The Discarded

Alone Chapter 8 - 4

"I don't have anything better than school clothes and the jacket you gave me." He wouldn't fit in at the party and everyone knew it. The jacket was a fantastical piece, a thing of magical wonder. But wrapping shit in tinsel didn't turn it into a present.

Kali smiled. "I think we've had this discussion before." Remembering the first time he'd escorted her; he gave a nod of acceptance. "I'll meet you at the willow tree," she said, gathering her harem with a curt gesture.

The others peeled off, each quick stepping it to get in the hours needed to get ready. Cesare didn't have any clothes to set out, perfume to put on, or make up to agonize over. He'd set aside a uniform that was clean and ironed, but that was all he had.

Taking the Serpens Lacum steps at a leisurely pace, he noted the eyes that tracked him. Tomorrow he'd fight a monster born into power, trained to kill, given every tool to make it the best it could be. The kids knew he'd be dead by this time tomorrow. There was no way a loser could win against a burning star in the firmament in the void blackness of the Umbrae Lunae.

They didn't know Cesare was birthed by slaughters fertile womb. Killers weren't born from luxury, indulgence, and ease. Gurkha, Spartans, Samurai, and Zulu were birthed in pain, blood, and bone aching misery. Fashioned through cruelty, created from hate, butchered into grotesque abominations of twisted instincts. Only a person who'd survived a cauldron of agony could look at killing as a way of life. Civilized men believed in right and wrong, killers knew there were only victims and the strong who fed on them.

A killer was used to fighting for every scrap. You had to have that familiarity with violence, an intimacy born of living with it every day. When you bleed just to live, you learned anyone could be beaten. Enduring strength's born out of agony; it's forged in the fires of torment.

The kids parted as he walked the hallway to his room. A solemn silence held them, an undercurrent of gleefulness, barbed, vicious satisfaction that he'd finally get what he deserved. A few watched mournfully, but they were tucked away in little corners and out of the way shadows.

Taking up his clothes, he headed into the bathroom, yells, arguments, and half real fights falling still at his approach. Ducking their heads, the kids finished quickly, leaving him alone in the room. Under the showers spray, he threaded his fingers through shoulder length hair. Darker than brown but not black, threaded with scarlet only ever seen in shadows, it was a statement of his change. In a normal time and place, the sudden change in color would be worth thinking about. But when you shared your soul with letters born before time, and a blade designed to kill your best friends, hair color didn't amount too much.

The night reclaimed the campus in a rush of bitter cold. Leaning against the willow tree, he couldn't pull his eyes off the stars, silent and frozen in their eternal darkness. Every star a testament to the loneliness of existence, fading lights from suns long since burned out in forgotten parts of the universe. If we're lucky, we leave a flickering light, a mere shade of ourselves for future generations to see by. More often, the darkness closes around us, extinguishing our petty lives, leaving no trace of our dreams, or struggles. There was a hateful comfort in that, a melancholy lesson that many a failure had found waiting for them on dark nights.

The slow dragging of fabric heralded her arrival. Materializing out of the dark, the harem were shades, mere ghosts with grim faces. She slid out of the night as if born from it, stygian blackness holding to her. He'd gotten used to her in faded jeans and snarky tee-shirts, clothes molded to her petite body. In their time together, Cesare had never seen her in anything like this.

Swathed in the skin of midnight, she walked under the stars. If a word had to be put to its magnificence, only kimono would fit. Created out of sumptuous fabrics layered over each other, she was the night sky when it was black as hearts despair, the shade of triumphant darkness over the diseased light of day. Long sleeves swept down in raven's wings hiding her hands in abyssal folds. Only her face could be seen, pale and doll like in its perfection, hair flowing down her back in a shining river of sable beauty.