Chapter Seven
"NO!" I stand up, wings stiff, trying to drown out his voice with my own. Husky looks at me in surprise, as the book I was meant to be reading thuds to the floor. I can feel my body shaking, but the sound of my pounding heart and harsh breath enough to drown out anything else.
My heart.
My heart...
I turn and run from the room, my wings shaking. I can feel and itching around my shoulders, and recoil in horror as I see anima markings beginning to darken against my white skin. As soon as I get out of the house, I take off, my flight clumsy with dedsperation as I pump my stiff wings to lift me into the sky.
It's not fair...
I was dead...you told me to let them go...but I found them again...you lied...I hated you...
You were dead! You should still be dead! It should be my turn! GO AWAY!
what do you mean, your turn? It's my body...
I shared this body with you, since you were born! How can you say it's your body?
You told me I was making them cry.
You were. And you should have passed on. I bite my lip, hard, wanting to wrench my wings out of their sockets to get rid of the emotions coursing through me. The the taste of blood as my teeth pucture my lip only compounds the how much I have lost. My wings are darkening too now, as reality returns, I feel my own substance diminishing. I don't want to be just a shadow! Leave me alone!
I don't want to be a shadow either, I'd prefer to be dead than this.
Don't say that! You have no idea! Most of the time I cant even communicate! I'm just a pair of wings! I'm hated by the ones I save!
"I just want to be real!" two voice screamed to the Sailand sky at the same time, from the same mouth...
I curl into a ball, letting my wings catch an updraft absentmidedly, as I feel tears running down my face as the colour runs back into my body. I can't fight him anymore. I can't continue to exist....I'm not real.
I strech my wings and exult in being able to fly again, without having to struggle. I twitch slightly as i sense a +anima nearby, but dismiss it when I realise that my anima is...crying.
I hate you... I hate this... I just want to die...
But you're an Anima.
I know! I'm an anima, I'm not real, I just save the lives of children in need, and disappear when they don't need me anymore, until someone else needs me! I'm just a pair of wings! I have no colour, no substance, I don't exist, and I can't die!
What are you talking about? I was confused, my anima has never spoken like this before.
I used your body, your soul, to tie me back to this world, so that I could have a physical body, so that I could exist. What we were, that semblance, that is as near to my true form as can exist in this world. Bitter laughter echoed through my mind. but that was stupid. I don't have a name, I don't have a body, or a heart or a soul. No anima does, but then, no other anima is concious...anymore.
You don't have a name? Even as I thought it, I realised that my anima did not have a name, it had always been just that, my anima. I realise that it's whole existance must have been like the ten years since I had died. A shadow.
I don't need a name, or a body. I've been this way for hundreds of years, why change now? The voice is becoming more like I remember, cool and distant, and I realise suddenly, that there has always been a bitter note in it.
Hundreds of years?
Yes. For more than eight hundred years, I have been the messenger of death, the black angel. A shadow of what people fear most. For the last seven hundred years, I've been alone.
What do you mean? I sense the anima brush against my senses again, but ignore it.
There used to be another anima like me, a true spirit. Not just an essence. For a hundred years, we were together, even if we were separated by the world...even when we were bound into a child. I sense anima, because I could always sense her. They called her an angel, the White winged messenger, until They gave her a body, a name, they made her real, and I lost her.
An angel?
Blanca. they called her Blanca. You found her, I could have been with her again, we would have been, but your need called me back, and her body was destroyed. I don't know what happened to her.
It's my fault that she died? And now you want to die too?
Yes.
Suddenly my wings furl, and I begin to fall. I try to spread them again, but the marks on my shoulders have become faint, and the anima in my mind is curled up and distant, intent on ending its existance.