Angry Beaver (She's Written It All Before)
She wondered if it were possible to know fear without love. Or if she had to be frightened of someone before she could love them, which was really the same thing. That was at least partly her father's fault. How could it not be? He left his own marks in his own ways on the lives he consumed. She knew, in a passive and not quite remorseful way, that he had eaten her soul a piece at a time, and that it was gone for good long before humans lived in anything but caves.
She had loved him, and did still, but dared say nothing against him, and what a misplaced loyalty that was; she hoped he would choke on it. He might kill her for it, or she might kill him. Both happened at night, in her sleep. She suspected it happened to all female creatures, if not with the same intensity.
All men were like him. Or perhaps all the men she chose were like him, but so far, she found the first to be more true. They were less honest about it, to be sure. Peasants weren't allowed the various excesses of kings. They were more careful, more delicate; they battered things instead of people, or simply fumed and shouted until their lungs were raw. But at the core they were the same. The names they called her were the same.
Maybe not this one, maybe he was different. He was different, she decided, and bit her lip in resolve. A better man than the rest of them, a safer man, who professed attraction if not love, and a good solid thump in the sheets without the usual poetry or expectations or wheedling for an audience with her sister--the one he'd rather have had in the first place.
A lot of them tried that, just as her father did; they angled for her sister, with her as the bait on the hook. While none of them looked like him, they did all look the same: clean-cut, blond or once in a great while dark-haired, with pale greyish eyes and pale soft lips that pouted apart for pale soft teeth, even and bland. She could see why they called their first set, when they were children, "milk teeth".
The idea that their teeth actually fell out, that they did so on purpose and grew back larger and stronger, mystified her. As she had known it, teeth came in suddenly, almost all at once, and were simply as large as they were going to be, and that was that. At the time it was the worst pain she had ever known.
As she learned more about the world, and its million kinds of pain, she realized all suffering was relative. Growing teeth had hurt more--much more--than breaking her nose, and only a little less than breaking her back. She was always careless, reckless, and perhaps the western battlements weren't the best place for a game of tag in the rain. She smashed her back in three places and spent the next several months staring up at the same grey patch of ceiling, living for the few short murmurings of pity Kitana passed by to offer up whenever she felt the most guilty.
But caring about her latest round of hide-and-go-sleep, that hurt more than anything else. The pain was real, physical, and it tended to settle just under her collarbone whenever it decided to stay awhile. It had to have been because he said she was beautiful. And possibly because when it got down to shouting, he called the right name.
How much had having a soul hurt? She couldn't remember. It probably wasn't as painful as his sincerity, his honesty. He hadn't gotten a peek under the veil yet, and he wouldn't, either. None of them were allowed to see her face. Not even if it matched theirs.
In his case it did. She had never seen a mutant up close before, and had been struck, hard, by the resemblance. By the exactness of it. He was a little stronger, a little harsher, with the solid angles of a man, but otherwise it was like looking at a mirror.
Which is how we get to mirrors, more or less, and how evil they are.
Don't have something nice to say, so I won't say anything at all. However, Melora Creager will enlighten us. Between the lines, with occasional spits of derision:
That's what god made SAILORS for!
Don't cry for him and chase him
Just go out and replace him
With some good-looking Tom Dick or Jack
'Cause if your kisses won't hold
The man you love
Then your tears won't bring him back