over the ocean outcast with nowhere to go a brighter forecast, new winds will blow a storm is drawing near it calms and the air is clear waste my youth chasing kites i know will blow out of my hands
- chasing kites, iamamiwhoami Prologue - To whom it may concern She’d been watching him for days but it could have been lifetimes; she wasn’t sure any more. The days blended into months into years into …. Forever? She wasn’t sure. It had been a long time since she rested. A long time since she had any sense of stability and certainty in her life. They were across the street in an outdoor cafe; a place they frequented most Saturdays. It was a quaint place, the kind with 10 dollar lattes and artsy Swedish House music playing low over the speakers. It wasn’t really him that she was interested in but he’d become a fascination of sorts. When you’re hunting big game, it’s good to know what kind of prey they like. And apparently this one has fairly good taste. Tall, dark hair, handsomely middle aged, good job, kind disposition. But also nice to a fault and ready to emotionally fold in on himself at a moment's notice. Poor guy. He never stood a chance. She got up from her table at the bar across the street, paid the bartender, fixed the belt on her coat, and left on a trajectory that would carry her past their table. They all knew of each other, all the parties involved in this secret little war, but none had actually crossed paths with her; at least not in this generation. Just as she passed their table she muttered an unintelligible word in a long forgotten language and a scrap of paper seemed to float mysteriously from her trenchcoat pocket. It flitted about in the air, drifting aloft and dancing back and forth in the breeze until, ultimately, it blew directly in and hit the seated lady in the chest. A look of annoyed disgust on her face, she pulled the scrap away from her Valentino dress and looked down. In an elegant cursive script were the words To whom it may concern, You’re next. Chapter 1 - Changes “Turn and face the strange.” The upset and discomfort had been visible all afternoon. Tristan couldn’t put his finger on it but he thought it had settled over her while they were at the cafe. Not that Lilith wasn’t prone to moods or bad humor anyway, this just seemed to be deeper and longer than usual. He knew the life she came from and tried the best he could to accept her for who she was, regardless of everything that came with it. Maybe someday it will all turn around. The good in their lives pointed him in that direction the days the bad showed up. ”WHAT. THE. FUCK. DOES THAT MEAN?” he heard Lilith angrily bellow from the other room. She’d been on the phone with her sister since walked in the door. They often got into yelling fights. They had a weird dynamic that was more strained than your typical sibling rivalry. He’d never met her whole family but apparently it was quite large to hear her tell it. He’d only really met her sister once and that was only in passing on the street. He felt like it was slightly odd he had never met them, especially considering they all lived in the same city. But it was a large city and they’d only been going out for a little short of a year. Families can be different and odd and have their own eccentricities. His father had died when he was young and he had a … strained relationship with his mother so he could understand. Tristan yawned loudly and got up from the sofa. He always felt tired when she was in one of these moods. Her anger and frustration felt very draining to him. He walked over to the window and pulled back the sheers. The rain was dancing on the road outside from a passing Summer shower. He looked across the street and noticed a solitary figure standing in the bus stop enclosure. A tall lady with long, shockingly red hair; natural, not dyed. Her trenchcoat was soaked from walking in the rain, her black leather linesmen boots slick from the downpour. Their eyes locked for an impossible eternity. There was no way she could see him standing in this third floor window but yet it felt like she was looking into him somehow; reading his soul. He smirked at the thought. She actually reminded him of a woman he’d known as a child. She’d been the outcast that lived on the edge of town, the one whispered about with sneering words like whore and witch. Looking back from the perspective of his age, really just someone who had been liberated and ahead of her time by 50 years give or take. The resemblance was uncanny but this woman would have been her daughter although judging by her apparent age, more like that woman’s granddaughter. The sound of the Butler door swinging open and crashing against the wall broke the spell. He turned from the window and let the sheer swish back into place. There was a visible dent in the drywall from that happening repeatedly. He meant to fix that someday but why bother? Maybe wait for the day it stops happening? That’s what he hoped her weekly therapy was helping her through. ”Is everything okay dear,” he pleaded as he walked back over to the couch and sat down. There was always a subtle, liminal moment in all of her moods. A momentary eternity where the wind could shift either way. She’d either sit down, smile, and snuggle up against him or continue the tirade directed at her sister against him. It felt like that other metaphorical shoe always took achingly slow to drop. She hovered there, like she couldn’t decide which way the shoe would go. In that moment Tristan felt an incredible wave of exhaustion wash over him. It was as if all the rest and peace and caffeine he’d consumed that day were sucked out of him through the middle of his chest. Didn’t he sleep well last