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     /_______  /|___|\______  /____|__ \ /_______  /\____|__  /_______  / 
             \/             \/        \/         \/         \/        \/  

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              \   \/\/   //   |   \|       _/    |     |    |  \                   
               \        //    |    \    |   \    |___  |    `   \                  
                \__/\  / \_______  /____|_  /_______ \/_______  /                  
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                                    ISSUE 011
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->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->
oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo 

One Lost & Becoming

He was twelve when the Travelator made him cry. It was 1992.

No one else noticed. They were too busy cheering for Jet or Hunter, laughing at
the pratfall of a contestant sliding back down the treadmill of doom. But for him,
that moment—when someone almost made it, hands outstretched, slipping in slow
defeat—broke something in him he didn’t know could break.

It wasn’t just pity. It wasn’t fear. It was recognition.

Even before this, he'd stand outside the telephone exchange building near his 
gran's house. Not -in- it... just close enough to hear the thrum of machines 
behind concrete. It felt sacred. The grey brutalist tower didn’t scare him; 
it hummed like somewhere he used to live. Or rule. Or die.

But there was no book, no guide, no elder to pull him aside and whisper,
"You were once something more."

The dreams started shortly after. Not dreams of flying, but of -remembering-.
A motorway stretched across a wasteland. Its unfinished on-ramps led to nowhere.
Streetlights flickered in blue daylight, casting no shadows. He walked them
alone, and the silence welcomed him.

In the day, he’d draw glyphs he didn’t understand on school notebooks. Watch
MTV cartoons with glassy eyes, convinced the characters were trying to warn him.
He could never explain the ache. The soft hum beneath the static. The shapes
in corner shadows that froze when you looked.

The world said: you're imaginative. Sensitive. A bit of a loner.

The world didn’t know what to do with him and the others, reborn in sneakers and 
windbreakers. There were no mentors. No Courts. Just playgrounds that felt like 
burialgrounds and adverts that sounded like riddles if you listened just right.

He never chose to awaken. The static chose him.

And then, as dusk settled and the CRT glow faded from his eyes, he wondered
what else has been stolen and what else he must remember with no one left to 
tell him.

The Fae called them The Lost.

He just called it being lonely.

This Lost child became The Raven.

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->
oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo oo1oo 

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       ! Produced by I HATE IT HERE - https://www.tengushee.com/ihih !
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EOF