Power.
It starts off as a dream. A want. A desire. Soon we begin to gather all our hopes and dreams into one big chest, thinking that maybe one day we will get what we want. It ends with Obsession but begins as Desire. So big for something that starts so small. Like a disease, it begins with one cell, one auxiliary function in the brain, one rush of hormones and adrenaline and it starts the fires in my soul. It manifests infinite possibilities, but it paves a path of devastation once you start reaching for it.
Is that what I want?
Is that what I have come for?
Is that what I need?
It is as if an answer rises up to meet me in the shape of water. The sea, such a simple yet complex thing. We see it and all we see is blue, and the curve of our earth if we reach out far enough with our eyes to find it. What we don’t see is its power. We think we do, but we will never understand it if all we do is stand on the shore and look out.
Can we ask things of the sea?
Will it bring us what we wish for?
Or, will it bring us death?
Then, nothing.
I don’t know what I ask of the sea other than for it to wash the blood away. To wash my life as I have known it, away. I believe it has the power to do that - to take away the things that make me weak. If I could get rid of my father, I would set the memories free in the waves right now. I would let it go and I would not go in after it. I would watch it ballast against all the suffering and wrongness I have known, that I have been taught. At first it would float, it would struggle to drown. For that is what most of me is made up of, the desire to survive against all odds.
Eventually though, eventually, the weight of the world crushes in on it. Then, all of the displaced pain and chaos of my life will eventually sink to its desired, forgotten death.
My thoughts seem wild, or maybe that is the amount of blood I have lost, or the ringing of adrenaline and exhaustion burning in my ears. I have forgotten the feeling of my legs or maybe sea water has numbed me. If I am cold, then it feels more like an inferno inside of me than it does winter. To return home right now seems hopeless. I wouldn’t want anyone to see me when I am not me, when I am not Emersyn the Emissary, the representative of Dawn Court’s Regime.
One day they will all learn to hate you. Just as they learned to hate me.
“That is not true. I am not you.” I mutter, but the churning air takes my voice from me and makes wind out of it before it can become words. I gaze up into the swirling clouds above me, it is just enough of a distraction (amongst other things) to not notice the danger creeping closer, closer, closer ..
‘Rough day stranger?’
It is already here.
When I look up I see a great black horned beast. Lightning streaks overhead but from where I am looking, it seems to come from the stranger’s horns. That could be the salt and hair in my eyes, or the memories of a monster that I remember so long ago (is it me?). Lightning growls like brawling tigers in the clouds, I reach out with one leg and brace against the bloodied knee to rise up . . I rise, slowly, with dignity, and with cracked ribs that leave me breathless.
“One could say that. Yes.” But I won my brawl, so I am not disappointed. Although I am beaten and bloody, I am victorious. I try to remember that as I meet her eye-to-eye.
Yesterday I was a soldier. Today, I woke up a warrior.
Lightning lashes again, thunder unsettles the horizon. The soft rain turns into hard rain, it nails down all the flyway hair to my bloody chest. Even after all this time, my heart beats fast - as if it is frightened but I don’t know why. I try not to look too hard at the woman who has come to me like a spell (on no account can I explain how she got here without me not noticing).
It is as if magic itself has delivered her to me. Even the sea too rises to meet her. The tides surge strangely around her ankles, and the rain seems to caress her rather than torment her. Even when the wind blows violently, it is only to gently comb the black hair out of woman’s sour apple eyes. They burn like lamps in the dark stormy afternoon. Once I have met them, I can’t seem to look away. It is as if a ship is being drawn to the shore. She is an enigma. I find her beautiful in all the ways I all the ways wished I could be, but never was.
“Who are you?”
With wings and horns and poise as beautiful and perfect as she, I should have simply asked, ‘Are you the devil?’
But that would be too hopeful of me.
@Lucinda !!!!