night? She smiled and sat down, relief washing over Tristan’s soul like a cold splash of water. She pulled down the hem of her Valentino dress as she curled up against him. Tristan smiled and felt her warmth against him. Their relationship was unsettling sometimes but he knew the good times outweighed the bad and that’s what counts. Right? ”My sister is an impossible fool,” Lilith smirked in her hard to place but vaguely Eastern European accent. Like Mila Kunis. Just that tinge of something Slavic back there at the end of an R. Well at least that was something he could agree with as he slowly felt his anxiety subside. Her sister was insufferable. Always calling with emergencies and anxieties at all hours of the night and getting Lilith all riled up. Tristan had often asked why she put up with her nonsense and all she’d do is shrug and say, “Eve is family. What can I do?” Tristan understood difficult family. His parents had been married for 40 years but probably hadn’t spoken 6 words to each other in the last 10. Outwardly they were the cream of the social crop in their community but inwardly it was all harsh coldness and calculation; the Kardashians pretending to be the Kennedys. His father was more concerned with money, womanizing, and his poker buddies at the Country Club than his wife and children. His mother was more concerned with how quickly she could get to the bottom of a bottle of Vodka than whether Tristan had lunch. Just wealthy enough to have all the bad habits but never enough to have a staff that could take care of the kids. His older sister had run as soon as she could find someone to take her away from the chaos. His older brother had followed in his father’s footsteps and could do no wrong. He’d just walked out the front door one day and no one noticed he was gone. He’d run as far as the money he had and his father’s social connections could carry him. Halfway across the country he’d run into Lilith at an art exhibition and they just kind of collapsed into each other like a neutron star . . . or a black hole. He still hadn’t decided which astronomical metaphor was more appropriate. It depended on the day really. I will not be equal to the fool who cherishes her own misdeed. Tristan whipped out of his reverie and looked down at Lilith curled up against him, coiled like a cat. “What did you say!?!”, the look of confusion clearly splattered across his face. Lillith looked up for her repose, equally confused, “I’ve said nothing dear. You are hearing the voices again.” But it had been there in that moment, clear as if someone had whispered it in his ear. Now that he thought about it though, it was not her voice. It had a brogue to it, clearly Celtic; Scottish or Irish. Liltingly feminine yet . . . husky. Suddenly, Tristan jumped from the couch and ran to the window and pulled back the sheer violently. But she was gone, the bus shelter was empty. Why was he so convinced it had been her? Whoever she was? Lilith was right, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that same voice in his head. It had started about two months ago on a foggy April morning. He’d been laying in bed, dreading the day like he did a lot of the time. The days had increasingly become someone else’s; work, life, Lilith. A percussive, repetitive rhythm that seemed to have no room for him anymore. He was not the musician it seemed, he was more the drumhead. It was in that moment that the voice seemed to push its way into his mind. That same voice as now; feminine, husky, Celtic. An ancient sounding voice from myth and legend. You are watched. You are protected. But you must break free yourself. It wasn’t imagined or an artifice of a waking mind. It was real. As real as someone kneeling beside him and whispering softly in his ear. It had come to him three other times before today; all with a similar message. You must break free. Break free from what? Tristan returned to the present and walked back to the couch; slumping down beside Lilith. It felt different though, laying here against her. Something had changed; had been changing since the first day hearing the voice. Distrust? Anger? Frustration? It was hard to place a finger on it. Lilith reached out to take his hand and he felt a tiredness overtake him. He hadn’t been sleeping well. Maybe it was time for a nap. As he curled up against her and let the tiredness overtake him, he saw the woman at the bus stop in his mind one more time. Why did she seem so familiar to him? Chapter 2 - Goodbye Stranger “Goodbye, stranger, it’s been nice / I hope you find your paradise” Tristan walked up out of the subway station into the dim light of a Summer sunset. The humidity was oppressive this time of year and Tristan felt like it pressed in on him like a vice. The old brownstone he and Lilith rented did not have any kind of central air conditioning and August evenings tended to be hellish hot and muggy affairs. Still, the night was clear and he was amazed to see a few stars twinkling in the sky. It was a good omen. He’d stay late again, working on finishing the Peters proposal. He lived in this dual edged world where Lilith encouraged him to be ambitious and climb for promotion at work but every time he did the things necessary to accomplish that, it turned into some sort of issue about why he had done it. Why the hell couldn’t she make her own supper for once? It was that constant, low grade tension that infected their relationship. He worked so hard to mitigate it some days that it felt like a full time job in itself. But no relationship was perfect and he knew what she had dealt with as a child. If this was all going to work, it was up to him to put in the effort to do it. And he did love her, there