Child's Play

Waking is a slow affair, velvet smooth and ice cold. Waking is abandonment. Coming home. Being free. Waking is a child taking their first steps for all to see, the secret hours of practice locked behind doors, not to be talked about. Waking is remembering. Becoming one.

It starts behind the ribs, just to the left of the heart. A small buzzing, like someone is humming along to their thoughts, like a cat purring in the dark. It starts there and latches onto the bone, staking claim and pulling itself to the surface. Under the skin and in the blood. Waking up is almost as tiring as being put to rest in the first place. The hum, the ribs, the mind, the soul. Awake. Awake and aware and alive, reborn in the morning light. Crawling back into my skin, realigning my bones, breathing in the last of a flame off the tip of my tongue. Closing my eyes as myself, opening them as another, blinking back to reality.

I want to be out, She whines from the back of my throat, sliding down to settle at the base of my neck.

"Go away," I reply through a crackling throat.

She huffs at my dismissal, but settles between the spaces in my spine, a chill buzzing through my body. It's time for me to be awake and for Her to settle in the blood flowing in my body from my heart with my breath. Breathe in, wake up. Breathe out, be real. Buh-dum, buh-dum, buh-dum.

Running through the woods, running through the woods.

The world is on fire.

An exaggeration, sure, but a problem nonetheless. Gone is the cave I laid my head down in. Gone is the damp dirt and the cool stone. Here are trees reduced to ash. Here are embers left to smoke and scorched earth left to stain. The leaves are drier than the season should allow, with remnants of a stray flame still fanning in the wind. But they will make a good warning bell--the only good to come of this destruction--with the crunch and scrape they make underfoot, though they're not much use given the abandoned state of the woods. We don't get many visitors--being tucked tight into the woods like a child prone to sleepwalking has its downsides--but when we do, they don't stay long. They don't exactly 'stay' at all. She sees to it that we are not disturbed, that we stay blanketed by shadows and legend, that word-of-mouth rings true: There is death in the trees. There are eyes in the wood.

That being said, She took liberties with her freedom last night. Liberties that put me in danger. Danger of being found out. Danger of being hurt. She doesn't see it like that, of course, and why would such an uncivilized thing? Why would a bare-bones monster bend to the will of convention? Why would the body She inhabits get a say?

It's an easy fix, all things considered. A bare foot to stomp out the flame. A bare foot to cover our tracks. A routine, practiced to perfection. A team, born of the shadows and master of the wood. I pack up our things. And I put out the flame. And I carry the weight of Her actions, step by step, day by day.

I--we--should be used to it. Used to the itch under our skin. Used to the whispers in the air. Used to being in two places with one set of tracks to follow in circles. But I'm only human. And She is decidedly not.

Did you see? She asks, her voice floating around my head.

"The mess you made? Yeah," I snap to the charred earth at my feet.

Dancing breath!

"Fire. You breathed fire all over everything. It's gone."

Not gone. Just different.

And if it isn't my own words coming back to haunt me. Memories of holding myself together with a death-like rot in my bones and a bruising grip on my ribs. Memories of her birth as my skull cracked in two and my blood boiled in my veins. Memories of women screaming, "End uf thi bebi os burn thi biest! Trevil wong end uf thi fiit! Bieaty bihuld end brewn bi hiet!" as the sky raged above us.

(It took some some to fully understand that one myself, but I got the facts in order eventually. As it turns out, being born to a secretive, don't-even-trust-my-own-shadow mess of a father and a conniving, bite-your-tongue-and-eat-your-questions-for-dessert wench of a mother has consequences. Old money consequences. Blood magic consequences. Hi, I'm a haggard old witch and I'm here to disrupt your life, consequences.)

Running through the woods, running through the woods.

"Just different. Sure," I placate, hoping the burning in my chest is contained to my consciousness and not Her's. Because how do you explain to a feeling that it doesn't truly exist--not on its own, anyway; not without you to feel it. And how do you teach manners to an idea? Or complex metaphysical changes to a disembodied voice? How can you not stare the monster of your reflection in its beady little eyes and say, "I'm okay. I'm just a bit different now. I'm still here."

