He is still becoming. Not complete. Not fixed.

Held in the pause between idea and identity.

A curved trace — gill or glyph — runs down his right cheek, not etched but remembered.

The body speaks its own history here: marks of tools, of fracture, of stitching.

Not healed, not open — held.

The cage around him is not prison. It’s memory. Or maybe measurement.

Lines crossed like coordinates in an unknown system of restraint.

Soon, fine webs will grow in its frame— delicate, almost organic— but spun from wire, not silk.

What they connect is uncertain. But the instinct to weave is there.

His mouth is closed. His eyes are closed. But not in serenity. This is not peace. This is containment.

At the base of his neck, a symbol—part seal, part scar. As if someone signed him before he understood the terms. It reads not as a name, but as a warning.

There are crosses on the chest—stitched Xs, quietly ritualistic. They don’t explain. They don’t confess.

And what of the tear tracks? They are not sadness.

They are loss. Loss of signal. Loss of origin. Loss of voice.

He has not been programmed to speak. But he listens.

And what he hears is not what we hear.

He is not fearful. But he is not fearless either.

His is the tension of a form, just before decision.

Not a portrait. Not a relic. Not yet. He is still in pause.