Eden was a cult. Eden had the last known tree in existence, and quickly it became a figurehead for us folks on Eden, and, just as quickly, it became the center of the cult's beliefs.

See, after the Quiet Rapture, folks quickly lost hope. We had limited ways to get food, water, other supplies. The cult grew up and around that lost hope, the belief that we were doomed. I was young, I dont remember much the leap of logic that folks had, but the teaching of the cult became that our bodies, when we die, would feed the Tree, become the soil. It was a noble cause, to those who had lost hope.

Public suicides began. That turned into scheduled executions of larger groups who had lost hope, and would give themselves up to the tree. My mom was one of them..

When I lost her, I lost a lot of myself too. I became impressionable. But something made me hold on--I was always the one who had held onto hope. I wanted to live in a world where everyone didn't seem to want to. That made me the perfect target..

Us kids were usually spared the "teachings" of the adult; we were the hope. But other kids like me who lost parents to the cult often followed their parents' logic, but the Salvationers wouldn't take kids. A group of kids in my foster group make up their minds; they wanted Salvation too. My mom had given me my dad's knife before she left us. I dunno if that's the only reason the kids approached me or I just exuded some sort of "this kid is Different" but. They concocted a plan to march up on the gallows after the adults were... done? And have me kill them.

..I dont know why I went along with it. Impressionable kid, I wanted to live, if I did it I would show I wasnt afraid... fuck I dont remember. It was definitely a mistake though.

And so, the.. next time Salvation came around, we watched the adults. Then we marched up onto the gallows. The kids had a big speech about why kids should be able to feed the tree too, and I did my job; I slit their throats. To this day I'm surprised the adults just let me. I'm not sure why I'm surprised, looking back at how deep the adults were in on their own supply, but..

After the shock? horror? apathy? wore off, one of the Salvationers whisked me off the gallows to meet with the Father, the head of the cult.

He asked me what happened. I told him. He said some bullshit about Eden needed people like me to help the lost, offered to take me under his wing. I didnt have much else going for me, and I was still sort of reeling that I wasnt in trouble? So I fell in with the Sons of Eden. I can only best describe us as a paramilitia group, the Defenders of Eden, Sons of the Father. It gave me a better upbringing than I could've had if I hadnt done what I did. And, when I got older, I was asked to be a Salvationer too. Turns out a spectacle like that doesnt go unnoticed or unforgotten, and ....folks would request me. The Butcher...

I've always had blood on my hands, it's poetic that the COI sent me to die in an ocean of human blood.

Filament Station... Both my fault, and not my fault... I was part of it, and yet I was trying to stop it... The reason I was in prison.

The other space stations and ships that weren't Eden had banded together into the Coalition of Iron after the Quiet Rapture. The COI, as I've mentioned them previously. ..Eden and the COI didnt see eye-to-eye. We'd always been uneasily at truce with one another when we weren't actively nipping at each others' heels. They'd pick through the remains of our ships, we'd infiltrate their stations for supplies.. I don't know the politics why we didnt get along, other than they, rightfully, didn't agree with the cult, and Eden thought the COI were too optimistic. Maybe I'm just too pragmatic but I never could understand why we couldn't just trade..

Filament Station... Part of what we Sons of Eden did was plan the raids on other stations. My Brothers planned an attack that was more than our usual hit 'n run. I, the star runt of the group, objected and demanded we run it safely, no casualties, no injuries. It was just the last in a long string of me trying to reign in my Brothers, who were getting more and more violent as the years passed. I'd gotten used to their sneers and telling me I was getting soft, but they agreed. Tongue in cheek and fingers crossed behind their backs, I came to learn.

We were to set off explosives, minor ones, in locations that would cause a commotion but no real damage. We arrived at the station in 2 ships. We docked at maintenance docks, rather than the usual incoming traffic docks, unlike what I had argued for. Red Flag. It was early in the station's sleep cycle, allowing for less security and maximum confusion.

We infiltrated, using comms to coordinate dropping the payloads. As I was the coordinator, I stayed nearest our ship, listening to comm chatter.

I got confirmation of the drop off, then of my Brothers getting clear or to their posts. One set came much later than the other. Red Flag.

I pushed the charge setter, which was my job. Then one of my fellow disillusioned Brothers rounded the maintenance shaft, shouting. That's when I learned of my other Brothers' betrayal: they had placed their charges not in the preplanned spots, but the station's mainframe ductwork, then fled back to the other ship to check in.

They left. My Brothers. Our Brothers. At their posts, on the station. And let me blow the whole place.

60-some dead, including my own Brothers.. The COI stopped me fleeing. I surrendered.

I've since come to realize that the plan was to get rid of us who were the weak links in the Brotherood, we who were disillusioned with the cult. Its probably better that the COI picked me up because I would have killed those Brothers.

