Corner
Beginagain
I'd been someone else for so goddamn long I think I'd forgotten how to be myself. Not, however, that this was necessarily a bad thing. It comes from way back, from the time before time, when I stole fire from the Gods -- which was me but wasn't, so to speak -- and I made a promise to a brother who wasn't that I'd shed my skin and walk with him for a time. For a long time, in fact.
He's dead now. I think. So I'm no longer bound by my promise, but it's been so long that I fear that should I break it I would not be able to piece it together again. The fire I stole burns, shut behind a door with no lock, a lock with no key. And I'm afraid of it. Afraid of me.
I've done some very, very bad things.
She was the worst. And for Her I'll burn yet.
Thrown from Heaven, bent and broken for sport of punishment -- I don't now recall, and really don't much care to -- and she found me and was not afraid. Falcon or devil; beast all the same. Who was I to her that walked with Gods? And she saw right through me to the core, and was not afraid.
She knew me. I cannot say the reverse.
I knew many other women -- and more besides -- however. And worse than infidelity, I cursed her to hell for my own faults and none of her own.
Yet, when the time came, it was she who took up arms and died at the end of all things. She knew... something. She always did.
This world now has no room for gods, but there is certainly a place for a devil. And perhaps this is why I survived, and she didn't, because despite all promises, this world is not a golden paradise. That in itself is perhaps important; perhaps even the End of All Things can be mistaken. One such as I cannot take that insight to its conculsion on its own, and the only one I knew would would have unravelled it... well.
So I survive, but it is not me that does so. Not really. For he is someone I have not unlocked in so long I wonder if I will ever be able to fit him again.
I will likely find out soon. Something is brewing; as if the world has finally woken up to the fact that it is... wrong. Because I saw her again; and I won't lie if I say I thought myself mad for it. And yet a few minutes spent with her -- or what had been her, so long ago -- and I knew. I cannot believe she is the only one.
Which means...
It's going to be a damn interesting new year.
Merry fucking Christmas.
Sigmund awoke from dreams of apples to the uncomfortable realisation that he did, for the first time in some time, have to get ready for school. New year, new term... same old Sigmund. Same old shit.
It was hard to get started in the cold. By the time he laced his sneakers, he was already on the bus.
He hadn't had breakfast, and the day soon got worse.
"Everybody, I'm pleased to announce we have a new student joining us." Ms. Thompson was far too cheerful, Sigmund thought, for a women whose main job was to babysit an ungrateful bunch of hormone-filled brats. "I'd like to introduce Lain-- I'm sorry, what's you last name?"
"Laufeyjarson."
"Oh, is that Scandinavian?"
"... something like that."
Sigmund raised his head from it's resting place on the desk. For a moment that voice had been familiar, almost like...
The new kid was a rockstar. That was the only word Sigmund could find for him. Tall and willowy-thin, a fey and almost feminine face, with a slightly indeterminate ethnicity about it. He'd look good on stage. On TV. Hell, the bastard probably looked good first thing in the morning after a long night's drinking. It was the hair, however, that really cinced it; in a tight, neat braid almost to the boy's butt, and coloured in the most incredibly intricate imitation of fire Sigmund had ever seen; right down to the slightly blue roots. Sigmund wouldn't have been at all surprised if it burnt to the touch.
Certain girls in the class were giving each other what Sigmund considered to be The Look; sizing up between them in their own special way who on the pecking order would be allowed to date the boy, for how long, and in wat order. Even those girls who didn't play such games seemed a bit misty-eyed. So, for that matter, did some of the boys.
Lain, for his part, regarded the class with the kind of cooly flat gaze of someone who not only knew their own exotic irresistability, but who revelled in it.
Sigmund hated him instantly. He would be cruel, aloof and unremorseful. The sort of person who would, in fact, most likely make Sigmund's life hell. He scowled straight at the boy; who had the audacity to smirk back.
Ms. Thompson clapped her hands cheerfully together, drawing his attention out of habit. "Now, where shall we sit you?"
There were sevreal empty seats in the class, one of which, Sigmund noted, was next to him. Which would have just made his fucking day, really it would have, but Ms. Thompson had been a schoolteacer for a long time, and wasn't oblivious to playground dynamics. As such she was looking pointedly at a desk halfway between Jamie Keifer and Alana Lipham. Lain's sort of people, Sigmund reasoned coldly.
"How about over there with--"
Something caught the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look, Lain seemingly hadn't moved. No-one else seemed to have noticed.
"-- Sigmund."
"What?" He jerked up, searching frantically for the sentence he'd missed. Surely she hadn't said...
Oh hell.
Lain just smirked.