The Mask

Part I: The Broken Girl

Sister,

Forgive me, dearest. For this power I can no longer use for good.

I feel my sanity leaving me – I have terrible visions, urging me to do things despicable – yet things that would feel so good. Not happiness, no, not joy; never joy for someone as broken as I – but things that ease the blandness curling around my heart.

All I have wanted for years was destruction. To kill those men, burn those buildings, and earn back what I've lost, but... now I want more. I realize I was a fool before, chasing my heart's most wondrous desires. If I simply take my mind's advice – listen to its twisting pathways of logic – I can make everyone else feel as powerless as I felt, chained up, those years ago, for my forbidden magic. But only if I let go of all this.

This is why I apologize. For this is the last time I shall ever write to you on this paper – you will be forgotten by tomorrow, and I doubt you shall ever enter my thoughts again. You would scowl at my disregard for family now, but... well... how can I put this lightly?

Mmm, suppose I can't.

You're dead. A year it's been since. So I suppose I'm writing to myself – as I must, I suppose, since I cannot speak.

But more than that, I needed to see my last thoughts written before I buried them in your grave. Saved before I never thought them again. If nothing more than to think back and mull over how I came to be where I am. I do not care for you or your thoughts any more, though I beg for forgiveness, and I laugh at myself now as I write this. I read the first line of this paper over again and now wonder how I could have been so emotionally incompetent just moments ago.

Well, well. Your tears in my mind, sister, make me smile at the thought of the many more that will come when I rule this country, my power making me greater than them all.

Shut your mouth, girl, I know I'm not young anymore. My bones may creak on occasion, but this does not mean I cannot win this war. For I will not lose. Not again, not ever.

This world is full of fools; even my family was this way. Everyone here needs someone who isn't a fool – well, me, of course, are you blind? – to lead them. May require some knocking heads of royalty and stirring fear around, but that just adds more to the fun, dearest.

You think me afraid? Perhaps you are the most foolish of them all.

I am not afraid; I never am. Born that way, you could say.

But do I have any worries, you ask? I'm missing something important, you say? Stupid girl. You've forgotten already, have you? Well, you always did ask questions of this sort.

Yes, it happens that I do. But only one, and it will NOT occur, for I will succeed. This fear is that I will not be able to gain a voice. Not having this is a sign of immediate low rank, and I cannot command a country without a voice to do so with. Yes, I was born without the ability to speak, but since my power allows me to bend the life in plants and things of the sort, I should be able to take the ability of speech from another being and transfer it into myself. There is the small matter that I have not discovered how to achieve this, but I am sure that it will reveal itself in due time, as everything does. Actually, the further I fall into insanity, the more I learn; the better, the stronger I become. I cannot say I regret anything, dearest.

And sister, you should know that I do not refer to you as "dearest". For the only thing dear to me is the power that flows through my veins, for I shall never lose it, nor shall I let it go. My dearest keeps me company after your death, sister, and if you can call it love, I love it more than you.

But this shouldn't come as a surprise.

After all, sister, you did betray me.

And dearest, you saved me.

Evena