[sub][center][color=00746b]"I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men."[/color][/center][/sub]

[i]"From the age that I could put a name to the vast expanse of water outside our manor, I held great fascination with the sea. If I was not swimming in it, nor frolicking at its shores, I was staring out at it, often in favor over my studies. White sands, palms, coconuts, and crisp, beautiful blue water form the crux of my earliest recollections of youth. The beaches of Georgetown and the warm Caribbean sea were more friend to me than any lily-white English child, more parent than the deadman who sired me, or the madwoman that birthed me. Entrancing and inviting through it was, the ocean carried an emptiness I could not place. In the look of eyes of dead fish upon the shore, or the sound of breaking waves, there was a meaning just outside the grasp of my infant mind. At times I found it much similar to the vacuous ramblings of my witless mother, cloistered in what had been my parents' bedroom."[/i]

Leonard Winfield read over his memoirs, penned in shaky script on salt-stained pages. It was the most he could do to keep from peering out the windows of the automobile, and revising his own writing kept his attention better than the textbooks that he had perused on the train. Even if the motorcar's motion kept him from being able to write any more, reading his scrawled reminiscences sometimes provoked new memories and revelations, which he would scribble into the margins so that they did not slip his mind. The Company doctors had given him the task of writing down all he could remember, in hopes it would help him recover more of himself, the life he once had. It had proved rather effective so far, as each page he penned brought fresh recollections, like flotsam drifting ashore.

He glanced out of his window and regretted it immediately, wishing he had a newspaper to obscure his peripheral vision. Looking out of a moving motorcar made him feel ill. This was not motion sickness, as he had never been as much as seasick in his life. Rather, the speed of the vehicle and its proximity to others operating at similar speed merely frightened him. Everything moved so quickly now. People spoke quickly, expected to be answered quickly, and commanded Leonard to travel quickly. It was all very stressful. The train ride had been pleasantly familiar once he had secured his passage. That had required assistance from one of his colleagues at the Company, but the effort had rewarded him with a delightful little charm called a Link Pass from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. However, the last leg of the journey had to be secured by taxicab, wherein Leonard now found himself. His colleagues had recommended that he "[i]Über[/i]" his way to the rendezvous, but their usage of the German word-fragment confused him, and he was not able to make use of their advice.

The automobile stopped with a lurch, and the driver barked out the total fare. Leonard scrambled to stow his belongings before awkwardly scuttling out of the car with them. He retrieved his money purse and paid the man, though he had barely been able to put his weighty tip into his hand before he rolled up the window and peeled away, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake. Leonard tittered at the poor service, and regretted tipping him at all. It was really a matter of principle rather than money; a twenty-five dollar fair for a twenty-mile trip felt hilariously overpriced, and the hundred-dollar bills in Leonard's purse felt like pretend money rather than real currency.

That matter settled, he donned his hat and strode forward with his doctor's bag in one hand, leaning heavily on his cane with the other. The cane was a prop, essentially, as he had no need of its assistance to walk, but on land his gait was half a lumber and half a stagger, and so it disguised him as a cripple rather that a creature not truly meant to walk the earth. It still didn't truly register with him; the fact that he wasn't human. He had to remind himself of that fact quite often. Between the visions and the changing, he had always known there was something unusual about himself, but he had assumed it to be some affliction or inherited condition. He had assumed that he was still a man, deep down, and had a man's soul. But that dream had ended, and now only the creature remained.

They looked like men as well, Leonard thought at he approached the two persons stood in front of the wooded cottage. More so than himself, admittedly. This was another thing that frightened him: these people, these monsters he rubbed shoulders with. It did not feel long ago that he was the only outcast in a world of men, but the curtain had parted and he liked little of what he found behind it. He knew what these two were from merely feeling them, though he recognized them from both employee dossiers, and by sheer reputation. Demons. Hellspawn. Devils in the flesh. Leonard had counted himself as a Christian man when he still was a man-- rather, still thought himself a man. These days he was not so sure. While he was not a Catholic, he wondered sometimes if their rituals and idolatry would give him comfort in his daily trials, grappling with how twisted his world had become in such short years.

Regardless, these were his superiors in the Company, and he had to maintain an amiable relationship. Priority in deference went to the senior employee, Mr. Mac Cléirich. His guardians had often gossiped that Irishmen were devils, heathens, and fornicators, but he had never thought that the accusations were so literal. Leonard offered the man a gloved hand to be shaken, his squamous flesh hidden under leather and wool. It did nothing to disguise his atrocious disfigurement, nor the unquenchable smell that surrounded him, but it spared the man from having to wipe his hands of Leonard's constant discharge of disturbing, ranine mucous.

"Mister Mac Cléirich, I am Doctor Leonard Winfield." Leonard's voice was deep and throaty, with a slight rasp, and his plosive consonants emphasized by his lack of a nasal cavity. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance. I have heard a great deal about you from our mutual employers. I am still an apprentice to the firm, as it were, and I hope to learn much from working under you." Mac Cléirich's presence was a dark and tarnished thing, like pitted iron. At once both hircine and serpentine. Leonard felt in him the winds of a storm, but it was aimless and diffuse, buffeting and howling but never truly coalescing.

Leonard turned to the other party present and offered his hand to him as well. "Mister Grimsley, I presume. Charmed." This was a far more unpleasant presence. It reminded Leonard of the lifelessness and putrescence of the seabed, a desolation of silt and bones in the freezing dark. One of the few memories he retained of those long years spent beneath the waves. While he knew it was no fault of the other man's Leonard still begrudged the creature before him for making him relive them in some small way.