Chapter Text
The fear of the Void is understandable, the Outsider finds, but misplaced. The sublime and ethereal, shadow and filtered light, whispers of regrets and hopes, displays of half-formed thoughts and structures buried beneath ocean and sand and the dust of time.
It is a concept that the Outsider knows is difficult for humans to understand, and He recognizes that to fully comprehend what the Void is would not necessarily bring the same contentedness of sated curiosity as it would in any other circumstance.
For the chosen few given the Mark, for the scientists and philosophers and alchemists and witches that toe the line between human and property of the Void...they alone can withstand the despair that drive other men mad.
But what of the common folk, of those who play carelessly with His realm and attempt to curry His favor when He has no need of them, they who hold the mistaken belief that they are in some way unique to the sea of others that were, are, and will be?
He is a murmur in their dreams. Their connection to Him is only made clear in the brief death of sleep, when hallucination and tuned perception are frustratingly ill-defined.
For all the work of the Abbey to scrub Him from existence, to persecute those who recognize His influence and power and summarily pay respect due to him as one would a lord or the blessed earth, a god and demon, a source of knowledge and madness, He will never be severed from them. His actions and inactions influence them, just as theirs inspire Him to reach through the veil to remind them that someone is watching, they are not alone. Whether that is to serve comfort or to terrorize is a matter of opinion.
They exist in His domain as much as He does in theirs. The Void is nothing but a Mind, and yet a Mind that acts independent of its supposed creator. He does not question His existence: He has his own role to play, as much of a piece as they are.
What is lacking in His understanding‒theory as opposed to truth‒is energy. Life. What speaks and moves and quietly goads is a human-like personification of Himself that does not exclaim, that does not cry nor laugh, that does not feel when its fingers brush against living flesh if but for a moment. What is missing, perhaps fittingly, are echoes of there that do not belong here.
At times He has indeed wondered what it would feel like to hold a person flush against His skin as a joint method of expressing love and siring offspring, what it would feel like to be filled in that way, as well. The Leviathans are His avatars, children in a sense, yes, but He does not weep when they are slain. It is the way of things as it had been shortly before and will be shortly thereafter.
Man is a predator, though an unconscientious and short-sighted one at that.
The pains of childbirth, the joy of a loved one returning from the war, the resentment towards a superior, the hardship of poverty and the numbness, despair, and apathy that it inspires. These are all echoed, all understood by the Outsider as legitimate motivations for behavior. He has watched them drive humanity for how many millennia and knows it will always be as such.
For now, as He has, he operates a limbo between idle and dynamism. He passively observes, quietly assesses, formally acknowledges, purposely overlooks, and discreetly praises. He fills the dreams of infants with gentle ocean waves and allows the hums of poorly-carved whalebone to ruin the fragile minds of men.
All the while He waits until it is time to make Himself properly known to another chosen, another piece to be guided and made aware of their value to the world. And (as suggested in some small corner of what it is all Him and just Him) value to Him, especially.