(You don't. The answer is: you don't. You can't, really. It drives you up a wall and 'round the bend for every day that you've lived, but it doesn't do anything. It doesn't help. The feeling is still just a thought. And the idea is still the polar opposite of a respectable decision. And the disembodied voice still lives in your head, your bones, your everything.)

"We need to leave," I announce to the clearing, using every ounce of determination I can to mentally strangle Her into a less than comfortable position at the bottom of my stomach.

Here is safe, She replies, her words echoing through me.

"Here is ash. 'Dancing breath' ruined here; ruined safe."

Not ruined. Just different.

"This isn't an argument. Or a two-way decision. We're leaving."

No!

And now She is trying her damndest to slink up my throat and out into the world again, to bring herself to the forefront of the conversation through sheer force of will. But I'm used to it. I'm prepared for the violent flares and the reptilian itch that She so often provokes. A metaphorical hand clamps down on and spins her around my ribs in a pretty bow.

"Safe is gone. Here is ruined. I need to find a new one--a new safe."

There's no argument from the weight twisting itself tighter when I scour the charred clearing for the frayed knapsack we've been dragging around, find it soot covered and flame scented, and set off towards where the sun peeks through treetops. The chill in my body recedes and a bored buzzing takes its place. Each step crackles like it might spark a new flame from the scorched earth alone. She busies herself with settling back into her place as resident nuisance and I busy myself with watching my feet as I move.

It's twenty walking minutes from our old haunt when the trees start whispering, when the leaves and twigs I've been careful to avoid start to snap and rustle underfoot. The world stills for a moment, everything but the faint shrrk, shrrk of feet dragging on the ground filtering out as I try to find the source of the noise. Ten seconds of holding my breath and standing like a deer in a trap lead to a slight case of whiplash and an onslaught of internal questions.

Because there's a small something standing with its back to us some hundred-odd paces away. Something with sandy hair woven down its back and faded clothing on its bones.It stands no taller than my knee stands from my ankle and it's covered in dirt. It's covered in dirt and wandering through the woods--the forbidden woods, the dark woods--and Ryle's left pink, it's a child.

Don't close your eyes when you're running through the woods.

Mine! She screeches from within, my side pulling with her renewed attempts at freedom.

"No," I chastise inwardly. There is no way in Tfin a child is actually standing with its back to us, no way a child is this deep in the woods to begin with. "It's nothing."

Not nothing! Mine! Little One!

"No."

Just to see.

"Not happening."

Help for Little One. I can safe.

That's what She thinks, but I'm not inclined to agree with Her. She who thinks warm blood is just as good as leaved steeped in river water. She who cakes dirt under my nails and breaks my bones to make room for herself. She who sits heavy at the base of my skull, my fingertips, the balls of my feet. She who is a beast.

Little One needs me, She whispers through my veins.

"No," I say to the forest, the trees bristling in their disrupted silence.

Let me see, She presses, her presence sitting like thumbs against my eye sockets. Not to hurt. Just to see. See Little One.

"Like you wanted to see the rabbits? Or that messenger on horseback?"

No!

"You don't want to see her, you want to see her blood on our hands."

Not to hurt! Just to see!

Her pleas are accompanied by a cold numbness seeping into my skin from the inside out. It makes my skin crawl and my teeth itch and my blood sing. If given the opportunity, I'd get to work clawing the feeling out with my bare hands. She isn't going to let this go, not until she has our hands thoroughly contaminated by the stench of death.

"Fine! I'll go see. You watch. You sit tight."

Sit tight.

"Be good. I'm in charge. Let me inhabit myself," goes unspoken.

I've not taken half a step before she repeats, Sit tight, and the world blacks out. It comes easier these days, far easier than when we were getting used to the curse in our blood--especially today, especially after She has spent the past night at the forefront of our being. She pulls herself loose and spreads herself thin, pouring herself into every uninhabited fiber of my being. I shed my skin in the blink of an eye, a deep breath and I'm gone, fully entombed in emerald scales and myth-like power. She emerges from under my skin, from the furthest corners of my mind. Handing over the reins to Her--an idea, a feeling--is like peeling myself apart, layer by layer, until everything is inside out.

Scales and claws and wings--Tfin the wings--being made and remade and made again from calloused skin and sinewy muscle. And I'm falling, falling, falling. Darkness and numbness seeping into the disembodied whatever that I become like this. And then there's nothing.