Welcome to Gaia! ::

Seruna was born in a lab, under the care of humans for as long as she could remember. Her mother, swoll’n and tired from laying her eggs, and her father, who had sustained life-threatening injuries from an ibex many years before, scarred and without fire, had been easily overtaken by these humans. Nearly the entire nest, four eggs, had perished without their mother’s warmth, but somehow, Rune had managed to survive under impossible conditions. Her birth alone gave them reason to test her; how had she, a female, and a small one at that, beat the odds and broken through her egg? They wanted to use her strength, enhance it, and make her into a weapon.

Kept in a small cage, she could only just make out the silhouettes of her parents in their large, stone cages on the far wall of the lab. When she was young, she would press herself to the bar, crying out for her mother, whining in distress or hunger, but she was quickly broken of that. Most days she would simply lay at the back of the cage, waiting for the next injection, the next test. Until one day she watched two men enter her mother’s cage and heard her cry out in pain, writhing against the confines of the cage as many humans crowded around, shouting. Rune sounded off loudly, calling out to her father to help her mother, and when more humans approached her cage, she breathed jets of brilliant blue flame from her jaw; it was the first time she discovered her fire. Eyes wide with wonder at her own power, she barely had time to make use of her newfound strength before she was shot with a tranquilizer powerful enough to kill a horse. She crashed to the floor, and when she awoke, she found nothing but darkness.

She was trapped, blind with nothing to see, cold stone walls surrounding her at every turn. They left her in there for days, and when the light finally poured from the entryway, she was broken once again. A group of humans, armed with sedatives, led her, not to her original cage, but the one her mother had once inhabited. The moment she entered, Rune knew what had happened; their tests had killed her mother, the scent of death had seeped into the stone. Enraged, body taken over by the power that these humans had kindled which had long lay dormant within her, she began to attack, and kill, every man and woman in sight. She set all the machines on fire, bent bars of cages, broke locks, cracked tanks containing god knows what, and when everything threatened to collapse, she escaped. She tested out her wings for the first time in her life, and she flew until she could no longer hold her own wait, and only then did she finally sleep.

For days she slept, and upon rising, she realized her memory was gone, but in her claws she held a piece of metal and two scales. She met a young woman who promised to take care of her, help her to get back on her feet; Ishme was her name, and with the help of some friends, she fashioned the hunk of metal into a beautiful locket which contained the only remnant Rune had of her past life. It was this piece of her history that continued to plague her thoughts, and threatened to make her remember the unspeakable horrors she had once committed.

My family was pretty normal. It was just my mother, my father, and I, all living under one modest roof, with a multitude of squabbles here and there, but none too serious; we disagreed over silly things like any other family. I must admit my father was never quite the loving type, he was always a bit rough, set in his ways, and determined to make his son tough, even though I was happy to just do everything for the people around me. He did not pretend to understand me, but he left me well enough alone, and despite the fact our little time together was not quite as special as most would hope, I thought nothing of it. I had my friends, my two best friends, who stole me away from any uncomfortable family time and treated me with love and affection beyond that which most people experience in a lifetime. Of course, they were not exactly the type to hug me and hold my hand every second, but the affection was implied in the way they treated me and respected who I was without abusing our closeness. Even then I was overly helpful, always looking to do things for others and make their day, though at that point, I was more cheerful, gentle, and willing to listen; not so much falling all over myself to be everyone’s quiet and obedient servant. People still tended to take advantage of whatever kindness I showed them, but Lynn and Caden were always there to make sure my services were not excessively abused. They looked out for me, and protected what dignity I had left, and that was good enough for me.

Caden, with his gruff personality, hot-headed nature, and loud, commanding voice, was always the opposite of the gentle, seductive, and unassuming Lynn, but, as they say, “opposites attract.” Yes, my two best friends in the entire world were a couple, and, if I can be honest with you, they were the strangest couple one ever did see. Caden never really liked to flaunt their relationship in public, though if anyone tried to make a move on Lynn, it would take five men to hold him back from beating the snot out of them. However, Lynn had always wanted to show off, to reveal the fact she had claimed him, not that anyone was exactly jumping at the chance to be with Caden, but it was something she took joy in; smothering the boy she loved in affection too intense for the eyes of the public. That was what they argued about most of the time, her wish that he could be someone else for a little while, and his wish that she would understand that while he was madly in love with her, he should not need to stoop so low as to display it in front of everyone for the meaning to get across. Let’s just say, they tended to argue a lot. The only problem with that was, as I bared witness to the same argument over and over again, the wanting that I had fostered so long for Lynn only increased more and more. I wanted her more than I could ever admit, and Caden, the person who had her right in his grasp, kept allowing her to slip away, kept taking her love for granted. How I wished he would just change for her, but I knew he never would; he was not the type to take orders from anyone.

