raxeira [on hold]

r a

(n.) the sun god, the supreme Egyptian deity, worshipped as the creator of all life. sometimes portrayed with a falcon's head bearing the solar disc.

"cause i'm going to make this place your home."

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unlike what raxeira had said, events did not repeat. the time did not loop and i did not go to the beginning, where my existence as a demon child had just been recognized. nothing changed. i stood with raxeira, waiting for the door to open, anxious to step inside and see the insides of someone's home. the only thing i had ever awakened to was drab orphanage walls and sleeping cocoons of children who had yet to spread their wings and experience life. i guess, in its own little sense that little familiar scene was a small time loop, a tiny infinity that would repeat in my brain.

from that day onward, from that day where i changed my loop of the orphanage, i would always awake to drab walls and cocoons of children. it was encoded in a part of me. i may have escaped that infinitesimal loop, but it would remain in a shard of my heart.

there are loops inside loops, and an infinity of lifetimes in each.

maybe this was how raxeira had achieved her aura of immortality. maybe she had frozen her own loop, trapped herself into a child's cage, free to explore other loops at free will. maybe life was an infinite time loop and she had broken out of hers, achieving some sort of archaic enlightenment that no one else could reach. maybe that was why her eyes were slices of broken glass. in breaking out of the infinity that held her, she fractured herself beyond repair.

broken is not unfixable. fractured is not unfixable. those words popped to the surface of my brain like little soda bubbles as the door swung open. i wanted raxeira to be healed. i wanted raxeira to sing herself past the boundaries of death and heal whatever inside her that she had destroyed so profoundly. i wanted her to steal athena's threads and bellona's cape with her footsteps of air, tear them apart and replace her frayed human stitches with the rightfully deserved ones of goddesses. i wanted raxeira to open her eyes and awaken to light that was not kaleidoscopes with eyes of shattered orbs.

but raxeira was a broken masterpiece. that was what defined her as who she was, like how bad luck took sand and water and molded me and my imperfections. it was a part of us. we could root it out, but it would never leave us.

"raxeira, dear, did you sneak out again!?" her mom had opened the door, and the warmth of the AC hit us. i yearned to sit next to the fireplace and warm myself by the hearth, buried in ashes and cinders in the heart of home. i stared up at her mom, but in my memory, her features were very elusive. i cannot pinpoint how her features looked like or any physical attributes. maybe raxeira was beginning to rub off me, because suddenly it was like my eyes cut clear through physical illusions and saw but the heart, with all its truthfulness. her mother gave me a sense of warmth and family that tears automatically prickled in my eyes. this is what raxeira returned home to every day. some anger and envy began knotting away inside me, but it quickly vanished like a last breath when her mom's full attention turned on me. "oh, you poor thing, look at the abuse you've suffered! come inside, immediately, let's get you all cleaned up."

i felt a strange sense of deja vu as her parents, their faces wiped from my memory, sat me down and asked me about my whole story. i told them nothing about being possessed by demons or manipulated by the devil or the sort of stories that often revolved around me. i told them how i really wanted a home and that the she-monster seemed to abuse me. they were very understanding and warm, and my bad luck repulsed it. you don't deserve to step into this place, talk to those born of Ra heritage. look at them. they are suns taken human form. what are you? a black hole, contained in a insufficient human body. do not take any more warmth. you will harm them, like you have everyone.

they were crackling fires. they made homes out of words and hands and gestures and little winks. light ran in their blood vessels and they breathed out little sparks of fire. they were made out of some sort of tangible love and light that the toxics they breathed out was oxygen and rebirth in my chemical lungs. i took in their blue skies and silver moons and green grasses and watched barren deserts become flowering pastures.

this is what home feels like, i remember thinking as a cup of hot chocolate steamed before me. their family was just how i expected a perfect family to be. i cupped my hands around it, my cold hands sucking up the warmth. it reminded me how it was my ever present curse that had sucked the life out of precious hazel and vesper. it reminded me how i absorbed all the light in the world into a dark abyss of a boy in which light could not escape. it reminded me how humans suck out the life of everything beautiful and lay waste to it in a futile attempt for more.

i decided not to drink it.

raxeira smiled at me from time to time as their parents discussed my fate. i caught little wisps of the conversation, like tendrils of a retreating cloud. "we can't leave him to go back to the orphanage." — "what to do then?" — "maybe tess?" — "maybe that would work?" — "raxeira seems attached, maybe"— "we can't adopt him" — "why not tess?" — "only option" — "i think he would be happy."

her parents left the room to make a few phone calls about me, and it was just raxeira and me. a feeling began to wind in me, a suspicious, sad thought. maybe i would never see her again with this adoption. maybe this was the last time i would listen to her muse about things i could not comprehend and look into mesmerizing eyes of shattered ice. maybe i would lose my sense of happiness once i went away. perhaps my bad luck wouldn't be put at bay for long. (after all, her singing and her parents were only a temporary barrier. my bad luck would always break through.) maybe i would forget her and she would forget me and i would be stuck in my individual loop with no idea which way to go.

she scooted her chair closer to mine. "hey. you're getting a home. isn't that what you wanted? you seem unsure."

"i just — you were the first person to understand me. and now I'm back to my life of shifting and searching and drifting."

she smiled, a tiny but pure one that reached her eyes. "don't be scared. the only constant is change."

"what if i harm my adoptive parents? what if the curse manifests again? what is the curse is real?"

"then it isn't your fault," she said definitely. her voice was a siren's again, confidence and soothing seeping through me like a sponge soaking up water.

"will i see you again?" it was a question i was too scared to ask. i had finally found rock bottom in tumultuous seas and now i would have to let go again and let the currents carry me as they deemed fit. i had already been used to this. why could i not return to the sea again?

"of course we will meet again," she said, as if she were omnipotent and could see the future. light filtered on her, surrounding her in a halo of fire and light. "of course i will see you again."

i left her behind in a train bound for an airport, which was bound for some distant part of the united states. i could not take my eyes off her the whole time, and i watched her silhouette as it faded away into the distance. i kept waving even after she was long again, and for a long while i stared at the spot where she once was, as if willing her to materialize. something inside me felt empty and yawning but her words of reassurance echoed in my brain. of course i will see you again. finally i turned my head back and traced a path across the dust lining the windows. it was the moment where sixth-grader raxeira became a thing of a past. but this was just the next run. raxeira was a drifter. we would find each other again. i fell asleep with clouds and light and snow, raxeira's waving figure a shadow in my dreams.