Alternate Realities

The Shadow

Behind the scenes, alternative POV

Happiness, even just a taste of retrospective laughter, evaded him. She scrubbed joy from every folded memory. Among his recollection, perfection befell others and avoided him at every turn. Always far below those around him. Or... no, he had been better at somethings, right? She must have cleaned up the messiness of his observations to push the sub-par into the superb; his best into his bitter worst. Around her, friendly faces twisted into monstrous sneers that plunked like broad stones through still surfaces of water: jarring and rippling for acres of time. Or maybe every laugh really did ring hallow in joyless ears. How would he ever know?

He shook his head like swimmers do to to clear soggy pathways carved intricately between his circuits. A surgeon. Precision. Maybe precise paths layered onto established trails couldn't help but leave wide and well-trod hallways. Each hardened vein darting off to a cavernous, wounded hall where childhood once played freely, but now was excised entirely. Crushed gardens wasted away where loyalties once germinated from strong roots. No matter the depths, she could extract any relationship like a weed. A greenwarden of the mind.

He often wondered if she knew the pathways she cut. A surgeon surely would know restraint better than the abandon with which she entered his mind. The daily intrusions long ago lost their invasive feel. Instead, each echo he never heard, each flash of thought recalled without his will, was met with exhausted resignation. It hurt less to be still, quiet minded, and without fight. It hurt less not to hear her arguments, the pulse of her reason, her rationale insistence, her power-hungry will that would take, take, take, even if he begged her not to.

"Be careful with this one, Maven." Her voice hissed, fetching that first kiss from him and turning the taste of Mare from warm honey to bitter rind.

She peeled back the smells, the feel, the taste of Mare. She floated into the texture and the beat of his heart, the heat of his cheek, the hope of his childish heart. He felt her jealousy, rage, fear left accidentally in the wake of her departure from that memory. A memory she could sour but not steel.

But what did his mother have to fear from the little lightning girl? From the red blooded woman she'd made his bride? She must have heard his question on her way out of his mind.

"We have much to discuss." The lingering hiss of her 's' called him to fallow, commanded him to attention, and worried him deep into his core.

-------

Thoughts? Feelings? Feedback?