-- inside me a lunatic sings

It had taken a particularly long time for Myrkur Hel to understand that it was not like the others.

Myrkur Hel was not particularly intelligent. In fact, in all likelihood, it was slower than normal. That was alright; its life was long and its mind was like the flux of the sea: it would ebb and it would flow. Sometimes bits of thoughts and emotions would wash to the surface like driftwood and it would grasp at them daintily and wonder, captivated, for a few hours, until it was time to ebb again, and the thought, idea or emotion would escape once again.

It had started with Lucien. Not him, per se, because he was meaningless to it, but with the consequences of its rather ruthless attack – not his pain, for that was its desire at the moment, not for its motivation, for it knew quite well what it was, but with its consequences.

After, it had puzzled about it, and wondered about it, as it tried to understand the mystery of it.

It had taken a painstaking amount of cycles, of endless ebbing and flowing, until it could reach a conclusion.

It was not like the others.

The thought was not new nor revealing. For the longest days Myrkur Hel observed it from a distance, pinning it to the soft basin where its deeper motivations lied, which was shaped like a dark sunless beach. It remained there, struggling and flopping as a dying fish until it could understand it and learn it.

It spent days without food or drink as it thought. It would not stir and it would not answer, its eyes open and unblinking and staring ahead, unseeing, at a world beyond their reach, beyond anyone’s reach but its own.

That was alright, too. The race of the Dark Ones was a strong one, but the race of Protectors was stronger still and Myrkur Hel was both. It would take more than starvation to break it, and water it would never lack for, not as long as it lived.

It had taken almost a month. The grass was dry where it had been, and no life remained where its feet planted, ever so delicately, against the acid earth. Where it had been a small desert – a few meters in range – appeared.

Before that episode, Myrkur Hel had been a creature of raw sensation: motion and speed and naked force rising mindlessly against all and everything that stood in its path. It was a force of nature and that was alright, because that was what it was meant to be, no more sentient or guilty of its strength than the frenzy of a tsunami or the disaster of a flood.

No more.

There had been pain and raw emotion and it woke a part of it that it had not known existed.

It stretched and moaned in pleasure as its cramped muscles released their tension. Its blood ran quicker under its skin, moistening them, returning fluidity to the places fluidity was not.

It had been careless.

That would not do.

“Are you alright?” Myrkur Hel’s brother-companion asked. His voice was musical as ever – he had the power of a singer driving his lungs, but but always spoke softly. It found it liked that. He always smelt of barren earth and smoke, underpinned with ambivalence, awkwardness and self-hatred.

It was a smell both comforting and unsettling to Myrkur Hel’s sensitive nostrils. It nodded to him, close to his shoulder where its own dark skin would brush against his tawny one.

“I am,” it answered in a voice like a swan’s. He was the only one to whom it spoke, because they were friends, old friends, and he had named it and given it shelter.

He smiled and brushed his lips on its temple familiarly. They were close enough for such intimacy and though they were the same age, Myrkur Hel was less developed, childlike in comparison to his adult body.

“Good. I was worried,” he said in his singer’s voice. His eyes were very, very green.

It loved him then, suddenly. Not as a mate loves another, but as the sea to the shore: relentless and ever, ever present. It would mold him and break him, soften and shape and twist as the sea does to the shore and it would conquer him: he was of the earth, or had been, stone-like and fragile both, but it was water, and it was patient, and it had time.

Thus it smiled and listened to his banter as he chattered about his friends and his worries, his hopes and his dreams, none of which involved Myrkur Hel, not really.

That was alright. They were like that, he was like that. They would always be. Myrkur Hel would see to it.

It smiled and felt more than saw the storm gather around them.

It was a beautiful day to be reborn.