The human came up upon me- slowly, cautiously. I could just vaguely see her turning back to say something to someone- a companion, it seemed she was accompanied- and the wind whipped her words to me. "-something here, I'll just go have a look, be right back-" A soprano voice, although the inflections and tone of it were lost in the howling of the wind. It was to be a woman this time around, then- if the light were better I could make out her features, but my nightsight has never been good. I've never figured out why people want to go about climbing god forsaken mountains in the dark of the morning, just before sunrise, either. But all these years- my alotted once a century visit always seems to fall on these times. Bastard. I turned my attention to the woman. Her eyes opened wide as she got in a good look at me. Blue eyes, pretty common these, because apparently people seem to think that they're attractive- and, yeah, definitely a woman. I searched my mind for the greeting of choice of this particular age. How had that dastardly wind god put it? Ah. "Hi. Welcome to the top of the world." Some humans can hear me, some can't. And some of them seem to have their aural senses completely detached from their brains and use their voices to connect to their eyes to connect to whatever they use to think. This happened to be one of the last category. She pointed a hand at me, although there didn't appear to be anyone in sight but the two of us, and started gibbering. "Y-you're a /man/!" She said, her voice high and shaky with hysteria. "Yes, yes I am a man. Thank you for noticing that tiny and insignificant fact, insofar that I am butt naked and facing you and no matter how much liquid the bungling things have managed to let flow from my liver this time, it probably can't cover up the fact that I /am/ very much a man." Her mouth opened and closed, in the manner of a fish out of water. " And you appear to have a mouth and eyes that work perfectly well, but no ears, and you enjoy being terribly obvious." Still didn't hear me. She continued speaking- to herself, obviously, becoming more and more disturbed at each passing sound. "And- and you're in chains.." Her voice trailed off, as she just plain stared. This was getting annoying. I mean, nothing wrong with a bit of healthy, appreciative admiration and all that, but there's admiration, and there's bloody looking at a person like he's a bit of meat, you know? I hate feeling like meat. Get enough of that already, thanks. So I turned to look her in the face; about the largest movement I could make, since the chains had me spreadeagled to the bare stone of the cliff. Not exactly the most dignified of poses, or pleasant- but it's classic, at least, and one gets used to it. One can learn to get used to almost everything, if one has long enough. She seemed to be calming down, but her urge to quantify things by stating the obvious hadn't left her. She swallowed, a nervous gesture, or perhaps something else I couldn't tell, and spoke, this time more coherently. "Don't worry, we'll get you out of here and into the hospital in no time- oh, you poor man, who could have done this to you? We've got to get you to a doctor, and fast-" The human started forward; I shook my head. "Don't bother." She gasped. "But- your wound- it's bleeding badly! We need to get you some help or you'll bleed to death!" She reached for my chains, as if looking for a release, meanwhile calling behind her for her companion. I shook my head again. "Listen. While it's nice to see some company up here, this really isn't any of your business, and you /don't/ want to get involved in it. The bleeding, if it disturbs you, will stop in a while. Look, it's almost healed already, isn't it?" While speaking, I routed a bit of power to healing the wound- but I hadn't been lying, the gape in my abdomen was almost completely repaired of the damage it had taken. It was almost morning, after all. She watched as the wound on my lower body healed to a single, white scar, the skin closing by itself. Her mouth was hanging open rather unattractively- there are a few people who look nice like that, but that generally has less to do with aesthetics, in my opinion, than the fact that they're such know-it-alls that flabbergastion- to name a new word- is a rather pleasing change. Humans. It was a pity that she'd come up on me at this time of the day, really. If I hadn't been in such a mood I could probably have been able to converse with her quite smoothly, maybe learn about life in this day and age from one actually /living/ in it- and perhaps enjoy the company of the creatures I'd sacrificed so much for already. If she had been aqquainted with the classics, she might have even understood what she was talking to. The moments before daybreak are always tense, at least for me. There is always that awful moment of anticipation- which time and experience, I've found, cannot alleviate. Pain. Is it something you feel, or something you think you feel? The only thing I can say is that it doesn't really matter. It will hurt, any way you think about it. Behind the woman's back, the sun was breaking, rays illuminating the sky with the solemnity of a very regally, very properly drawn shining chariot. "Leave." I said. This time I put a little power behind it, stealing a favorite trick of one of my contemporaries- and suddenly my voice sounded like thunder, echoing in the mountain space. I could feel it reverberating through the rock, bits of less secured mountain dropping off to fall the long way below. I hoped they didn't hit anyone. Hell of a way to die, that. Wouldn't wish it on anyone. Well, /almost/ anyone. The woman abruptly shut her mouth, and fled. I didn't bother wondering what she'd tell her companion, or whether she would return to make a second, misguided try at freeing me. It is only once in every hundred years that any mortal can manage to climb this mountain, after all, and no one, would believe her, not with such a fantastical story. ..or they just might. Humans, after all, are humans, and the wind tells me that they remember stories from long, long ago. He tells me that my story is among them. Who'd think..? Oh well. A whole lot of good remembering would do any of them, anyway. My name is Prometheus, and I am not really a man.