[Forsaken] Pure for Crimsonearth

[frothy-bunny.livejournal.com]

 I step out of the shower and I can hear the house moving round me.  Genevieve playing in her room, the first changes arguing over who gets to use the toaster first and it feels normal.  I look at myself in the mirror and there it is; the brand. The scar that just won't heal.  

I have other scars, some I keep because they remind me of my stupidity, some because they remind me of leadership.  This one will never go.  They pinned me down.  They gagged me so I couldn't speak and then they threatened the spirit while he burned the lie into my skin and the gift into my mind.  When it had glowed Red in the hisil it told of how I had single handedly masterminded a cous on the forsaken of Shetland, how I had led the attack. I had never left that Island, or even that house.

Now it was just a scar. Now it was just a memory. Now it was Strikes-with-force telling me that I had to learn to forgive. The people do not murder the people. Now its just something that reminds me just how lacking in normal my life really is, even for a forsaken.

(Forsaken) Christmas dinner (December challenge)

[akonken.livejournal.com]

( (With apologies to elizathemekhet if she feels misrepresented!) )

(Lost) Danger!

[akonken.livejournal.com]

The room was oppressive, the heat of the fire that was meant to be cozy augmented to the point of being stifling with the crush of the crowded room. The conversations were a buzz in the background, and I focused with difficulty on the purr of the man called Rex.

He was sinister in a way I couldn't put my finger on, like the woman next to him. I was grateful for the noise of the room, because it meant they couldn't hear my knees knock together.

I couldn't decide if they were bad guys or not. If they were, they were alarmingly charming.

Then that other girl pulled a knife and pointed it at the woman.

I moved back out of arm's reach, and then back further until I bumped into a wall and couldn't go any farther.

The next few minutes were confusing; the dark woman with the bright hair was calm, threatening but not defending. Rex got between them. Tegan got between them.

People talked, and nothing happened. Then people talked about nothing happening.

I focused on the wall. It was solid. The fight hadn't been a distraction to lure me to where a creature blended into the wall could swallow me without anyone noticing.

I was safe.

It felt strange.

The smart one came over to talk to me. He had a name now too, something harder to say than mine. I like talking to the smart one; he has good ideas. I feel safer with him around, and I don't think it's just because he's more likely to die than I am.

Knife girl left, dark woman stayed. She still seemed dangerous, but she paid no attention to me.

I still don't understand what happened.

Is this what it's going to be like now?

(Forsaken) Not a creature was stirring... (December challenge)

[akonken.livejournal.com]

(Again, with apologies to sl4irl who is briefly mentioned.)

( Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house… )

[Lost] No one

[http://users.livejournal.com/_crimsonearth/]

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

There, I was a hundred, perhaps a thousand different things for Her.

I was everyone and no one, all at the same time. But I remembered…

I remembered my little flower with her tiny little fingers, my loving husband who used to murmur my name in his sleep, ‘Scarborough Fair’ playing in the restaurant where we had our first kiss, the phone call from the police when my parents flipped their car down the bank on the ice, the smell of orange jasmine by the back door… and a hundred other things besides. I remembered it all so clearly.

But I have promises to keep,

When I got out, I knew exactly where to go. And the house was just as I remembered, only… an old widow lived there now. And swore she’d lived there all her life. And there was no orange jasmine. But then I found them. Found him and her. And she could have been my sister. Two, perhaps three years I thought I’d been gone, and yet she was a woman. And he no longer murmured my name in his sleep. And I thought there would be photos, old wedding gifts, a birth certificate, my mother’s locket passed on to my daughter; I thought there would be things, traces of me, but there weren’t. Not a picture. Not a signature. Not a whisper.

It was as though… I had never even been.

And miles to go before I sleep,

And so, once again, I was no one. I could be anyone. Anyone but myself, apparently. And I took my name. I accepted what I was. I came to terms with it, but it was a private burden; it was mine to keep. And everyone I met from then on was so goddamned determined to treat me like a someone, and I made my throat sore explaining to them that this was not for them to take away. This was mine.

It meant something. It made me Free. Because… if I couldn’t be who I was, I didn’t want to pretend to be someone else – not for any longer than I had to. Not for the rest of my life. I chose to be something, to forge myself anew from the embers of my broken life, to do what I was made to for a purpose that would somehow make amends for what I once had been and maybe, just maybe, save someone else, maybe her, from ever having to go through the same.

And miles to go before I sleep.

But I didn’t realise how much it would sting me when someone finally treated me like I was no one.

Like She did.

Like you just did.