I am.. gently colorblind. I've known that about myself for ever, and it only rarely has caused me issues. Being here, I learned it has a name: deuteranomalia; I can't see the color red, the color range of purples is severely limited and much more blue, and most greens look more yellow. I can tell this now, because the new body I reside in is not colorblind. One can only imagine the moment I first realized that there I could see these other colors.

Within headspace, I retain my colorblindness. It's frustrating, actually, as now that I'm aware of what is possible, it's hidden from me for a good section of my existence. I'm glad that I get to see these extra colors when viewing meatspace and when fronting, but it's in stark contrast when I know that Duranos is a beautiful lavender color, but all I can see him is as periwinkle. I can conceive of the colors, now that I have experience with them, but it's a far cry from being able to see them.

Those familiar with my source may be a bit horrified. Yes, I can confirm that I see blood as the color orange. When the blood was filling the Iron Lung, it was hardly a different color from the rustbucket itself--yes, that's just as horrifying as you think it is.

And in an ironic twist of fate, orange has been my favorite color for a long time. But once I saw red, real Red, it quickly became my new favorite color. I do still really like orange, don't get me wrong, but seeing Red for the first time was like I had finally found a missing piece of me. Thus, my new favorite color is one I can't see*. ....*normally.

I'm also very aware of the irony, I assure you.

When I arrived here, I was at my absolute lowest rock bottom. ..I mean, it's not very hard to say that "death" is the absolute rock bottom for anyone, but also mentally, physically, emotionally. And it wasnt all just the extremely traumatic experience I'd just had.

I grew up in a cult, I became disillusioned by the cult, I was betrayed by the cult, then I was imprisoned by the cult's enemies as a scapegoat. There was very little about me that was "human" by the time they welded me into that tin can; driven by the instinct to live, I was little more than a caged animal, as that's all I'd really ever been treated as.

Coming here was a massive culture shock, not simply because of how very different this world is to the one I'd always known, but because the people here immediately treated me with kindness. Despite all but one face in that first meeting being that of nonhumans, I was shown such gentleness and understanding... that honestly, it scared me. I'd never recieved such warmth, and it's unfamiliarity was akin to violence in my panicked state. But, I came to learn to that they were people, just like me--even the ones that didn't look human at all. ..And honestly, I was just as animal in my sense of self, as they were in appearance.

I had to slowly be introduced to the idea of personal agency, something I was wholly unfamiliar with the concept of, that I see now is a basic personal right. I was gifted a room of my own, with no surveilance, that I was allowed to retreat to whenever I felt like it, though I was gently encouraged to spend time with the rest of the system and not just hole myself up. As everything else, my sense of self-worth was at rock bottom, and I definitely didn't want to be seen by others. But, their warmth kept me around.

The inadvertant first step came from just being around them. I didn't get to grow up with animals; we didn't have the food to feed livestock and ourselves. I knew of animals as a concept, but hadn't seen one since I was small. I quickly became fascinated by the more animal-bodied of my sysmates and their lack of personal space wanting to be close to others and have their bodies touched. I learned the term "touch starved" later on, and I had a bad case of it--I kind of still do, even though I get plenty of touches and cuddles whenever I want. Probably making up for all the lost time. I was gently encouraged to reach out and pet my sysmates that came by, and it was suggested to Ozzie, little lapdog Ozzie, to spend her lap time with me. Honestly, I don't think I'd have recovered as quickly as I did if she hadn't. She can talk, but she's not as talkative as others in the system, and being able to just have her weight on me, like a weighted blanket, and not need to engage in conversation with her, helped immensely. Plus, she is so small that I never felt threatened by her presence. She would seek me out to make sure I was okay, and... just getting to have that personal connection was a major bandaid for my psyche.

Once I came out of my shell some, started to pull together some semblance of being a person, I was encouraged to pick out things I liked... We didn't have the resources to be picky, in my time, so choosing something purely based on aesthetics alone has been a painful affair, for me and everyone else encouraging me. Even knowing that in our headspace we can simply will things into existence is hard for me to comprehend, and even to this day doesn't make any of these decisions any easier. It started simply, with clothing, which at the beginning was an enormous hurdle. Choice paralysis was the least of my worries, because I didn't even know how to want. Liking things was made into a primitive experience--picking which of two similar things I thought was better. It's really embarassing to think back on it now. What actually helped, as much as I'm loathe to admit it, is having a celebrity for a doppelganger; you see, getting to see clothing on ...someone who looks like me, takes a lot of the guesswork out of whether I think I will like something. A couple of my earliest outfits were lifted straight from his wardrobe, because if I thought he looked good in something, I knew I would, too.

