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Meruel laid his hand flat against the smooth metal of the mural.

He gazed up at it, curiously regarding his own likeness. Accurately depicted more than a hundred years prior to his maturation and awakening within the spacecraft that had served as his cradle.

It was the source of the encoded psionic transmission he had followed to this desolate crater of a solitary moon, cut off from the planet that had once held it in orbit. He"d pursued it mistakenly believing that it might bring him to a source of sustenance. The nanite mass that comprised his body moved more sluggishly than before. He was weak from lack of nourishment, not yet having been successful in finding a suitable host. Part of him was disappointed that this lead had proven false in that regard. But only a very small part. This discovery was more than worth the detour and the resulting hunger.

His creators, his lost people, had shaped the metal beneath his fingertips. Their transmission was an echo repeating throughout time. For all he knew, there could be others out there to find... or this could be the only one of its kind in the universe. They had cared enough about him to leave him a message. They had cared enough about him to sacrifice themselves to conceal the location of his birth. He might never know their faces, their voices, nor the touch of those who shaped him. But through their actions he could almost perceive something of how they must have felt about him.

A weapon. He had long been aware that he had been created as such- the sharpened reflexes, defensive capabilities and tactical processors that he possessed were all evidence of that fact. The message encoded within the mural further proved it. There were some disturbing questions raised by that revelation, of what had driven his people to such desperation in the first place. And yet...

He reminded himself that they hadn"t been content to simply leave him that way, even though it would have been perfectly easy to do so. He hadn"t been programmed as the last remnant of a bygone war, charged with seeking out his people"s destroyers and exacting single-minded vengeance for the fallen. Partway through his development, they"d stopped engineering him solely as a weapon and turned him into something more. Everything they"d had left they"d given him. Their knowledge, their technology, even their own likeness. No longer seeing him as mere a creation, they"d truly made him their child. The final child their civilization ever produced.

Palm resting against the metal mural, Meruel curled it into a fist, squeezing tightly. Yearning more than anything in that moment for... contact. For a survivor, for someone else to hold, for another presence to ease the overwhelming ache of longing and regret that was his alone to shoulder. His makers had shown him such tenderness, and yet in his isolation, there was nobody for him to reciprocate that feeling to.

Tearing himself away from the wall with reluctance, the eel looked up at the carving one final time. Quelling the feeling of loneliness that once again threatened to overwhelm him.

"Farewell... and, thank you, for my life."

There was nobody to hear him. Yet disregarding logic, the words themselves felt as though he"d needed to voice them.

*****

We are each the sum of all that came before us.

Madness_demon captured the style I was looking for with this piece magnificently! I absolutely adore a good mural.