Awaken September's Gods: I

I

They marked themselves to prove they weren't counterfeits.

The pens always showed yellow on their skin, making them giggle with relief and suppressed anxiety. They did this periodically, when the humans were distracted. The Archivist was looking for them, but as long as the pen marks were flavescent, they believed they were hidden.

Lorcan smiled, though it felt odd, at the thin stripe of yellow on his pale skin. The smile felt a little stiff, not quite real. He practiced in front of a mirror three times a day, trying to make it believable. Everything in this version of existence felt odd. Not painful or pleasureless, but odd. In fact, many of the things humans did were quite pleasurable, despite the oddity. Kisses being among his favorites.

Niamh looked at her own yellow stripe and then at Lorcan's attempted smile. It looked more like a grimace to her, though she had very little room to talk as her own 'smile' was barely passable, even as a facsimile. Everything seemed off to her. Their laughter sounded hollow, no matter how many laugh tracks they heard. The 'kisses' Lorcan bestowed upon her were distasteful and strange at best. She submitted to this because he was the elder, but she refused to let him experiment with the act of 'procreation.'

If she were to be honest, Niamh believed that the whole experiment was ludicrous. They were not human. They would never be human. She did not want to be human; they were useless wastes of flesh. They had no comprehension, no knowledge retention. They were pathetic. She followed Lorcan because he was her elder and, though she had only the most basic of basic emotions, she felt kindly toward him. Not quite affection, more of a positive feeling.

Lorcan, on the other hand, had been endowed with a wider range of basic human emotions. He could feel anger, though he didn't understand it. It was glorious discovering the basics of humanity. He yearned for it, without quite knowing what yearning meant. The pleasure sensors embedded in his skin allowed pain as well as the pleasure. He would sometimes hold Niamh simply because she felt right in his arms.

Niamh felt nothing when he held her, when he kissed her. He had attempted to convince her to "make love" as the humans did, but she declined and he hadn't brought it up since. He felt a kindness toward her. A kinship. He wanted her to experiment with him, taste the newness of this world around them. He wanted, but could not find the best way to express it. However, Niamh had no interest in these things. She had no desire, he realized. Desire being the emotion he felt the strongest. It was like a flame inside his manufactured chest, spreading through his limbs until he had to grab the counterfeit pens to make sure he was real in this reality.

The yellow calmed him. He was real.

It came down to that question, he realized. Was he real? Would these humans accept him as one of them? Would he ever be "human?"