(no subject)

He had forgotten heat, except for the heat of fire and the machines that kept Rapture running. For a long time there had just been cold - water, metal, ice in his hands. No sunshine, no summer. Coming to Darrow had been like a reminder of something he had encountered in a dream: vivid, even real at the time, but fading. But then, bit by bit, he had remembered. Not just the sun but some of what he had done in it: swimming, picnics with groups of laughing people he supposed must have been friends of the man he had been, dinner and drinks and dancing. Once, he was almost certain, he had climbed a mountain; he remembered the sun on the snow and holding fast to the rope, crags above him and thin air below. He recalled things like classes - a university? He remembered the sawing drone of cicadas as he hiked through thick forests.

The forest through which Delta walked now wasn't nearly as thick as what he recalled in those fragments, but there were cicadas, and by some miracle the dense, heavy heat of mid-July had gentled to something that felt very much like the softer weather of late May. It was too beautiful to stay indoors, even at work, which he still enjoyed very much.

So he was alone, not really hiking but instead wandering without any real purpose, letting his perception drift through the dappled light streaming past the leaves, listening to the cicadas, and for once, not remembering.

The memory he was making now was enough.