Gloamwight

My dear Padulweis, I weary of the atavism of these outer moons, stars, and planets. For strength, wear a hardy set of horns and antlers over the brain gourd. In the cold, wear animal fur to preserve the thermal properties. To thrive, mimic the native fauna of the alien moon. Or perhaps it is a zoomorphistic fallacy. Explore this. No, Padulweis. You cannot see me but I put down my stencil and paced my chambers and then, my thinking in the same circles as my feet, I take a different path out the door - locked behind me, never fear - past the barracks and mineral exchange and the churning lipid vats. I pause on the footbridge over the slough, and wonder at the rainbow slicks. They do not welcome me any longer at Chirpy's Canteen. Oh, no. How will my frame sustain without bowls of starchy gorsoup? Their water, so close to the slough, should not be trusted anyway. All purifiers in this frontier are clogged with heavy metals and noxious spores. There are other canteens and other gorsoups, less starchy, that I drank from the bowl (local custom) as I think about the zoomorphistic fallacy. But there were no breakthroughs, Padulweis. Only the harsh chords of a young drifter's stringed instrument. It is needful of tuning, as is this whole settlement. So we return to atavism as I return to my chambers. I am here now. I have my stencil, and that is how you can read my thoughts from so far away. We are present together in time, if not in space. I look again at the Gloamwight mask and I see it for what it is: a hybrid creature produced from the salvaged remains. The skull from a real living thing - a gloam. The coarse pelt from another beast that I have not yet taxonomized. (The fibers fall at such a rate that I worry it will be but a sore specimen for our little gallery.) The horns, long and short, the excreta of a crude lathe. All screwed and glued and bound together over a padded metallic frame that sits heavy but comfortable. Not atavism at all. A new mutation, and better than the sweaty troglodytitic mutants at Chirpy's.