THE EIGHTH COLOR OF THE RAINBOW

by RogueStar

*
Love is the only thing that makes things one without destroying them
~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

*

Somewhere a star is born. A comet dances and flirts with an asteroid belt,
before speeding onwards in a trail of fire and spark.  A species crawls out
of the primordial ooze and turns its gaze to the heavens, the elemental womb
in which its component elements and molecules gestated. A starship cuts its
way through the fabric of space-time, racing light.

He senses these things, as he lets his mind drift among the energy lattices
out of which reality is built, feeling the birth of each new world and the
death of each civilisation.

He becomes the lightning and streaks across the sky in electromagnetic
splendor.
He plays among the waves with a curious pod of dolphins, and dives to the
depths of the Marianas Trench to where the flattened animals stare at him
with bulging eyes.  He becomes the song of a thrush, the color of a flower,
an ultraviolet ray. Finally, he enters the wind beneath a sparrow’s wings
and floats gently into Salem Center. There is a final good-bye he has to
say.

Rogue is sitting alone at a table, sipping a soda and paging listlessly
through a magazine. He tickles her neck, blowing strands of brown hair
across her face, metamorphosing into something more primal than a thought.
An emotion. Happiness. Contentment. She smiles and her eyes search the empty
cafe, then shakes her head as she dismisses the sudden notion of his
presence as a trick of the imagination.

Subtlely, he increases the complexity of his thought-image - a fractal that
constantly expands inwards, becoming more intricate as it does so, unable to
approach completeness. He adds the hiss and rush of steam; the pattern and
interplay of the sixteen moons of Jupiter; the first word of an alien race
struggling towards civilisation; the perfect darkness of the abyss; the
swan-song of the multiverse’s greatest bard whose voice still echoes in the
vacuum of space.

Rogue’s eyes widen, as she sees the universe laid before her, and she knows.

“Joe?”

::No. No longer. The voice of a lark maybe. The light of a sun. The orbit of
Ganymede. The eighth color of the rainbow.::

****************************************************************************
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Disclaimer: All characters are the sole and absolute property of Marvel.
They are not used to make me a profit, nor for any other, evil purpose.
However, comments are welcomed with open arms and minds at
brucepat@iafrica.com. :) On a more personal note, I still can’t believe I
wrote this! I am not a Joseph fan by any means, but thought that I should
give him a fair chance. Hmmm . . . it’ll take a while for me to get over the
discovery that there is something to like there, but I’ll survive somehow.
:) It’ll take an infusion of X-Men #24 to pull me through this one. ;) Also,
how can you tell I’m in exams? Short, short pieces! Em - your title is in
jeopardy! :D