I am a wanderer.
A storyteller.
A star-seeker.
As years gone by, my mind wanders far above the world, detached from the events around. I was here; yet I wasn't. Gray shadowed walls, stark and bare. Longing for their own story, their own place. That is me, I am it. The bare wall, longing for release. Longing for adventure.
I remember my younger days, when my mother would sit me on her lap. Hold me tightly in her arms. And recount in glorious detail the wonders of the stars. Never the world, she would tell me, the world is far too evil, but the stars, yes, the stars are beautiful. She told me that each star was a person; each person had a story, an adventure. A journey on which they embarked, a defining moment.
Someday, someday my child, you will be a star. She pulled me along winding roads of dark smoke, clouded eyes, and broken faces. She was my hero, as well as my curse.
As I grew, the stories that I had been told in my younger years became embedded in my mind. Permeating into my actions, my thoughts.
"Your ma's crazy," They said, sneering mouths and cruel dark eyes stabbing me. Taunting me.
"No," I told them, "She ain't crazy, you are."
But they never believed me. With those words, they pulled me out of my home. The place I loved. The only place I knew. The place where I learned about the stars; where I learned about the heroes in them. The world was full of danger, but the sky wasn't. They pulled me away in a flash of blue and red lights, in my mother's screams, in my own tears.
They placed me in a strange world. It's a special place, they said, a special place for special boys like you. There were no stars in this place. Blinded by bright city lights and the strident honks of horns. No silence. No peace. No heroes.
There are always heroes, my mother told me once, and if you don't see them, then you have to be one. Yet, I could not find one, and I could not be one. The darkness in my mind pulled at me, a sinking abyss. Beckoning, pleading.
"You're crazy," they said, "Just like your ma." I didn't understand then, I didn't understand why. I was a whirlwind of broken thoughts, my actions- fractured pieces of normal. I was a hero, yet I was the villain. I was going to be a star, yet I was the very thing that swallowed them whole. I wish to have likened to the great stories uttered through cracked lips. A person. A place. Strange walls. Broken faces and shattered hearts. There was never a light for me. No, there was only darkness, bleak, hard obsidian. A black hole that sucked in everything around it. It was my enemy.
Every great hero has a fatal flaw. Achilles had a weak heel, Hercules had a big ego, Othello was jealous. Mine was embedded in my history; harshly penetrating my mind, my actions... everything. Dark circles underneath dark eyes, shaky hands unable to keep steady. The voice of my curse taunting me everywhere I went. And everywhere, everywhere I saw it.
A dark shadow, a person of ash. My enemy. The great antagonist of every hero's journey. You must be the hero when there is none, she whispered in my ear, as soft and biting as the winter wind. The type of voice that leads you, but is quick to strike you down. The snow underneath our feet, beautiful, yet dangerous.
They called me insane. I didn't believe them. They don't understand you- us, because we can see the things they can't. Sharp words and biting tongues. Lost souls amidst a crumbling world. They didn't understand; they didn't understand about the stars. About the heroes', about the adventures. Fairytales, they would say, they're all fairytales. But they weren't, they were as real as the shining stars above; tangible, living, breathing things. I tried to make them understand; instead I was met with biting words uttered from cruel lips. Like a fiery tempest, jerked about on the harsh waves of the sea; upward, forward, downward, and back again. A whirlwind, a tornado of ash; tearing down all in its path. Burning, shaking, breaking, tearing.
"What do you see?" I see bright lights, stars, fire, ash. I see shadows underneath rocks and the blue of the sea. I see unhappy faces and sane minds. I see white walls and red balloons, I see heroes and villains and sometimes both at the same time. I see a multitude of people who don't understand the stories that passed before them. I hear beating hearts, the sound of drums, thump, thump. Those who were alive, those who were sane. Singing voices and shouting cries. I see many things. But not that which is expected of me.
A broken mind, a shattered thought. A brief fleeting glimpse of joy, broken in two by humanity's cruel grip. Grasping towards the heavens in broken despair. This was the end, no more walls; blank and cracked, peeling and bruised. No more world where all that was known was pain and darkness.
Then light, a bright shining ray that sliced angrily through the darkness. Silver in color; the fresh scent of a mountain breeze. And I was flying.
High above the earth, above the evil. The shadow ripped from my arms, sent below in a whirl of dust.
And I could breathe. Men walking to and fro, broken wings unable to fly. They laughed at nothing, then at everything. Women fondling pockets of air; crooning to them as if they were their own children.
Then there was I, high above them. Flying over the trees, touching the cool sky with my fingertips.
You are a hero, came the whispering voice, you are the stars. A laugh filled the air, tingling against my arms and swirling through the clouds. Insanity is in the eyes of those around; brief glimpses of darkness through the eyes of man. Cruel, sinister beings who knew nothing of true joy.
Gray walls left behind, silvery stars lay ahead of me. A straight path to the good, to true happiness. I wander about the earth, capturing these small fragments, frozen in time. My soul drifting across the continents; while my body remained behind, trapped in a square room.
I was not insane, the heroes were real.
I was just the only one who could see them.
fin
