When I'd been a child I had loved sleeping in the open air, under the beautiful glistening stars that had guided me night for night. Somehow they guarded and protected me. I didn't know why and I didn't even know how they'd manage that. But somehow you're feeling more confident about things you've made up yourself as long as you're a child.

And I had really missed the stars at the academy. I had really missed them.

I hadn't exchanged a word with Koschei after the incident with Ms Reprics. I avoided going into my room and failed to appear or refused to attend several subjects, especially those where I would have been forced to see either Ms Reprics or Koschei. Though with Koschei it was of no use; he was everywhere around me.

So, I tried to evade the issue by not sleeping in my room anymore. I slept under the stars, watching them night after night with tears in my eyes, wondering what I had become.

I wouldn't want to be seventeen again, seriously not. Even if it wouldn't be on Gallifrey, seventeen is a hell of an age. You're too old to be naive and too young to be adult or at least nearly grown up. It's neither youth nor adolescence, though it can be described with one word: terrible. Being seventeen was simply terrible.

I'd never felt that bad in my whole life ever again. And I was in a war.

I knew that Koschei was still occupying my room. So I had no choice but to abandon my books and my belongings to their fate and wouldn't set foot in my four walls ever again. Or at least I hoped I never had to do so.

I couldn't stand the sight of Koschei. I simply couldn't.

I didn't know why. He'd hurt me. Of course he'd hurt me.

Life with Koschei had always been about getting hurt by him.

At first I'd thought that I had felt abashed because he'd hurt me intentionally and I hadn't been able to either realise it before it had been too late or manage to struggle against it and shake him off. Though I had probably hit him more often that night than I had done it in my whole life ever before, and definitely more determined, I hadn't managed to keep him from poking fun at me for being weak and inferior; and I hadn't been able to discourage him from poking me in general, likewise.

I sighed and stared into the gleaming sky.

I lay on the academy's roof and my gaze had drifted off, far away into the never ending, endlessly spreading space.

The sky was alight. It had burst into bloom, if you could have said that about a sky.

At least to me it looked as if the sky had been ablaze with lights; it had been new born and spread its colourfully shimmering mist across the universe.

In a few days there would be a supernova, I assumed. But due to the fact that my books and scripts on astronomy were still trapped inside my room, along with those books which had mainly focused on the topic of astrology, I hadn't been able to look up this spectacular celestial phenomenon.

And I believed in stargazing. I believed in reading the future in stars; I believed in stars.

Koschei had been wrong. He'd always been wrong, all these years. Life wasn't about knowing what to do with other things. It was about knowing other things; or getting to know them. A constellation didn't have to have any meaning at all. Maybe it had found meaning for itself, but I didn't care about that. Nothing had to mean anything to you; you weren't supposed to use and abuse things as you pleased; though Koschei got away with it very well.

All that had mattered to him the past years since our childhood had been how I could have been useful; in what ways he could use me; how I could make his boring and uninteresting life more delightful.

For Koschei life was a game. A game, everything was nothing more but a game and he was ready to play. And he was so playful. He'd always wanted to play. Play at fate, for instance. Or playing with his toys, his beloved toys. Life was a game for Koschei and all living creatures around him were toys. Nothing more but toys. And I was one of his favourite.

Life was a game. It was either win or lose.

And worst of all: he cheated all the time.

I shuffled a bit and rested my head against one of the chimneys. I no longer feared falling off the roof. I guess sometimes I'd even wished for accidently tripping and plummeting. If it at least looked like an accident I wouldn't have been forced to leave the academy after regenerating; suicide wasn't what you would have called highly appreciated. In fact individuals that had dared to take their own life, which was usually nothing more but a very bad attempt to watch blood spurt out of your body or have a quiet different look at reality if you managed to achieve a broken neck, had usually been punished and expelled from normal life due to the defilement of the race.

And those who'd succeeded in killing themselves hadn't been buried; it was thought to be terrible bad luck to return something to the earth that had obviously neither wanted to stay on it nor had the earth wanted to take it back.

Anyway, it required failing while achieving what you wanted. Or achieving while failing. I didn't know the difference. But I didn't know about suicide; which was a strange thing to think. I felt as if it had been over for me and it certainly didn't feel like the worst had been over; it hadn't even really started.

I had looked at suicide with the eyes of an innocent child, at least with still being seventeen. To me it was nothing but a short cut of life. Well, as long as you didn't succeed in accidently actually killing yourself. Then it was obviously over.

And I guess I never really wanted to end my life like this. I never wanted to end it at all. That's just something that could be considered as being natural for every being. You don't understand life. You don't know when it starts and you definitely don't know when or where it ends. But you know that you want to keep on trying.

You have no choice. There is no easy way out.

Killing yourself meant regenerating. It meant a re-start, a new attempt, if you wish.

Succeeding at taking your own life would have been stupid. This way you wouldn't get a second chance.

I sighed again and searched the sky.

It was a strange feeling lying awake at night while wondering if I'd get to get eighteen and still being myself. I never knew if I'd reach that age before regenerating for the first time.

And I felt stupid for even considering it.

I didn't want to die. I didn't want to fall off the roof, I tried to convince myself. I simply wanted the bad impacts on my life to disappear.

But they wouldn't. They would simply refuse to vanish.

They were here to stay.

Or to sit, to be more specific.

In fact they were sitting right behind me and lowering their hands on my shoulders in order to administer me the shock of my life.

Koschei had found me.

And he was out to play.