A/N: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, D9 – write a threeshot. Also taking advantage of the prompt to play around with more experimental writing. Enjoy!


my definition is my words
Chapter 1

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Sometimes, I have to wonder…what makes a human?
Where is that little facet that, when turned, makes a human bleed
but a monster simply squawk like a black crow attempting to be the innocent dove…

But crows are not doves, and monsters are not humans.
Maybe…monsters are just better at pretending to be a human
even if they don't understand…
or I don't understand…but I'm not a monster either, so maybe that's why…
or rather, I don't call myself a monster. I might as well be.

Sometimes, then, I wonder: what is a monster? What makes one?
What makes someone a monster? Or not? What makes someone call themselves a monster…

What makes someone call themselves anything?
What makes someone anything?

I'm not a human. I'm not a monster.
Rather, those are not words I use to describe me.
I do not cry or laugh. Sweat or bleed. Flee or chase. I just drift.
I just exist.

Don't ask me who I am; I can't answer that.
I am not no-one, nothing, because I exist. Or I say I exist.
But all else from that is inexact.
Not blackness: that is too precise, too exact. Something else. Something less black.
But not white. White is far too bright. And the dusk is…well…

.

He is Cherubimon. Or so he says. He calls himself by that name. Others call him by that name.
Maybe it is his name. But, somehow, it doesn't seem to fit.
Something's wrong with that name. Something missing. Or something extra. Something there.
Something not there. Something that was there before…or perhaps never there.

It doesn't matter all that much to me. He is he. I am I.
But "I" is not a name. A pronoun used to replace a name. Replace an identity.
So then…who am I?

'You are Duskmon.' Or so he says. So he calls me by that name.
I don't believe that is my name. Things are often called names that aren't theirs. Names that are
merely ill-fitting labels slapped on, sometimes carelessly with chewing-gum on the back to hold it there.
It'd dry out, eventually. Or fall off. Or some kid in detention would scrape the chewing gum off the desk bottom
and then that'd be the end of it. That label.

Names should be everlasting. Or that's what I think. Maybe I believe it too
but the truth is I don't feel enough to believe. I don't know.

And, sometimes. I don't want to know.

.

I am a digimon. That is what he says.
But, in the rippling water under the near fall moon, I see another face.
A face beneath the mask I wear.
A face that looks human.

I don't know why I think it does: look like a human. I have never met one. Never remember meeting one.
And, yet, that is what I think. A human face. Not a digimon one. Or, at least, one that looks like a human
beneath the mask. Or, maybe, it is just another mask.
Just like this mask that I've worn for as long as I can remember.

It's a pathetic mask, really. Does not conceal my eyes. Or my face.
Or maybe it does, because when I take it off, they change.
Red eyes become blue. Dark, sun-burnt and moon-kissed, skin becomes light and pale:
innocent.
I don't know why that word comes to mind.

Innocence. It's another word. Perhaps a meaningless one. A zero on a scale that has infinity between zero and one.
Everything aside from zero is the opposite of innocence. The guilty. The sullied. The coloured.
Only pure white can be white. If such purity exists.
But I digress.

Red eyes become blue. Small slit eyes become larger, wider…and more uncertain.
I am a plethora of uncertainty as I am.
And why does my face change so much without the mask?
Even my hair…long and yellow like the face of the moon to short strands of dark like the starless sky…

Where has the moon gone?

.

The moon goes through cycles of death and rebirth. It waxes. It wanes. It disappears. It returns.
It has a cycle that defines the nights, like the sun defines the day.

No, that is too inexact. Inaccurate. The movement of the sun defines the day, yes, but not like the night.
It travels through the sky. Starts in the east: that teasing glimmer poking its head over the mountaintop.
It dips in the west. Below the line of trees. Into the ocean of water beyond.
It defines a day within its limits and nothing more.

But the moon is not like that. It says constant in a night. Flittered by shadows. Flanked by stars.
Sometimes, it is a starless night.
And it changes, every night. A little bigger. A little smaller. A little different from the night before.
It defines days as parts of a larger whole. Something meaningful.
Every day is the same. And they repeat. Endlessly. Uselessly.

Why must the days repeat? What is to be gained from one unchanging day that another cannot offer?
The night, at least, gives the impression of time flowing within those invisible riverbanks.
Flowing somewhere.

But even the nights are slow.

.

Not much moves in the night. The days, for how unchanging they are, are full of flurries of activity.
Senseless activity. I am yet to see something accomplished with them. And neither does Cherubimon.
He is disappointed. I am indifferent. The failure of his servants means nothing to me.
They call me a servant but I am not one of them. Or, I don't call myself one of them.
Cherubimon does not call me his servant either.

It's another label. Servant. Master – I am not a master either. An observer, perhaps.
An observer watches. I see the flurry of activity in the day, but it is the night I watch, the night upon which I stand vigil.
The night…to which I converse.
The day doesn't stand around to listen. It comes and goes and returns, unchanged.
The night changes. The night pauses. It listens. It breaths.
It sings a slow enough dance that I, who cannot dance, can waltz to its tune.

.

The dance is slow. Careful. Pallid.
There is no destination, unlike the singer: that moon whose course is plotted out,
who reaches an end and a beginning and countless steps in a cycle, spaced out but repeating…
Like the day, who repeats its pilgrimage from the east to the west and then under earth…

I have no destination. I stand vigil upon the darkness: the darkness in my mind, my heart
and my world.

In the darkness are my questions. My words. My rememberings.
After a point – or before a point I suppose – I remember nothing.
This dance has long since become an endless loop like the night and the day.

I am Duskmon. I am not. I am a digimon. I am not.
Without my mask I look human. I am not. Without the human I look like a monster. I am not.
I exist. I dance in endless days and endless nights with the slowly cycling moon.
I am not nothing. I cannot be nothing.

I just don't yet know the words to describe the something that I am.