I think he just found their obsession with augmentation to be maniacal.”

“What do you think about that?  The idea of spirituality?” she asked.  “Machine or flesh.”

He thought in silence as she watched him, inscrutable.  “I think…it’s…it’s old.  It’s part of our lives because it’s always been there.  But I hold trust in the Truth.”  He tilted his head.  “I don’t…I don’t see any harm in wanting to be a part of something larger than yourself.  I just don’t like proselytizers.”

Venus’ shoulders slumped a bit.  She nodded again, sliding her glasses on as she did.  “Okay.”  She turned back to look at the stars.  “Thanks.”

“Why do you ask?” Jake inquired.

She shook her head.  “No reason.”

“You do nothing for ‘no reason.’”  Jake gently traced his fingers along the back of her hand.  She flinched a bit.  “Venus…I was okay with you asking me.  Are you not okay with me asking why?”

She sighed.  “That’s fair.”  She turned to regard him through the mirrors.  “I’m…I’m an atheist, like you, Jake.  But…there’s an aspect of the Salamanders…really, the entire Nocturnean world…that’s deeply spiritual.  Not in the sense of gods and thinking forces of nature, or any rot like that, but the idea that the lives we live are meaningful.  To each other, to ourselves, and to Nocturne as a world.”

He didn’t say a word.  He just listened.  “Jake…I’m not springing a religion on you.  I’m not religious.  But meditation and contemplation of the universe is a part of life for Nocturneans who live long enough to do them.  Salamanders spend…well, days sometimes, just sitting in the saunas in the Sanctuary Castles and meditating.”  She crossed her hands in her lap.  “That’s what I was doing.  I’m not looking for God out there, I know he doesn’t exist.  I’m just thinking about…well, everything.”

Jake glanced out the window too.  “Oh.”

“The Promethean Creed says that life is a circle.  Birth, death, accomplishment or failure, learning.  All in a circle, that ends in the lava that fuels our world, under the watching eyes of the beasts that ruled our world long ago.  If that sounds like religion…”  She hesitated.  “It used to be, I guess.  But…for me, it’s more a frame of reference.  You see?”

“No,” Jake admitted.

“It’s…look out there.  There’s a universe out there.  There are worlds, and monsters, and beautiful people, and beautiful monsters.  Life and death and discovery and ignorance, and hatred and love.”  She rose to her feet and slowly walked up to the panes of glass.  “It’s humbling, isn’t it?”

“It does feel that way,” Jake said from the bench.

“Yeah.  It makes you feel small.  Overawed, right?” she pressed.

“Yes.”

“For me…I don’t just see swirling orbs of hydrogen and photon beams and energy cascades and a Warp rift.”  She turned back to him, bathing him in her light.  Her clothes were a dark grey that day; with her unbound black hair and skin, she nearly vanished against the skyline.

Her brilliant eyes burned in the darkness of her silhouette.  Jake stared at the two little red ovals for a moment in silence.  “What do you see?” he asked quietly.

“I see…I see beginnings and endings.  When I look down there…I see people living the Circle of Fire.  They don’t call it that, of course, but it’s there.  Birth.  Struggle.  Accomplishment or ignominy.  Death or apotheosis into Astartes, then death in the far future.  The worlds out there…”

She cupped her hand and lifted it, until from his seat, it looked like she was cradling Fenris’ moon in the palm of her hand.  “They’re the same, Jake.  There may not be drakes and ske-run on those worlds, but they’re the same.  Worlds full of life, worlds all but dead…humans and xenos.”  She lowered her hand.  “I see…I see a beautiful, frightening wheel of life and death, fire and glory, darkness and loss.  Not visible, but it’s there.”

Venus slowly walked up to him, blotting out the darkness until all he could see was a halo of stars around her dark outline, and two little suns burning in her face.  He stared up at her, something momentous building inside him.  He had no idea what it was.

“When I lay in bed at home, I watch my homeworld spin over my head.  Dad and even Mom would tell me stories, of the Nocturnean people, of their beliefs, and the things they had to teach us and others.  We learn, Jake, we learn fast.  We take the most ancient and powerful technologies of the Mechanicus and we turn them against our world, or in harmony with it, and we build homes.”

She slowly knelt, until her eyes were level with his.  The lights in the room were off, all he could see was the light of Fenris’ moon behind her, and the endless, swirling pools of red in her eyes.  “Jake…I think machine spirits are as real as the next girl who builds machines for fun.  That is, I don’t think they’re real.  And who knows.  Maybe all the spirituality in the world is nothing more than our instincts.”

