Torn Apart

Feel Like I'm Someone Else

The sheets were cool and crisp and the mattress gave easily as he shifted. He pushed his head deeper in what must have been a cloud and hoped with every breath he would never have to move again.

"Our visitor is awake."

There was a woman in his room. Why was there a woman in his room? He cracked an eyelid open, squinting at the light.

Sideways, he saw a column of a girl standing over him, wide-shouldered and straight as a pillar. A brilliant smile plastered across her face and she dipped her golden head, green eyes sparkling. "Yes, Mother."

The smell of roasting grain crowded him and he pulled the sheets closer. His skin prickled and his gut fluttered. He wasn't in his room. What was going on?

"Leave us. I will come for you soon and we will walk to the border."

The girl spun away, gliding through a granite arch. Definitely not his room.

"She is beautiful, is she not, my pet?" A different face interposed itself and he jerked back with a shout. It was like a tornado of earth in human form sat there, fixing him with stone eyes.

"You have never seen my like before, have you?" her voice was soft, tender even. Why was he not comforted? "Fascinating. And here I thought my pet could not be bested. He even boasted it, and yet here you are. Not quite the background fragment he claimed."

He swallowed, raising himself on his right arm. The sheets slid and he grabbed at them, mortified. "Wh-where are my clothes?"

Something of a smirk crossed that face and he ducked his eyes. It unsettled him. "You appeared without them, or don't you remember? I carried you here."

He clutched the sheet, wishing it was more than just a sheet. "No. I don't-who are you?"

She tilted her head, her eyes staying fixed in space as her face rotated around them. His stomach flipped. "It's rude to interrogate a host before giving your own name," she admonished. "First, what is your name?"

"I'm..." He blinked. "I'm..." Coldness spiked his chest. There was a blank. A huge, gaping blank space spreading out where his name should be. He reached farther. An age? Family? Friends?

Blank.

How did he get here?

Still blank. There was nothing, only the faintest tinge of-

"Orange!" he blurted, immediately feeling stupid. But there was nothing else there, nothing he could find to tell her at any rate.

A lilting laugh drew his eyes back to the strange being. "Well, then, Orange. I am the goddess Demeter."

His mouth dropped open to deny the existence of such things as gods and goddesses. No words came. There certainly was nothing in his experience that compared to what he was looking at-

What experiences? He had nothing to compare to. There had to have been something, how else could there be such a sudden sense of loss? Despair seized him and he choked on it. What was happening to him?

"Not only mortal, but apparently weak among men." Demeter sighed, turning from him and rising. "Still, come with me. Orange is no more your name than Green or Blue, but if that is all you can give me while my Pet rests, we will fill your head with useful information for his return."

He was struck by the odd desire to follow her, but that was absurd. She scared the living daylights out of him. Why would he want to go with her? He didn't move.