quick drabble

[shamera]

I met a man once made of metal and straw, a sword in one hand and a rose in another. He was missing a head and yet he could not only see and hear perfectly well, but spoke with a distinctive enunciation.

I stood there in shock the day I met that man of metal and straw, and he spoke to me of dreams and worlds where he had traveled, always looking for something; something he did not recognize himself.

“Sir,” I dared say when I found my voice again, “Perhaps you’re looking for your missing head?”

And he laughed and laughed at my suggestion, the sword quivering and the rose wavering as he gripped them tightly to his chest, the sound of metal clanging as his gleeful chuckle continued. I did not move while he laughed, half because I wanted to hear more of his stories and half because I was afraid he would take it as a insult if I turned away, and drive the sword straight through my heart.

He was a frightening man, this man made of metal and straw, even if his words and tone were kind.

“But I don’t need a head,” He responded as his laughter died down, gesturing to the empty space above his shoulders. “What need have I for a vestige of sight and sound and taste when I can produce and receive those senses perfectly well? Do I not hear you fine enough? Or can I not perhaps see the blue of your shirt and the brown of your hair? Can you not hear my words in return?”

I nodded my head hesitantly at that, and pointed, “But sir, what of your brain?”

He did a little jig for me then, a perfectly harmless dance that drew fear into my heart as his sword swung and slashed through the air as if it were an extension of his arm rather than an accessory.

“I need not my brain,” He told me after, “For it is far too complex a thing. If I had my brain, I wouldn’t be able to speak or hear or see! My, I would not be standing before you at all if I had a brain, because what brain can justify the existence of me?”

And I could only nod once more in agreement to his words, because I had a head and a brain and could not justify his existence.

He handed me his rose and I could not deny it, the soft petals pulling me along after him as he ran on the wind, legs weak and made of straw and staggering under his weight, and yet they persisted as he proved his grace with each step. I, however, was clumsy and slipped often on the air, face flushed as I heard the mocking laughter of the wind below me.

But he stopped for me and he offered me his hand, and I once again accepted as we stepped into worlds beyond color and gravity. I never once looked back on that journey, and I think now it is because I feared what I might see behind me. The world ahead was always beautiful, but the world behind, if I had turned my head, might have been rotten and black.

With his straw he warmed me on the cold of the journey, and with his metal he defended me from creatures I had never once dared to dream up.

“Should you ever miss yourself,” He told me once in his jovial manner, “Just look at your rose, and you will be reminded of me.”

“But how will that help if I miss myself and not you?” I asked boldly.

He did not smile at me because he had no mouth to smile with, yet I could feel his satisfaction at my question with every thump of his metallic heart. It was gentle and it was terrible, and I knew that it made no sense at all because his very existence made no sense.

He answered many questions of mine about the meaning of life and death, about where we came from and where we go, about the past and present and future and all of space and time, and I knew that all of what he said was nothing but the truth. Yet the one question I asked him over and over again which he could not answer was perhaps the simplest of them all.

“What are you looking for?”

The man of metal and straw would grow silent and we would continue on his journey. “I can answer all your questions but that one.”

“Am I asking the wrong questions, then?”

“Are you asking the right ones?”

We ran over the wind and danced through the air until I was old and feeble, and then he would carry me on the strong metal of his back, on the soft straw so that I did not hurt and ache. I would see easily over his shoulders because of his lack of a head, and that terror inspired by the first instance of his presence was slowly driven out of me.

Soon I grew too old to keep up, to even hold on as my flesh withered away while his metal and straw remained fresh.

“I will take you home.” He told me as I gasped for breath on the wind. I could not answer him at that point. “I will take you home so that you may be young again, and live your life as you were meant to. I will tell stories of the child I once met, the strange child of flesh with a head atop shoulders who asked endless questions but never the right one.”

He ran through the wind and advised me to shut my eyes as we travelled, and I did as tightly as possible even though I could still see the black and smell the rot as we went backwards. I could feel myself breathing lightly again and hear the sounds of life beyond his worlds. By the time I once again opened my eyes, I knew that no time had passed since I first met him.

“Why me?” I managed to ask as I tried to cling on, knowing in my head that he would soon leave. I was a thing that withered and died, and he was a thing that did not. Where once he had been unnatural to me, I understood that I was the unnatural one to him.

He spoke to me then, sounding pleased, and I remember not a single word of the answer he gave. But it must have finally been the right question, because this time he handed me his sword, and I accepted with the hand not holding onto his rose.

He left then, as swift and graceful as ever, and I returned to my life as I was meant to live it, never losing sight of that everlasting rose. He was right: it was where I looked whenever I could not find myself.

And now I will wait for that strange man of flesh and metal. Wait for him to come back for his rose and his sword, and wait for him to come back for me. I will join him again as the strange fleshling, and I now understand why I could not stay.

I could not stay because I understood. With his metal that protected me and his straw that warmed me and the rose that offered me a home, I had always understood the purpose of his sword.

One day, if he deemed me worthy again, he will come back and I shall cut off my head, and then we will adventure forever for the one thing that we are missing.