There was one day in particular I will always remember; one fight that started it all. It was late in the day when it happened, on the way home from a party of some sort, where Lynn, drunk beyond belief, had climbed into Cadens lap and purred to him seductively, feeding him some of her rather explicit lines, and attempting to act on her words, right in front of everyone. Overreacting a tad, Caden grabbed her and began to drag her towards the door, grumbling angrily about how she must really be trying to piss him off, which somehow turned into a rant about her drinking habits. She was upset, confused, and by the time we had reached the car, Caden having stopped to yell at me to get my a** in the damned vehicle, really, extremely, pissed off, which did not surprise me with how she felt about being repressed by anyone, let alone her boyfriend. They argued the entire way home, but I hardly noticed; I had, by that time, fine-tuned the art of blurring their words to mere background noise. When we reached my house, Lynn was so upset that she stormed out after me, and yelled that she would find another way home, at which point I was forced to step in and support her drunken body, so she did not fall flat on her face in the next few steps. Caden was enraged, but he dared not leave until I gave him a nod that said I would help her find a way home, at which point he slammed on the accelerator and flew out of my driveway, probably headed for empty streets instead of his own apartment. I took Lynn inside so that she could calm down and assist me in figuring out how to get her home, but by the time we sat down on the couch together, she had exploded into tears. I held her head tight against my chest, and hushed her quietly, wishing I was better equipped for dealing with this kind of thing. When she finally lifted her head, I saw something strange in her eyes, and in one quick movement, she leaned forward to kiss me.

All that wanting I had held inside for so long spilled out after a moment of shock, and I kissed her with an intensity I had never known, but before I could show her with my lips all the passion and love I felt for her, she pulled away. Her face was horrified, ashamed, and, above all, sad. She kissed me out of frustration, but it was then that she realized that even a kiss like that meant more to me than all the stars in sky; I was more hopelessly devoted to her than she could have ever known. Years later, as I thought back on this moment of pure disgrace, I realized that I had always been the type of boy she wanted; the kind, gentle lover, happy to flaunt my love and shower my beloved in attention and affection, anything that would please her. However, I also realized that I never was, and never would be, the boy that she loved; that spot was forever reserved for Caden. At that time though, the only revelation I had was that I needed to get her home and quick, or else suffer through hours of tension I would never have survived; luckily, the first person she phoned was right down the road, and seemed to have nothing better to do anyways.

Lynn spoke to neither of us that night. The next morning we had planned a trip with some other friends to the movies, and despite how weird we all felt about being together, we followed through, knowing we would be suspect to intense questioning if we didn’t. When Lynn and Caden picked me up, things were deathly silent, and I assumed they had already been that way for quite a while, but at least no one felt the need to make awkward conversation. That is, until Caden got frustrated with the silence and started to tell Lynn how sorry he really was, promising that if she would only give him some time, maybe he could-She couldn’t handle it anymore, she had never been able to keep a secret, especially one that made her feel so guilty in the presence of the boy she loved so dearly. Everything that happened between us came pouring out of her mouth in a barely comprehensible string of words, after which she apologized profusely as tears began to fill her eyes. She had hardly finished, and already Caden’s uncontainable rage made him whip around to slash and grab at me with his hands while simultaneously stomping down on the accelerator and allowing the wheel to swing wildly in the opposite direction. Lynn hardly had time to scream, Caden barely had time to think, before our car smashed into a tree at 100mph.

Caden had never been one for safety; he had always thought himself too tough for all that nonsense. So it was no surprise that on that day he was not wearing a seatbelt, nor had he ever checked his air bags to make sure they worked. The medical examiners said that this caused him to fly through the windshield, shattering the glass, and like his car, come to rest after smashing into the tree. He died instantly. Lynn was not so lucky. Her seatbelt could not catch her before her skull slammed against the already splintered glass, and when it finally did, the violent push of her body against it ripped open both her abdomen and neck. She bled out slowly, painfully, that is, if the first impact did not knock her unconscious. Many times the idea that as she laid dying, Lynn glimpsed the image of her beloved, already dead and bleeding, laying on the hood in front of her has kept me awake at night, hoping with all my heart and soul that she did not blame herself. Surely if she had seen that, she would have cursed herself a thousand times; that was just who she was, and how deeply torn she had been over her own actions. I knew the truth. Everything was my fault. My wanting, my need to make her mine, caused her to seek comfort in me; to commit a crime against my best friend. I still wish she would have chosen me, still wish I could have made have made her love me somehow, and that puts me at fault for all that has happened. Even more so when you realize that I walked away from it all.

When Caden had first set his eyes on me, my immediate reaction was to unbuckle my seatbelt and force myself into the farthest corner of the car. As we slammed into the tree, my curled up body flew into the back of Caden’s seat, and I was knocked out instantly, falling into the small resting place beneath my feet. When I awoke, I felt an aching throughout my body, but what hit me hardest was a searing pain around my eye. No one knew what caused it, but I sensed it was there to represent all that had happened to me. A few weeks later, when the quiet whisperings I heard after the accident turned into loud, argumentative roars that blocked out every other noise around me, my father told me the scar was a curse that had brought demons into my body. He spent a long time trying to beat the voices out of me, but eventually he expelled me from his home; frustrated and disgusted by who I had become. All I had left was the conversations in my head between two voices I had always known and loved; people whose lives I had destroyed.