'A poem for you, dear'.
The young Ania Akensen dreams of a lover. Anyone would do the trick. How long has it been since she last saw a boy ? A year ? More perhaps.
She sighs. She'd give everything just to be allowed to look into a man's face. Apart from her father's, of course.
She thinks of his rugged features. Those of a man who was never given any respite by life, yet came out on top and continues to as years pass. He's done so much for her. She feels ashamed of daring to dream of a husband when her genitor is out there dying out in the cold for her.
He's a true man, she realizes. One way more beautiful than any of the pretty boys she hears about in books. Because her father's scars don't make him disgusting or unattractive. They all tell stories. Captivating. That's what they make him. They show how much he's had to battle for survival, how strong he is, how great a force of nature.
She's very proud of him indeed. It's he who killed the largest whale ever spotted in the oceans of the planet. A behemoth thirty-four meters long, the size of three great school buses. The demon's skull is hanged in the living room downstairs for all to marvel at... And for potential enemies of the Akensen family to understand that Father Igor is able with his hands.
Yet as magnificent as her father is, Ania does not see him as a potential partner for lovemaking. What's that I hear, reader ? Are you shocked, perhaps ? Are you throwing your arms up in protestation ? Well, let me tell you that : This story is not about a world polished and kind as that of a fairytale. Do not dare to assume this fact for even a split second. What you are presently diving into, this fictional place I present to you, while supernatural and incomprehensible in part, is grounded in reality primarily. As such, when looking at life from the perspective of a young woman in the nineteen-thirties for whom life essentially amounts to staying home reading and daydreaming, one with brains enough would not be shocked to hear that yes, indeed, she had, in the past, fought against the urge of courting her own father, her brain flooded with bottled up hormones, her heart and body desperate to release them all out onto someone.
However, like was said, Ania is also a voracious reader, and as hands-on as her father's approach to life is, her mother's was more meticulous. For even though Igor Akensen's bride had died of unfortunate causes when her daughter was three, she'd set everything up to ensure that her daughter would become a fine, educated woman. And so, even in their tiny wooden house perched atop its frozen hill, there were books in great quantities, detailed maps of the outside world and even a projector for watching movies, even though it had, unfortunately, broken down only a few weeks after the mother's departure for the kingdoms above our heads, and had not been repaired since.
Consequently, even as isolated as Ania is from the rest of Humanity's representatives, she remains one of the most well-learned maiden of her country. And so, she's learned to use her brains before listening to the strings of her heart, as she understands that oftentimes, emotions wreak havoc on one's lifepath, especially when the emotions in question are akin to that of attraction or love.
She's long thought about how to calm the desires her bosom birth regularly, and strong-willed as she proved to be, she's concluded that even though she's got no present way of satisfying her cravings for pure love and connection, she'll wait until the day presents itself, when she'll meet someone not of her lineage, a boy whom would take her as his wife. She knows that time will come. Surely it will now... Will it not ?
In truth, she'd made this plan - if one could call it that - when she was seventeen. Now, her twenty-first birthday is fast approahing, and as hopeful as she remains, seeds of doubt have been planted inside her yet young and feeble mind, and she reckons as though her dreams of meeting a lover are escaping her grasp, pulling away from her, ever more as time goes on.
She's thought about going to university of course, but given her family's reclusive background, there was never any hope of anyone accepting her anywhere. She doesn't even know if state records know she exists. That and the fact that her father and she live on meager income, a wage so pathetic that Igor struggles to pay even for just clean water and electricity.
Oh, well. Her situation isn't so bad, she thinks. She doesn't have to work for anything, and even though her days are uneventful, she is alone to blame for that, for they could be filled with whatever she wanted them to be as long as it'd physically be within the range of her options.
All of that to get us back to the fact that she'd long understood that she would not be dating her father. And because she now had the additional knowledge that she possibly would never meet the boy she sought out in her dreams with such desperation, she's conjured up a way to make her days less painful, even if only a tiny bit so.
Her main way of exteriorizing her passions was through writing poems. She imagined herself entertaining an epistolary conversation with her beloved, at least the one she'd constructed for herself in her mind, and every day or so, she'd write a new body of text in order to answer the messages she'd gotten in her dreams, during the night from her imaginary boyfriend.
'I reckon you do love me,
As a man loves a woman,
And that friendship between us,
Is more than just the fuss.
Hope I make your soul lively,
As you make my heart un-wan,
Come on boy be courageous,
Come get me, victorious.'
She hears the creaking of the door. Father's home with the blood.
