April: They call her Cuddles

The picture I have submitted for your consideration this month I imagine is not a particularly popular choice with you, nor with it be with those who flip over the classic, unchallenging curves of March, expecting more of the same and getting this. I figure you can always pass it off as a harlequins day prank or a pictchop or some applesauce like that. I am resolute in submitting it all the same.

The story that proceeds this shot manages to be as strange and wonderful as the creature in it.
You may remember that I had been pursuing a certain albino psyker since October, when, on the advice of one of the more....reality challenged guardsmen in your employ I accidently walked in on her post wash.

Well, in the time after this incident I had been following leads and collecting statements from soldiers and staff learning everything I could about her, including where I could find her. I had to call back on techniques I hadn’t used in years, back when I was a war correspondent but the more I learned the more I became fascinated. A psyker - and one more harshly touched by the Emperors unquestionably beneficial , but occasionally difficult to immediately appreciate gifts, and a voidborn to boot. What I’m getting at is I heard she was freaky as. To some, she was a secret weapon, to others, some sort of confident to a majority of rank and file troops, she was just a rumour.

There was such mysticism surrounding her that when I eventually located the very inauspicious vault door that lead to her chamber, the fact that it opened by itself didn’t surprise me at all.
She was lying on a large hammock in the top corner of a huge, single chambered room, littered with bean bags and data slates, sections of it partitioned off by piles of books or decorative sheets. She had her back to me, which, despite my apprehension, I was able to appreciate.

She ‘spoke’ to me in a way, that I imagine you are already all too familiar with. Echoed and distorted with its tempo all messed up, I won’t try to transliterate this, obviously. I would like to point out though, that in spite of everything, what bothered me the most was that her voice sounded as though she was right next to me.

“You’ve been looking for me.”

I hesitated, never having ‘spoken’ with a telepath before. I was unsure whether to speak outloud or just to think my responses really hard. I couldn’t feel her in my brain or anything, so I opted to go with the former and said that I had indeed.

“You want to take pictures of me.”

No argument there either.

She shifted herself in her hammock, which I didn’t mind at all.

“Why do you suppose that is, speck?”

It was almost as though she was angry, which I thought was kinda weird given that she’d been apparently reproachful about our earlier encounter. All the same, I picked my words carefully.

“Something a bit different, I guess.” I offered. “Some people like that sort of thing.”

“Really.”

“Yeah! I’ve never actually seen a voidborn before if you want to know the truth.”

“I would like to know the truth...”

I flinched as I realised she was now looking right at me, hunched up in her hammock, her knees reaching higher than her head. She rolled her body end over end to the floor, moving as though underwater.

“...and the truth is...”

She closed the distance between us quickly with slow deliberate movements, almost loping on all fours.

“...that you...”

Her face, in all its horror was now right against my own.

“...are LYING TO ME.” There was a tremulous fury in her voice that juxtaposed with her alert, permanent grin that gave me the knock knee jelly wobbles like nothing else.

“I...” was what eventually managed to begin with “i don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stated as plainly as I could with her augmetic eyes focussing and whirring at me. She stood to her full height and paced around me; the sheen of her suit and how little it left to the imagination I’m sure I would have appreciated in most circumstances, but her face, the scrutiny I found myself under and the slow sucked breaths from between her teeth kept me in a fascinatingly rare state of mental piety.

“You lack even the decency to remember” her words rattled through me like a spinal injection. I was about to argue once more that I had no idea what in the name of him on earth she was babbling about, but she suddenly knelt down in front of me, still taller even so, and ran her hand across my pounding chest.

“I could just dig it up, speck. But I might crush your little insect body, you’ve buried it so deep.” I couldn’t tell if she’d taken away my ability to answer back or whether I was just too scared. Either is quite likely.

She tilted her head, somewhat regarding me. “I’ve got an away game today, grub. Just a little fun. It may jog some feelings – some memories in that meat you call a heart.” I sort of nodded. Her large, slightly clawed hand brushed my face and through my hair. “if it does...” she continued “...and you can live with yourself; then you can take your wretched pict.”

I followed her, trance like to the shuttle bay where we boarded and Arvis and set a course for the nearby developing planet of Vorm 13. Perhaps it was in the same way you don’t take your eyes off a spider that’s in your room, but I found myself to some degree captivated with her. Her long hair, stupidly thick for how white it was. The fluid way she walked, the instinctive graceful way she handled piloting a ship. Precise and flowing with no wasted movement.

We arrived on the planet’s surface, and it was as crummy as you would expect from a new settlement , with developing cities and hives on a the horizon but largely blasted desert, slagheaps, frameworks and temporary hab villages where we were. The iconography on the habs was all wrong though. I didn’t recognize it, to the best of my knowledge, but I had an ill feeling.
“Humans that sympathise with the ideals of Tau Empire have been making trouble in this area. Remnants of the forces that were here once, abandoned by their adoptive race and with their strength reduced but determined to slow production of these hives. Been killing construction workers. Not good, speck.” Her voiced ricocheted around my body so much I could feel it my chonies, and I found myself wishing she would stick to talking in short sentences. She visibly exhaled as she descended the ramp and just stood, staring straight forward for a while.