Once I got the hang of that, it was suggested to me to redecorate the room I was gifted. When it was crafted, I was part of the creation process, but in my caged-animal mindset, the box that came out of my early brain was little more than a prison cell--something I was all too familiar with. I knew it wasn't helping my psyche, but I had nothing more to go on. We looked at different rooms in catalogues--a concept I'm still baffled by--for inspiration. Eventually, I came up with my current room's layout; a beautiful, sunny, airy bedroom with plants along the walls and a small seating area for folks to hang out with me, in my space.

However, the most important challenge of them all has been learning bodily autonomy. After years of being treated as a tool, and dehumanized so thoroughly, my only real understanding of myself has been to be Used. I had some early practice of autonomy with Ozzie, as well as needing to have my wounds treated after my physical trauma and being able to voice my pain threshold and have it heeded, but as it became clearer that I was the subject of several of my sysmates' ..physical desires, I needed a safe crash course in how to Deal with that. You see, I was a virgin before coming here. I grew up in a cult, in the apocalypse, and in hindsight it makes sense that the leadership would refuse to teach the kids about sex. Just another way I was dehumanized, and my sysmates made it very clear that without that learning opportunity, I'd missed a huge part of learning to be a person. Some folks may disagree, but in my case, yeah, it was a huge missing piece of me. Healthily navigating sexual interactions and discussions, exploring my personal preferences, having my desires heeded--all very crucial parts of learning not only how to conduct myself, but interact with others, even outside of a sexual encounter.

For as much as I've bloomed and become my own person, I still have a long way to go--I can feel it. But it remains so funny to me that it's been a group of nonhumans to teach me how to be human again. I could say "person", but let's be real, those nonhumans have all been raised with humans. They know better than anyone how to be human--if only to better fit in. I don't think I'd have it any other way, given a different chance.

I come from a time in which there's so few humans left, no animals left, that it's inconceivable that there would be other life in the universe. The concept of aliens were just on our periphery before the Quiet Rapture, so suffice it to say, I never considered the possiblity of ever encountering something other than human. Which, made coming here really scary. My first memories of being here were of being held down quite forcefully by a blue-skinned human-like person with eight extraneous ...arms? coming off their back, a purple-skinned person with a single ...mass coming out of their forehead trying desperately to tend to my massively bleeding arm stump, a.. person-shaped black-skinned creature with a long face trying to comfort me, and an actual, recognizable human, explaining in plain english where I was and what the fuck just happened. ...Beyond that, I don't actually remember much beyond the fear and pain.

But I did come to learn, through that perfectly normal human, that I was safe, even if it didn't feel like it, even if the others around us didn't look safe. They were people, just like them and I, and I began the slow game of learning what animals were, let alone what animals my new fellowship was.

I felt like I had a pretty good read on humans, before. But having no experience around animals, I was extremely lost, as they all seemed to have an innate language they all shared between them. I've since been told that, yeah. Animals have body language that they can more or less get the gist of just by being animals. Now, our headspace has what I learned is called "empathic telepathy". We can think at each other and be "heard". This is totally separate from their innate read of body language, and often is relayed in concepts instead of words. For the most part, I've been able to Get that bit. It's intuitive, as concepts typically rely on shared emotions or "pictures", but it's still been a bit of a learning curve--since, they're using Animal emotions, Animal "pictures". I've gotten... better, over time, as I begin to learn each animals' body language, but it's been a helluva road bump.

I'm told often that systemmembers who have alterhuman or nonhuman headmates, over time, acquire nonhuman identities just by osmosis. My one fellow human in the system has been here ..five? six? years, and has held onto their humanity with a deathgrip, and has wholly resisted this phenomena. They assure me that it's not for certain that I'll pick up nonhuman habits, and so far, I still feel wholly human. Which makes it interesting when I front.

The new body I reside in has "supernumerary phantom limbs", limbs that the human body doesn't naturally have--in our case, a tail and long, elven ears. Chief's assured me that they also feel and interact with these when they front, and it's nothing to worry about. Something about how the body's brain has created neural paths in particular for these features, and can be felt and/or manipulated by anyone who fronts. I'm told I'm quite expressive in headspace, posture and facially, and I've noticed that is similar as well for when I front. Including trying to utilize the long, elven ears to emote with. In a particularly nonhuman way. I'm assured that this is perfectly normal, that an emotion is instinctive, and that instinct is going to express itself in the ways the neurons are set to fire. Similarly, the phantom tail will do it's own thing, which is also in response to my emotions--it's still a weird fucking feeling though.

Especially when that tail follows me into headspace. I've been told that I've been spotted with a ghostly phantom tail in headspace, emoting with it. I don't feel a fuckin' thing, unlike while fronting. I do have phantom limb syndrome for my left arm when I'm not wearing my prosthesis, with a similar ghostly fascimile of my whole arm, so it's been theorized that my brain is simply translating that into a similar experience, after having gotten used to dealing with the body's phantom tail. I still feel wholly human, and Chief says they've never had a similar experience, so I guess I can only wonder if I'll become another example of headmates acquiring nonhuman identities.