my definition is my words
Chapter 3

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Somewhere along the lines, I have changed.
The moon no longer sings to me. The dark no longer calls; instead,
it is the light straining its tendrils cold to touch my hand, pierce my shoulder, caress my shoulder
and makes me turn towards that blinding light.

Sometimes, I see a shadow in that blinding light.
Sometimes it feels familiar. Often it is just a fleeting nightmare that bids me stir
and I wish it would leave me alone, if only for peace of mind
but it does not. It calls; it continues to call.

.

I find the source of that light. Finally. That boy, that warrior with the spirit
so different to mind. At first they seem inconsequential things: all of them
but this one burns. As I lift my sword to strike him down, he burns
like a fire clinging to the sole that tries to stamp it out.

It burns, and my eyes and something inside burn along with it.
I feel like a moth trying to draw close to this drunken flame but my wings
are becoming tatters, and ash, yet I must still –

Where is that me who stared at the moon and the slow moving world?
Where is that slow moving world?

It has started to go oh so fast and I cannot keep up. I can only give chase
and yet every move seems to leave me more confused than the last.

Here, I acknowledge the confusion, and the want.

I want to know why this light, that boy, burn me so.
I want to know why the world has suddenly started moving
and without me.

.

I let my eyes readjust. I search for the darkness and though I struggle
I find it, wrapped around myself like a stifling blanket. Like a winter's night
that has suddenly grown too warm – and I wonder why that thought should come to me at all
when there's been no winter yet that I've seen in this world.

Or maybe it was winter, before, and now this is spring, full of pollen and too bright suns…
again, why am I thinking these thoughts? Pollen… I feel I know the word
and yet it is something I've never seen, never come across…

And never has become a remarkably short time, and darkness longer, stretching out
into this undefined, unknown time

And I wonder if there was something in there, something important, something my body clung to
even though my mind forgot.

And that was a fire even more painful than that boy of light.

I needed to find him. And…
I needed to find out what was in the darkness that I'd lost.

.

I found him. I searched. Those memories he clung to so desperately told me nothing
and yet they tore at my heart. I still didn't understand and that fire continued to painfully smoulder.

I needed answers, and yet they weren't forthcoming. Just that burning light
that only burned more, as he spoke, as he lit up, as he fought –

Eventually I couldn't stand it anymore. I fled.
And he was the one chasing me.

.

He wanted answers from me. I almost laughed. I didn't have them.
I'd been the one seeking answers that, apparently didn't have.

He asks me a question. Such a simple question: who are you? But I can't answer him
because, now, I'm even more confused. He says I'm his warrior, the prince of darkness
but for the first time I can't believe him. There's something else. Something different
or something more. What does a digimon have to do with a human beyond this impending war?
But there was something else. I knew there was something else.
I'd felt it when we fought. I felt it when I hunted. When I was chased.

There was something,
something…

.

So that was what it was.

The memories came suddenly. Painfully. I'd fled without even realising
into the darkness in which I'd been born, that I remembered so strongly
even though other memories ran over them now, creating a murky grey.

I wanted someone to tell me it was a lie.
I wanted someone to tell me it was the truth.

They were malleable then. Hot metal liquid ready to be moulded into shape
and moulded they were, at first, to the only one who existed beyond the grey –

And then it was shattered. Broken. Forced into the correct shape, the correct skin
that person who I should have been

But hadn't.