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“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.”
-Psalm 23:4
~~
Clark recognizes humanity. He feels it. He loves it all the same, the comforting warmth of the sun on his skin, the smell of rain long before the first drop ever falls, the sound of his mother’s laughter. That’s why he recognizes, too, when something is inhuman. Not like how he is: inhuman, but human all the same, in the ways that matter.
No, something that is wrong. Something that kept him awake at night at twelve, when he lay with his back to the sky in the hayloft. Incomprehensible whispers that he now tries to drown out with the buzz of Metropolis life. The voice of something unnameable to every database in every universe and planet he’s ever been to.
There is something wrong in Smallville, and Clark is scared of the wind that carries out its will.
~~
“You city-folk are ignorant. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Ignorant about what exactly? What is going on here in Smallville that is so complicated you can’t even begin to explain it to me?” Lois’s voice is imploring as she sits across an old woodworker in a dingy diner off Route 56.
“There’s nothing ‘going on’. Smallville is the same as it always has been.” He casts a dog-tired look down at the mug in his hand, letting out a dry cough into his fist.
“And I don’t doubt that, but if it’s the truth, why are all the residents so reluctant to speak about it?”
“We don’t trust out-of-towners, and that’s that.” A truck passes with a blaring horn and the man turns to look at it, as if chasing the noise. He doesn’t flinch at the fly buzzing on the windowsill. He only smiles at it before giving her his attention again.
Lois can tell that she’s losing him, so she goes in for the kill, certain that she can get him to speak, “Listen, Mr. Ellis, I know about the meteorite, if that’s why you all are tight-lipped–”
“No.” His voice is serious then, grave, and clearer than she’s heard it their entire conversation. His smoke-worn lungs seem to start functioning better out of necessity. The conversations around them waver. A pregnant waitress sends them a look.
Lois can only stare at him with furrowed brows, waiting for the silence to cease as the yellow glow of the booth beats down on them.
He sighs with a rattle, and the clink of silverware resumes. The diner breathes again.
“The Kents have got nothing to do with this, and you ought to leave those nice folks alone.”
She nods, “Please, Mr. Ellis. I want to hear your story.”
Mr. Ellis looks back to the window, where there are four more flies flitting about than before. He doesn’t flinch at that either.
He stares past them into the distant fields and begins telling her the tale of a town that is alive not just by virtue of its people.