Ulrik

the engineer

Ulrik didn’t know what right was, let alone what it should feel like. For so long he shoved his emotions down, pretended that they were not there (and sometimes they weren’t). He was numb inside and out, staring through unfeeling, solid bronze eyes at the world which hummed and churned like a machine, but what he saw with that bolt of lightning was chaos. Sure, patterns lived in chaos, but that was so unexpected, unpredictable, and unsettling, even for the engineer who admired such bright, natural shows of force. In a single second, the king of a herd was reduced to nothing, a soulless body smoking, patchy and damaged. All of his items were gone (taken by the Time God when he was looking away), and he had been left speechless.

No one should die that way. Even he recognized that fact, so when his instinct to hide the evidence and burn the body had subsided with the chastising of Essetia’s lovely voice, he had tried – more than he had ever tried before. Ulrik, the creature of few words and isolation felt sorrow. Under the cover of nightfall, he had dragged Midas’ body into the snow, preserving it beneath a layer of ice, and he had worked hard on making a machine that would carry his body across fast growing snow to the bulk of Helovia. Tirelessly, he maintained this rhythm, speaking to no one as he set about his task.

When he was done, he sent the machine in motion, a simple platform with four, mechanical wheels. Ulrik found Midas in the snow, tearing it up with his cloven hooves and heaving the dead weight onto the metal surface with a straining yank from his back and hips, teeth pulling on the large, white tail. As he stared at the body, he wondered what Essetia would think, trying to see the body through her eyes – the eyes of a friend. With care he had never truly expressed before, he placed all of Midas’ appendages in a natural pose – as natural as he could manage, and closed his eyes with his lips.

He couldn’t fix or hide the damage from the shock, and he hoped that he was doing the right thing. So much was uncertain about this journey, the outcome far too unknown for his comfort. Creatures with souls were so taciturn and unpredictable, and he preferred to stay away. But, here he was venturing into the fray with controversial data and a dead body well beloved by most, and he felt his tongue thicken in his throat. Head bowed and mind churning, he set the machine in motion again, walking it through ice and snow that gathered on his black pelt. He barely felt the cold, lost in his head as he was.

The Engineer arrived at the base of the Heavily Fields, knowing that his machine could never make it up the path – not easily anyway. He stood awkwardly by the body he had delivered, a deep frown marring his black, velvety lips. Bronze eyes did not shine today as he stared awkwardly at the ground, not sure that he would be able to speak – even if he had to. Instead, he turned to where he hoped Essetia would be. “You can go,” he said quietly. “You must hate me…” the words were whispered, and he wasn’t sure she would hear at all. Ulrik stood listlessly, so uncharacteristic for the magnetic, vibrant and darkly lit engineer, and he was afraid.

[[Ulrik is delivering Midas' body on a platform machine with 4 wheels
-- @[Essetia] can go free, and I hope she is able to accompany his body ;-;
]]