Fifteen

Slowly, ashes rose, falling, tickling the frozen earth.

His anatomically incorrect lips pulled into a strange smile. You could hear the cries below, the explosions, the world breaking. His body shook in silent laughter. This was funny, beyond funny, this was hilarious.

Run, he breathed, looking over the ledge, gently he fell. Flowing over the landscape.

♦

Laughter, whispering, playing.

Shh, Mother cooed, Sleep now, Fifteen.

♦

In the world of white, children played, they enjoyed life, in this hide away. This was a place no one knew of, children of variety of different race and origin played together in the white meadow. In this land of no colour, there was one child, a child born of the lily, a child born of the Mother. Fire for eyes, apple blossom skin with his angelic mop of hair.

He was strange, but the other children varied only slightly. White hair spouted from their scalps.

The adults were stranger then, white clothes and masks. Laughing gently as they played, eyes daring to focus, to adore Just to harden into an emotionless glaze. They played until they slept, and slept until they roused for meal.

♦

The ash didn't hurt, the embers licked and caressed his skin, lovingly stroking him as a lost lover would, he loomed over the destruction. White could be seen through the dark, and this was feared.

Run.

♦

They came, the dark creatures, destroying the light from which they had believed was the only way. They ate away the happy and destroyed the souls of the young. The white land slowly morphed into a dark abyss from which only screams and torment could be heard. Chemicals rearranged, wires entwined, metal forged. Perfection

The gentle creatures of the white meadow slowly formed into dark beasts, children of broken spirit, distraught and destroyed through this creature. No longer where they what they would have been, but an abomination instead.

♦

White flowed. Sweet whisper of white scorching the dank place, leaving brittle clarity to the land.

♦

They grew, slowly, forming into amazement for those dark things, Uncreatures, deathish, insults. They played new games, these children, graver games, death games. Play, they say. Treat and pamper given to the winner, and the worse than death to the other

Slowly, slowly, the insanity grew. The bizarre craze installed itself into the gentle children of the dark, the slow smiles gone, replaced by a crazed snarling grin, ripping and tearing their mouths, slowly from them things formed. Fangs protruded, horns crowned, claws grew. The once children fell from humanity to the darker nature of those from which they had grown. Markings covered them, numbers.

♦

A bird, red embedded itself into him, telling him everything, giving him nothing

Mother...

♦

He was strange. It did not change him as the others. He was half, half of what was once and what was now. Slowly he was tainted by red, it ate away from him, changed him as the others did not. He would not be lost in their insanity, but instead, he grew.

These creatures, the ones that destroyed, claimed creation, intelligence was boasted. They were but pigs in the cycle. The once children grew to nothing but beasts, begging for death, for themselves and those who they give presence. He alone... He alone was alive, he could remember the meadow, the place of their growth, which was now but a lagoon. He saw, and thought, surrounded by less than swine, creatures of death and destruction, the creatures of disgust in pure form.

He breathed their air, ate their food, bunked in their beds. Soon the insanity crept into him.

♦

Run

♦

It ate away at him, he knew well. He must leave, get away from this mold ridden world, this abyss of grotesque. The beasts snarled, it whimpered, fate sealed. The smaller Once Child cried to them. Hunger destroyed them further, the screams could be heard from the hide away, the still white. Hardest he tried, he could not help but rench. He tried to hide from them, to protect himself from their infectious insanity, the virus of mob.

He had once been infected, his body had ended riddled with fever caused by flesh breaking, only to have what would have come from those wounds retract. It had left his mind clear, where the others had submitted to the pain, he had fought. He was not that of the Once Children, but not of the White. He was some freak, an oddity, the one forgotten, a failed experiment.

They left him to die, and he had wanted to die. He had crawled deep into a hole, and from the hole he had fallen further, to what he might have thought the centre of creation. Where he fell was the last of the White, the light of his childhood It had kissed him, caressed him, pulled him from fever, but even that only pulled him half from the insanity that was etched into his soul. This place became his home, although he could not stay, he hid with the White, which in turn for his secritivity cradled him.

♦

Fifteen, she yawned from the earth, begging, crying for him, Do not go, I will forever be empty.

♦

Red had infected him, as white was the colour of Beasts. He alone wore this strange colour and in turn they cackled.

It sang, sweet melody fell from it's beak, it swept past as though destruction was not underfoot. The Red Robin sang from the trees, looking down on the Once White with simple curiosity. Watching as the creature emerged from the depths of Tera, of Life, Earth. It sang it's complex tale through the whistles of the wind. The Once Children could not hear it's beauty for their lostliness was deafening, but he could. His heart yearned for that tale, so he followed it into the world and from there he flew.

♦

They did not see the red, it skitted across the sky through the air, into the dark, it flew fast and faster still. It grew into a blur of light, sonic destruction death and chaos lost within its faze it screamed through the open wind as the White died in the mist. He sang, it sang, They sang, the world became a melodicinal creation by the land and the death was once the light and from the Once White came the lily but just as suddenly the world stopped.

And the song began again.

♦

Quietly he sat, branching in a far off way trees still green, untouched by the Once White, breathing the musk of the earth, creatures grew and blew against his flesh. Air was fresh and deep alas the soft of this place was to be tainted, as he had. Red wings gliding through the air, hiding from Uncreatures, those who would steal his freedom Fleeting happiness and joy filled him but through his momentary happiness came dark despair.

The cackles sang through the dusk, they followed him through the night but no other would have known what was that he was running from. He fell from the dark and into the light, creatures not unlike him fell from around, gleaming in the dark, Once White, surrounding what was left of light.

♦

Deep and damaged he lay. Light markings from his escape shown behind him, he, himself, covered in gouges. He soon would die, lying there. Glimmer of hope no longer existed.

Gentle powder covered him, white hid the red, encased him within the accursed uncolour. He, numb, breathed the damp cold, inhaling the White, exhaling red. His breath crystallized on air.

♦

Laughter, whispering, playing.

Shh, Mother cooed, Sleep now, Fifteen.

♦

Bolting forward, the Child awoke from the dark abyss of White.