A long time ago, when she still had time for such trivial whimsies, she would gaze up into the sky at the mountainous clouds, majestic and imposing, spiraling high into the heavens, and dream of flying. She would sweep her hands through the air and pretend her fingers were running through the damp swirls of white and gray, and she would close her eyes and feel it, wet and creamy like milk, whipped to a froth, or cool and dusty, fine grained sand between her fingers. She lived in those clouds, far away from the echoing quiet of her world and the empty, dark hallways of her home.
But that was when she was very young, before her whole purpose turned from quieting the rumbling of her stomach, to fighting, and (most importantly) winning. And she dreamed of death and blood on her fingertips, a bright, bright red fading to a dingy brown as it dried in the beds of her nails. (And they weren't nightmares.) A determination burned behind her eyes, hotter than the fires of hell, and any that clouds swept past her gaze dispersed in the dry heat.
And for a long time she was angry. An undefinable, indescribable anger that would sneak up and wrap it arms around her throat and choke her until she awoke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and shivering. And one day, out of the blue, she realized that the loneliness had caught her again, and she gripped the knife she always kept by her side so tightly that her skin ripped with a smooth, slow delicacy. And yet it didn't hurt half so much as the pain in her chest as she realized that fighting wasn't enough.
So she tried to smile, to hide her weapons behind her back,and not imagine throwing each one at them, and not see her toys wedged deep into their flesh with perfect clarity in the recesses of her mind.
But still they skirted around her, the orphan with knives always clenched in her fists, and mouth always turned into a half hearted smile... Except for the two boys, the quiet one and the loud, who ignored her and smiled back, respectively. The loud one would clamp his hand around her shoulder and squeeze, and a warmth would flood through her, and she would be laughing, out of nowhere, a grin on her face that didn't hurt like the others, that didn't feel so wrong. And the quiet one would look into her eyes with a cold, dark will that calmed her nerves and hardened her resolve. And soon they were not the boys, they were her boys.
And her boys grew into men, strong, strong men, that ran, and leaped, and fought with her. And she grew from a girl, to something much more wise, that laughed that her childish dreams, and how they were oh, so frightening, all that time ago, and holds her weapons between her calloused fingers and sees what they are really for, and sees what she's really for. She is not so dependent on the kill now, to define her, to prove her worth (to prove her existence). Now she lives. With them.
And she jumps into the sky, feels the clouds brush past her skin, and it are just as she imagined. No. It (life) is so much better.