was just something back in that ancient, ancestral part of his limbic brain that clawed at him. Was this the way it was for everyone? This had been the way for his parents, her parents. Maybe this was just life? Tristan sighed and let his shoulders drop as he walked through the front door. Lilith was there in the living room, fixing him with a dead stare and a glass of red wine in her hand. Tristan quickly plastered a smile across his face. The smile he always hoped would placate her but never did. The absurdity of that thought struck him just then. Why did he feel the need to placate her? Wasn’t she the one that was always telling him to do everything to advance at work and live up to his full potential? Wasn’t she always the one that questioned why he didn’t make more and why they were reduced to living in a walk up when her sister had a veritable mansion on the outskirts of the city? Wasn’t she always the one constantly buying him expensive clothes and telling him to dress for the job he wanted and not the one he had? But she was probably half a bottle in and he could see the storm brewing in her eyes. “Hey,” he started as he intentionally pitched his voice with a happy tone, “I stayed late again tonight — finalizing the Peters proposal before Friday. It felt good to make progress.” She smirked and flipped her long black hair back across her shoulders. The smirk. The hair flip. She had tells. He could see them. “You always do that — work obsessively,” she seethed, “It’s like nothing else matters to you. Don’t you ever think about balance? You look exhausted.” It didn’t matter if he saw it coming or not, it always caught him in the same spot. A quick jab in the middle of his stomach. Not a hard punch per say but it lands for sure. That ancient part of your brain booting up for another round. “I do think about balance,” he again placated, “I just wanted to get this done so the team can move forward. I’m proud of the push.” And why the hell aren’t you proud of me doing exactly what you always say I should do?!?!?!?, the voice in his head yelled angrily. “Proud? You’re proud of working late instead of being present,” she dismissed, “That’s a weird thing to be proud of. Are you doing this to impress someone? It sounds a little insecure.” Bloody fucking hell!, the voice yelled again. It was this duality of conversation that exhausted him the most about these conversations. Why couldn’t he just be angry and yell and scream and tell her how he felt? What held his tongue? How could he hold it together when he was a seething emotional mess inside? “I’m not trying to impress anyone,” he soothed as he reached for the hand that didn’t have the wine glass in a death grip, “I just care about doing a good job and supporting the team. When you say it like that it hurts — it feels like you’re minimising what I do.” When I’m doing exactly the thing you wanted me to do! And now he was placating two people; Lilith and the voice. “Hurt? Really? I was only making an observation,” Lilith punched back harder, “You’re so defensive. I can’t even make a simple comment without you getting upset. Why do you always turn everything into a fight?” Tristan’s shoulders slumped visibly and his head tilted forward ever so slightly. This was always the point where he felt like he’d slept walked into a swamp and now he had woken up in waist deep mud. How best to get yourself back out? Notch up the placating? Fight back? Try to back away quietly and hope it dies down? Surrender. He rose and walked into the middle of the room. Maybe a little space would calm things down a bit? Maybe if he just explained himself a bit better? No. Surrender. White flag time. “I didn’t mean to make it a fight,” he offered, a tone of pleading entering his voice, “I’m saying the tone — it sounded dismissive, like my effort didn’t matter.” Again a smirk. A subtle dismissive laugh. “Dismissive? That’s rich coming from you. You’re the one who decides you’re working for validation. I was trying to help you see you’re burning out. Now you’re being dramatic. You always overreact when I point things out.” And as if to punctuate her point, she rose and turned towards the kitchen. The brisk walk and her body language said only one thing; you better follow or my wraith will elevate. He didn’t feel like ducking a wine glass again tonight so he followed faithfully. He quickly covered the space between himself and the kitchen and pushed his way through the swinging butler door. His body was on high alert. He could feel it. How would this end tonight? He could feel the energy accumulating, like static electricity collecting at his fingertips. He was so tired of this dance but what else could he do? Be home on time next time you jerk. I sat here all by myself all night. Oh, there’s the other voice in his head. The one that sounds like her. The one that chastises him when he goes out with his friends or doesn’t want to do the things she wants to do. How selfish of you. She already had the wine bottle in her hand in the instant it took for him to get to the kitchen. Good, it wasn’t empty. That wouldn’t be a projectile tonight. “I appreciate concern, but the ‘obsessively’ comment felt like an attack on my goals; our goals. I’m allowed to be ambitious without being labelled.” She snorted dismissively as she poured more wine. She seemed energized now, warmed up, and ready for a fight. But suddenly he felt drained and overwhelmed. Why did it always go like this? He did something she wanted and encouraged him to do and when he did it . . . this . . . again. “Labelled? I didn’t label you;” she extolled as she waved her free hand in the air, “you labelled yourself. Stop inventing insults. I’m the one taking