Once within the small farmhouse, Alex and Seff hear the sheepish bovines outside excitedly baah-ing in a deep tone. “They love the lightning  from the storm, it helps them recharge.” Seff sips his tea slowly. The scent smells of floral and fruity notes with a hint of sweet spice.   

Seff’s father comes into the room with the same tea and stares out the window. He sits down on one of the comfortable pillows and sips away. “Hmh…” He grunts. “So…” Alex perks his ears and stares at the large, feathered man awaiting further audio. “Where did you come from?” Alex looks down at the table, he too has a cup of tea nearest to him, staring into the mirrored image of his tearing and glitching left eye. Some of the blue liquid falls into the tea and swirls floating downward. This confuses Alex and he looks closer into the tea, staring at the bottom of the cup in awe. The blue liquid stays still and in shape as before, yet separates while in airy temperament. Seff’s father is already at a loss, wondering why he isn’t replying. He notices, again, the rip in his back, oozing blue blood. It seems to rip farther down his spine. There's some things he cannot see.

Seff's father puts his tea down, slowly getting up as Seff watches Alex stare into the abyssal tea water. Quietly and carefully he looks into the rip and sees larger components and blue flesh glowing around it. There's a chorded spine made of polymer cartilage and metallic columns. He’s astonished at how complex this being is... as well as… 'mechanical'. He has never seen such an organism in his fair time of living, nor has he seen a contraption of this quality. “Where -did- you come from exactly…” He sees a broken part of metal that fell to the ground and retrieves it looking at the grooves and smooth outer layer. “Titanium…” He ponders, roaming back to his pillow, sitting in it again.

Seff moves slightly closer to Alex, “So my father’s name, it’s Akhmin. I used to have a mother… but she passed. Her name was Riima." Alex listens to Seff's story in earnest, "She was very gentle... just like a bumbling Flitter… Roaming, retrieving pollin for her colony..." Seff looks down, his eyes deprived of glee. He smiles slightly. Alex starts to feel… bad. Their mouth starts to frown as well. He touches it as he does, confused at this feeling.

Akhmin pockets the titanium and stares back outside. The gusts are at their worst and the bovins are finally calm and asleep. Seff also stares at the storm. “So do you think there will be many quallix this day? It’s been fairly acidic…” Seff is pondering the success rate and amount of meat they can harvest by the end of the planet’s beginning month. Akhmin thinks for a moment, already complacent with the amount of food he’ll be able to harvest, wondering more about what they just happened upon… the 'organism' they just picked up, battered and broken, sentient, and somehow, very 'android-like'.     

Akhmin put their elbow on the table to lean in, looking at Alex. "Did I ever tell you about the Mekan?" Akhmin revises what he once told Seff of The Raphiim Tribe and their close encounters with sentient machines. The robots they came into contact with had a clanky and robust humanoid chassis. They were helpful but more like slaves, labor workers and had directives. They had no will and were literally made to serve. By whom? Some say a large being, a metal entity. The being was made of a brazen brownish metal that was ever-clean, steaming acidic chemicals seethed from their gaps. For their robots, some of them did become lost at some point. They even started gaining will, but in the end, were unable to live amongst other living beings. Even though this metalloid entity took great care in their creations, it wasn't long before those hunks of metal and wire started rusting and returning to the soil as ruin. In the end, they wanted to be put to death compliantly and recycled. The history of these robots was tragic and yet peaceful.     

As they sit, Akhmin inquires about how there are ruins beneath this realm and that he's been there quite a bit when he was but a young man. He almost goes on to prattle about the day he met Riima but before that could happen they hear the sound of a bird. A cawwing noise. Akhmin sips the last of his tea and goes out onto the front porch to find absolutely nothing in sight. The winds are picking up as a black-feathered bird made of bone caws in the acid rains beneath the roof. Akhmin stares up at it but doesn't see it as it flies away into the night's embrace as a shadowy fog. He does, however, see a flash of green lightning as a figure stands steadily beyond the yard staring back at him before disappearing. 

Seff rushes out beside him as Alex follows. Alex can hear the cawwing even as the other two can no longer sense it. He doesn't just hear the bird, he hears everything. He hears the screaming of the owl from his dream as it rips through his mind, offending his nerves. Seff sees him gripping his head and tries to console him but nothing is working. Alex seems to have stopped in place, his eyes completely white. He has gone into a trance. He stands up, steadily walking away from the table. His chest creates a humming noise only he can hear. The light resonates within his ribs as something pulls him toward the storm, toward the nearest and tallest hill. The glowing blue node on his chest is noticed by both Seff and Akhmin and pulses as he wanders off. Seff tries to hold his arm but loses grip. Akhmin tried yelling to get his attention but then restrains him due to lack of success with vocalization. 

Alex, able to push Akhmin away with the force of a bull, blindly walks into the acid rains. Akhmin, with his arms up, has nothing to say as he is handled like a piece of driftwood. He stares at Alex walking away as he slowly focuses in on his own hands. "What-- in... the...", Seff tries running after him, parts of his skin, corroding from the rain. "Don't go into a torrential downpour, Seff!... you ought to know better... let him go." Akhmin scolds Seff as he watches Alex walk to his fate. "Seff..." Seff looks back at his father holding a metal shard. Akhmin proceeds, "Just... let him be..." He starts to walk in the cabin. Seff, unwilling to let go, sits as Alex is in the distance.

Alexander is treading into the eye of the storm, the dark abyssal clouds with torrential downpour of acidic raindrops. Something within his body is creating this bright pulsar, a warm glow emitting from his core, as if luring him toward the sky. As he braces this danger, he’s completely and utterly focused. Lightning strikes fairly close to his position, yet nothing of his emotion comes to the surface other than some jerks of muscle. He stops abruptly, looming in one place. The pulsar is still at the same interval but is now making him look up at the sky slowly, as if he needs to directly go toward the stars. He cannot just fly or jump up there, however, so his body remains. His eyes glance at a cloud in front of him and so he begins staring directly at the lightning bolt about to pierce his forehead as time slows. He’s about to get blasted by tonnes of energy when suddenly, his body feels like it’s resisting impact and moving in limbo. A gravitational field is holding his body and pulling it toward a portal that opens up behind him, emitting from his back. It looks like a polygonal, four-sided star, ether emanating from its opening. It, too, was the same blue color as his emissions. Before he can look completely behind him he blinks away, disappearing from view as the lightning catches the ground, zapping a very small flower. 

Alex starts seeing flashes of images from when he was walking toward the storm. With the feeling of a spark of electricity, he drifts away from its arcing grasp as if in two places at once. The feeling of nausea is almost absent but gives his mind vertigo as he blinks back into existence and drops to the floor inside the living room area of the house. He replaces where he sat before but flying acrossed the table and hitting the wall. His eyes become dim and tired. Faint voices clutter as static input in what seems to sound like Seff and Akhmin coming to his aid. His mind suddenly drifts off and falls into slumber once again.

One last dream occurs. One of absolute fear and madness. A dark orb glistening in a black void. It’s levitating in place right in front of Alex, stationed as if it were an egg. It boisters like a throbbing heart. Black tarry tentacles reach out from it, slowly moving toward Alex. Not being able to move, Alex is wrapped in them, dragged toward the orb without escape.