guard.

WRONG

ACT I, SCENE I

wrong.

Kanashi wakes up to white, white, white.

Walls and tiles and chairs painted blandly; everything is white and silver, dipped in monotony. It smells like antiseptic―like the place she died in. She does not like the taste of her own death on her tongue. Bitter and sour and something that feels like misery. Everything stings, ire and fear like adrenaline rush through the veins she no longer has. She wants to spit it out; to get rid of the chills crawling along his spine and legs. She's been like this, somewhere, not on her Earth, not with her brother. In the future, or in other places past. I wish she saw a different tale, mayhaps of a girl that loves guitar and has ears that spill her heartbeat into boomboxes.

Someone is wailing, so she breaks away. She doesn't know how long she's been like this, frozen in place midway-real and full of holes.

Maybe this is heaven, her Aniki had always told her she was going to go here when the dwindling warmth in her chest died like the end of a concert. A cacophony of brilliance cast out of a last breath. She remembers something, not why, though. (Where is her Aniki? He was there, at the end of her bed, and he was breaking. She needs to fix it.)

The walls are white like winter-cold. Kanashi has always gotten cold easily, and she feels frost in her veins. This is different, though; this cold is clinical. Like something is missing, she doesn't know what though. (It's gone, gone, gone―)

Her reality twists, and she wants to shiver and shake and feel frost so cold it jolts her out of her daze. It never comes; but at least now she's lucid.

Abandon ship or drown; fight or flight. Someone is screaming next to her―suddenly, everything is not white. Or perhaps there is now a gradient, silvers and blacks, blue and brown eyes, vermilion splattered like a signature across a canvas of hair―the other is still monochromatic, whites and light shades of silver, disconcerting the blood etched to the child in her arms. It's a burn scar that lines him in crimson red, dragging from his arms and legs, stapled to his jaw, cried around his eyes (markings from days that paranoia does not allow sleep, stained in deep purple). They will marr too far into the future to remember, but Kanashi does not know this; she never will. Until the day he is gone and the clinical chill in her heart aches as strong as the day she died.

It's white, it's white and cold and burning, frostbitten air hangs from the glaciers of tension in the room. The woman has a sad smile (she thinks her brother used to smile a little like that, she thinks her sister ought to have smiled like that, because her Aniki never smiled on his own) and she bares her own. A flat mimic―the twist on her lips is different.

Fear is something Kanashi knows like the back of her hand. It's like the cold, the natural instinct to flinch at the sound of shouting, or of someone getting angry (or the lulling of the sea, though she's not quite sure why though, she doesn't remember Imoto).

It crawls on her back; little black spiders with red tattoo's bitten into the ridge of her spine, gaudy fingers twist and her eyes well up (or do they? Can she even cry?) with fear enough for her to remember something she'd rather not (something to do with Aniki, he's crying―that can't be right, Aniki doesn't cry ever, he can't―and he's red, red, red). The man with boody hair and too-bright eyes makes Kanashi cold, makes her tremble event though she isn't real; even though she's been dreaming for who knows how long. She doesn't like him.

The woman gives Kanashi something unhinged, something she's missing (but not the thing she's missing that she needs, because she's never getting that back it's gone, gone―) but never had. Maybe it's just that Kanashi is a hiraeth. A lost soul (gone, gone, gone) roaming through the planet with blind eyes, watching the breathtaking sights.

The man with blood spattered over his hair looks at the child with greed in his eyes, diamond-hard blue and split ends; he ignores the cold spots on his back. Taking the boy in his hands, away from the Woman Of White, he grins and Kanashi sees another face atop his. Black hair and eyes dancing with ire and sadism -- she is not enough they say. There was someone else, before. With two different eyes and straight hair that looks far too much like a woman she has never seen before.

It's a ghost in the wind and ashes covered in salt-water and the soft dirl of an empty graveyard. Heavens hands ache and stretch over burnt crops and this little boy comes from it. He is of fire and snow, of ashes and the rain that sweeps it away. This child is of fire and ice, splitting image of both him mothers love and his fathers hate. His skin will burn to nothing when he is not but a child and the angels will sing him the song of life when his father tries to kill him (and fails).

This is a terrible story, if you would like to read about happy endings and lovers that end in tragedy, exit these pages. I have slipped past and seen the future this little boy of burning skin and cool hearts - it is a terrible tale. Soaked in hurt and hurt, there is no love for boys like these. These sad boys, the crying and wanting and unloved boys. The ones that stare up at the stars because the moon has no eyes to bear witness to the tragedy of them. The I'm better of dead god, please kill me boys. Dipped in harsh words that stink worse than the bile licking their tongues as they hold fire to their bodies and relish to the touch.

The boy screams in his mother's arm, one day he will have lost the ability.

END SCENE