Venus stared into his eyes, as if she was trying to speak to his soul directly.  “Maybe…all the spirituality in the entire universe is nothing more than people anthropomorphizing something to make it easier to understand.  Maybe the Circle of Fire itself is nothing but pretty words to comfort mothers who outlive their children.  But…Jacob…my love, when I look out at those stars…those worlds…those people…I see the Circle turning.  I see the wheel aflame and spinning, driving time and the world forward.”

She sat next to him again, watching his eyes as he sat in silence.  “I’m sure to someone who doesn’t think spirits are real…in the literal definition, anyway…that sounded like hogwash.  But I look out at those worlds, and I feel my heart beat faster.  I feel like I’m…back in the Hall of Deathfire.  I can hear the fires of the world burn beneath my feet.  I whisper thanks to the metal as I shape it, even if I know it’s an inert mass of gold that can’t love me back,” she said, finally cracking a grin.

“I want to think that maybe, just perhaps…the world can be seen through a secular lens and still be spiritual, to some tiny extent.  Maybe we anthropomorphize life, death, and the stars because we want to, not just because we’re driven to by instincts we don’t need any more.  It helps us feel a little less humble…but not un-humbled.  It makes you feel a little less small…but not that big.  It lets you feel awe…without being overwhelmed.”

Jake sat in silence as he looked back at her, meeting her eyes as best he could from inches away.  Finally, she slid the glasses back on, and looked back out to the stars.  “That’s what I see, Jake.  I see a galaxy that…for all my Family’s glory…has been burning and spinning for a very, very long time.  When the human race is ash, it’ll be burning still, turning still.  I’m here…I’m looking out there…because I’m okay with that.”

Jake didn’t answer right away.  The two teens stared out the window into the depths of time and space for a while.

“We’re…insignificant, Venus.  I know what you mean…when you say that we’re trying to put a face on the faceless.”  Jake slid his hand over hers again, and this time she didn’t flinch.  He sat in the quiet a moment longer, letting the reassuring heat of her flesh bleed into his cold skin.  “I feel the same way about you.”

Venus turned to him in silent question.

“When we met…started dating, you scared me a bit.  Not the eyes and skin, at least not primarily, but what you meant.  You were something vast.  Something amazing, and a little frightening.  A fraction of the Emperor’s power.  When I went to that party with you, I was putting a human face on the side of the Emperor’s family most people never see.”

He coughed.  “Now…obviously, I don’t think of your family as spirits, or anything.  But to stand in the same room as the Emperor for the first time…that was humbling.  Then I saw him eating nachos and wishing your cousin a happy birthday.”

Venus chuckled under her breath.  He continued, a smile appearing on his own face.  “If your entire lifestyle tells you that life can be seen as a circle…then so be it.  You’re a brilliant girl, and I’ve known about the Astartes’ spiritual side for a long time.  You have Chaplains when they’re outlawed for the rest of the galaxy, after all.  You’ve never tried to hide it.”

Jake slid his hands around hers.  “So…yeah.  I don’t see a circle of fire out there.  Literal or figurative.”  He paused.  “Okay, the sun, I’ll grant you,” he corrected.  Her shoulders shook in silent mirth.  “But I don’t see what you see.  That’s okay.  Right?  I see an empty space, populated occasionally by orbs of hydrogen and helium and lithium undergoing pressure-derived self-sustaining fusion reactions.”

“I see that.”  She glanced out the window again.  “I would be downright hypocritical to say I don’t.  I just see a little more, too.”

“That’s all right with me.  Circles of fire and Promethean Ways…I don’t know them.  I’m not really wired to see the things we don’t understand as mystical, even in a completely non-theistic way.  I can spend the rest of my life wondering about it without a spiritual filter over it, even do it with you.  But if it comforts you…what right do I have to complain?” he asked.  He pointed out at the stars.  “That’s our Imperium out there, and people live and die out there every day.”

The two of them sat in the depthless quiet of space for a few minutes more.  Venus slowly slid closer to him on the bench.  At last she rested her hands in his lap and lay her head down on the impromptu pillow.  She kicked her sandals off and curled up on the seat, pushing her glasses up her nose until the only light in the room came from the sky outside.

Jake draped one arm over the back of the seat, gently running the other through her silky hair.  They rested together, watching the stars burn.

“Did you mean it when you said you’d spend the rest of your life with me?” Venus asked quietly, nearly an hour later.

Jake smiled down at her.  “I’d…”  He trailed off.  “Yes.”

“…What were you starting to say?”

“Venus…baby, I’d have proposed by now if we weren’t legally too young on Terra,” he admitted quietly.  “I’m looking forward to Kouthry like nothing else I’ve ever felt.”

Venus shifted a bit.  “Oh.”  Jake felt a tiny wet spot appear on his leg below her eyes, but didn’t feel the need to dry it.  One was appearing on his cheek, too.