the high road here, trying to protect you from yourself, and now I’m the villain? That’s not fair. You’re making me feel attacked. Tristan slumped in a chair and rested his elbows on his legs, leaning forward. More of that pleading tone leaked into his voice. Sometimes she would break off the attack. Sometimes she would press it until all that was left was his shattered husk. “I’m not attacking you. I’m telling you how that phrasing landed with me. Can we talk about it without flipping blame?” Oh. Bad word choice. He said the b word. “No! You always make it about your feelings!” she bellowed, “I was honest, and now I’m being punished for it. You’re so sensitive; maybe you should ask yourself why you need everyone to approve your ambition.” Fuck!, the voice cried out. The Shadow wanted its pound of flesh. He pushed it back down again. “I wish you’d ask me questions instead of assuming motives. It’d help me explain why this matters to me,” Tristan tried with all his might to stop this convergence of oncoming trains. His emotions and her frailty. “See!?” Lilith yelled, slamming down the empty bottle for emphasis, “There you go again! Deflecting!” I can’t have a normal conversation with you because you turn everything into analysis. I’m done being lectured by someone who can’t take a comment!” And in that instant something snapped inside of him. He felt the physical crack somewhere deep inside his body. It was like that bottle slamming into the cupboard broke the trance. He looked over at her with a dead stare, locked eyes, and rose. It was like he’d lost all control of his body but he was thinking clearly for the first time in his life. Lilith looked genuinely stricken by panic; not in a way that she feared anything but in a way one does when something has gone horribly off plan. This was the moment, so many times before, he’d crossed the floor to her, hugged her, and asked for forgiveness for something he hadn’t done. This time though, he felt different. He walked toward her but instead of stopping he kept going past her and out the butler door; still ashen faced. He stopped only briefly to grab his messenger bag and walked out the door, down the stairs, and into the unknown. Across the street, in the bus shelter, she opened her eyes and stopped the chant. It wasn’t exactly true that she couldn’t help him. He needed to make the decision and then she could help. He’d made the decision and she helped. Purely defensive magic. She waited for him to get halfway down the block and turned to follow. It was going to be a long night. Chapter 3 - Magic “Oh-ho-ho, it’s magic you know / Never believe it’s not so” Through the ages she hadn’t intervened often. The victims were usually simply useful tools for finding them. But as she’d come into this Modern age she’d started finding them everywhere with a shattered trail of victims behind them. It was like they had multiplied in the last 50 years beyond a number she’d ever seen before. Was it there were more of them now or had the world changed enough they didn’t have to hide as well anymore? Either way, she’d found it had changed her moral code over time. Hunt and destroy had become protect, hunt, and destroy. It meant emotional entanglement sometimes and actually . . . caring? . . . beyond the mission but the scales didn’t feel anything like they were balanced anymore. She hadn’t talked to anyone like her for 30 years. Was she the last one? Even given the fact that time was an interesting . . . concept . . . to them, she could feel the loneliness in her soul. What would happen when she was gone? Would they win? “Es ist ein schöner Tag zum Sterben,” she muttered to herself. A bit of a personal mantra. She wasn’t acutely telepathic. She didn’t need to know his exact thoughts to imagine what he was going through right now. She hadn’t changed his mind or driven him towards a direction; her words had simply been a charm against their power. They had this unique sense that allowed them to pull you back in that liminal moment before defeat. So many had lost themselves that way. She’d blocked her, gave him that moment of clarity she was about to steal from him once again. The Other must be enraged; apoplectic. But already planning to get him back. The last time it felt this personal was during one of the wars. Which one? She couldn’t remember. She had been in London. There had been bombing. She saw herself in a uniform. She’d followed one to a smoky little pub off of Whitehall. The Dominion Arms she’d remembered it was called. It had been a narrow, three-story affair tucked into a side street. The frontage was dark, weathered timber with small leaden windows. The windows crisscrossed with tape from the bomb blasts. She tracked this one half-way across Europe from the efficient urban hustle of an untouched Berlin to here in the bombed out heart of London. The Other went from girlfriend to refugee to hunter again in the space of three years. The Other probably would have stayed put in Berlin but once Hitler had moved on Austria it had become obvious war was coming and she needed a new source of validation and attention. She had become attached to a military officer on the General Staff. His time would quickly become consumed by the war effort. It was time to discard and move on. And she’d chased this Other across war-ravaged Europe until they both landed here in this dingy pub; intertwined in this bizarre love triangle. They had both found themselves with this same sweet, kind Canadian officer. That night had been ahead of plan, and totally against orders, but sometimes love doesn’t acquiesce to high command. She carried her silver dagger in a leg sheath with a steely resolve for what she had to do.