Waiting for the End
LIGHT
The Itch
It is with agonizing slowness that it begins to piece itself back together. For time uncountable, all that it is aware of is the light and warmth and comfort that surrounds itself. It takes so long for it to find the trickle of knowledge that lets it understand 'female', and so much longer to apply the designation to herself.
The disconnect between that and the next thought throws her for a time; as the seed of knowledge takes root and a vine works it's way possessively through her, she wonders if this is what it feels like to be swaddled. Now she has three thoughts, confusing and tangled together: This is me! I am female! O but knowledge grows like a vine 'round a tree! and The child is wrapped in linens and cloth for warmth.
She is grows like a weed, she thinks. The vine around the tree as pieces fit themselves together in the child, but she doesn't need to be wrapped in linen. The longest day has come seventeen times since she was a seedling small enough to be swaddled... and now she has four tangled thoughts. What is day, and why is it long...?
Though these pieces of the past only result in confusion, she clings to each one with teeth and thorns. She won't let them go. She can't let them go; these are the fragments of understanding, these are the fragments of herself. These tiny scraps of being are all that remain of who she had once been.
In time her tenacity and greed pay off. Her name is Serenity. Her name is Nál. Possibly even Laufey. Yes, Laufey is comfortable and warm, a favorite blanket. Nál is the familiar wrap of silks and fur, the sounds of home. Serenity... Serenity is right. It is weight and duty and love so brilliant that when it dances with the light all she can see is star speckled infinity.
All three are hers, and she is all three. Each piece is a fragment of her whole, she decides, although it is less a decision and more a remembrance. She remembers Serenity and Laufey and where they had come from. Nál is still a mystery to her, but as she remembers the other two her memories come faster and faster. It is the sickening lurch and spin of pagan travel, and she rests heavily on the light to steady herself.
With each spin she learns a little more of herself, and the light burns a fraction more. The warmth fluctuating now; at times it burns as though she stands in the midst of a bonfire, and she is burning up from within. At other times, the sensation is more akin to being buried in an avalanche; it is all ice and snow and a cold so deep she feels her vines wilt and shatter beneath it. This is the definition of agony, she thinks, but her suffering is proof.
To live is to suffer, so to suffer was to live. She clung to that, and she knew.
She was Laufey. She had been crippled, but she had forged on despite it.
She was Serenity. Dead by her own hand, but determined enough to see her love again.
She was Nál. The last memory clicked into place and she called the light by name.
"GABRIEL!"
in all honesty, I confused the hell out of myself writing this one.