I am a condemned man.
My sentence is etched in stone.
I stir the #2 pewter cauldron. The heat surrounds me, engulfs me. There is no escape. I am suffocating.
It has been predestined.
The sentence was passed long before I entered this mortal realm. The seed that spilled from my sire was diseased and wretched much like the image I have carefully constructed. The glass house in which I am displayed leaves nothing to the imagination but I am not only a master of potions.
I am a master of illusions, a puppet or a simple marionette if you please whose strings are manipulated by perverse masters.
His will is not his own.
There is a place of honor where I am going. A place reserved for those that deceive, those that betray, and those that shatter dreams. For those that have cried over the freshly turned earth of a mother's grave, two mothers taken far too early. Each by his hand, whether he wielded the wand or knife their blood is forever on his hands.
He merely stirred the cauldron.
The coppery scent haunting his waking dreams, their pale skin and lifeless eyes are his constant aide-mémoire.
For each death another link on his chain, what is one more link the old man asks.
Little does the old man know, the chain is wound tightly, heavy and binding. The water is slowly rising, filling his lungs.
He is drowning.
The potion needs stirring, counterclockwise this time, casting darkness into the light and light into perpetual darkness.
They stare at me through narrowed eyes. Lions and lionesses ready for battle, ready to pounce on my carcass. Snakes will slither away, but lions are brave especially lionesses. They will hunt and kill for those they love.
Does she love me?
The fiery one did once upon a time, the love that foolish children share.
His was a love born of loneliness and hunger.
A cold man will always turn to the sun for warmth. The fiery one had been his sun, his warmth.
Foolish pride and arrogance served to destroy that which was endured out of need and innocence. Now all that remains are her eyes in the guise of another. One that is bitter and jaded.
This lioness is different. Her mane is wild, her eyes alight with fight. No, this lioness is fierce and loyal.
Is she loyal to me?
Her pride strop and bicker. Loyalties tested and renewed. The one, the boy with the eyes to see, with the scar to feel has been battling too long for someone so young. The boy does not know that death is not an escape, but a necessity. The lioness tries to offer comfort. The condemned man envies their bond, the comfort she offers.
She watches me stir the potion. She does not know that I see her, that I watch her through curtains of black torment and misery. The innocence of the cub is no longer there, the desire and craving of a predator remains.
I am a condemned man.
She devours existence, knowledge, the words, the sounds, and the taste of all that is known and unknown. She relishes in the understanding, in the slow simmering cauldron of existence, the orgy of ideas and thought. He has feasted at the same table and has been left wanting. It is her knowledge that he craves, for she is a mystery. No longer does the fiery one fill his thoughts, his dreams his desires. To know her, his lioness would be to know the whole of the universe, the power of her coursing through his veins much as the magic that binds us to our very soul.
She is his equal, his other half torn asunder in their creation separated by time. Bought together in this space, but their time is not right.
The storm is approaching.
"Professor…?"
He stirs the cauldron.