I was about to say something to break the silence when the hab village in front of us rumbled and erupted with xenos loving belligerents. Furious and stampeding, clad in rusted xenos armour, brandishing clubs and jury rigged rifles. There were maybe fifty or so in total with 4 groups of them travelling in armoured all terrain cars. They bellowed some sort of battle cry in their borrowed language and the enormity of my predicament suddenly sunk in.

“All this to deal with and they only sent you?!” I wailed piteously as I dived under the Arvis.
There was a pleasant, ticklish laugh at the base of my neck.
“Only.”

Fifteen years, and I’ve never seen anything quite like what happened next. With one furious backhand, she launched the closest car skyward and back toward the village, scattering its occupants, her free hand sending forth bright blue forked bolts of lightning into the rampaging foot soldiers, barbequing half a dozen at once. Cars and humans alike were ripped from the ground and hurled throughout the village pulverising buildings and weapon emplacements alike, as electricity arced amongst it all.

It was all over so fast I hadn’t even thought to snap a picture. I nerved myself to come out from under the Arvis’ wing, everything had gone quiet. There was maybe three of them left, battered but standing. I couldn’t hear anything myself, but by her gestures and the fearful way the survivors regarded her I think she was offering them advice or some form of parley.

“We’ll never join you deluded fools in worship of your false Emperor!” the surrogate leader spat furiously before turning and running with his associates. “This isn’t over!!” A third voice, guttural and cruel slurred from behind a nearby slag pile. “Ooh, i think it might be.” Still laying on my stomach, I clawed at the ground in abject terror as four what I knew to be Kroot descended upon the survivors and, seeing little use for them as auxiliary troops at this point, set about peeling them as a starving Attillan would a luxury crustacean. Traitors though they were, the sight and the sound of it turned my stomach.

Within the confines of my subconscious, a large, rusted, sealed, locked and chained door was ripped unceremoniously from its framework.

Lulia

I couldn’t move. I wanted to, but couldn’t. That was the thing. I couldn’t.

We had been sent to Golgana Five, in the midst of the Imperiums last big push to take back the planet. Not as soldiers of course. It was my first real job as a war archivist, all apple cheeked and excited and my brand new pictograph optics that would keep my hands free. My pilot, and assistant, of course was Lulia.

Lulia.

Seven foot of alabaster skinned, glorious Lulia. The way her pink eyes winked at me when she would deliberately almost crash into something just to scare me. The fluid, graceful way she did everything. From piloting a ship, to breathing, to walking. Every movement a beautiful underwater dance. Her soft, silvery hair.

Lulia.

I felt the effects long before I felt the pain in my neck. My spine turned to oatmeal and my knees ceased to exist. I fell headlong into a nearby thicket and only then realised that I’d been hit with a paralysis dart. I wanted to move, but I couldn’t.
Lulia was cornered, taunted and then devoured alive by the Kroot that had ambushed us. I don’t know if I they forgot about me because I was mostly hidden or because they were having too much fun with her, but I didn’t miss a thing. My malfunctioning optics looped the whole grisly scene back to me over and over until I was eventually recovered two hours later.

Lulia.

Cool metal. Soft thighs. Engines on autopilot. I was back aboard the arvis. I don’t remember how I got there but i could tell I’d been crying, or whatever my equivalent is. She was cradling my head.
“You were not hiding. Just hidden.”

I think I nodded.

There was an odd scratching, like a whimper behind my eyes.
“I’m...” was all she sent.

I tried to say something but my throat was scratchy and absolutely raw. I had been screaming at some point, I guess. She held me close and her whole body shook. She didn’t seem scary any more. I tried to comfort her, but I couldn’t lift my arms at all.
She brushed my hair aside. “It’s the trauma, darling. It has weakened you badly. Please. Please forgive me.”
I concentrated hard, thinking only of how glad I was to have finally remembered. I was sad to have lost someone I cared so much for, and in such a horrific manner; but to remember that I had ever cared so much about someone – that was a gift. I knowledge that I had ever loved someone – anyone, you see, had been missing from me all this years. It left me incomplete. She brought it back.
Her body shook harder as her hair fell about my face and tickled my skin.

Lulia.


A few days ago, I came out of the medical bay and returned once more to her room. She was waiting for me in a silk bathrobe, which by its size was not made with her in mind. Her smile, for the first time, seemed genuine.
“She always wore white, didn’t she?” she asked, loosening the belt.

I nodded.

*******************

Sometimes, something is terrible and you don;t know its terrible until it's too late. You just need to move foward and except your new life as a "drr drr drr" wriggly man who tries to write deep.

The art, I don't dislike. I think in some pictures of Cuddles I've been glossing over the fact that she actually looks weird as shit physically and is meant to be an aquired taste. Here, I think that shows.