Chapter Three-Clematis

The next day, when dawn broke, I looked down at the village.

I did keep a straight face as I analyzed the scene below; my family members, one by one, having their corpses stacked in a morbidly tidy pile.

I tried to remember when they all fell: but only the sensation of adrenalin and an occasional bloody scene returned to parr. 

A wave of fear and absolute sadness swept over me: I was alone again.

All alone.

I climbed out of the tree where I had been resting and thumped quietly to the ground. Cage, I kept thinking, sanctuary. Where was my cage? My head spun. I clutched my blade tighter. I walked, walked, ran, stumbled. I didn't feel any emotion toward my dead family- it felt morbid and wrong, but no sadness came. I was pained, sorrowful, and grieving for myself- but it was a small feeling in the back of my mind. Continuing to walk nowhere, I finally allowed myself a few hot tears for all those Villagers who had died- and since no one of the clan had triumphed, for nothing. Nothing. All those people. I thought over the people I had killed, and somehow, I had had a reason. I was needed. The thought curled through my body and made me fight on- taking lives like they were petals picked from a flower. I stumbled on until I found a pond- quiet and calm, unlike my mind, and edges blurred by the mist that covered the land. Slowly, hopefully, I looked into the water. I must've had those eyes now. After everything that happened the night before, I must've. 

I observed. 

I cringed.

 My hair, white and fair like a snowflake, still tumbled down my back, neatly, not a strand out of place. My skin was still pale, not tanned or damaged by the sun. And oh, how sane my eyes. I looked straight into them -bright and light green as ever- and they stared back, completely sane and calm. No bloodlust. No rage.

I sighed inwardly in frustration. Nothing worked. I was just a boy with a strange gift. I wasn't worth looking at. I wasn't worth fighting, wasn't worth befriending.

I had nothing.

I was nothing.

I had no one.

I was no one.

I stood, my visual features calm and everything else mad with anger, and looked to my right, trying to find something, anything, that would ensure I wasn't just a speck of dust floating by, and was actually a human being with a purpose. 

 To my absolute joy and satisfaction, I not only saw an affirmation of my existence, but something familiar, an old friend popping out of the soil.

A blossomed clematis flower. 

And, I realized in relieved fascination, not 'a' clematis, but indeed 'THE' clematis. I remembered her; she had been a friend of mine a while ago, in one of the short periods of my release from my cage. I walked to her, knelt, smiled. "What are you doing blooming in a place like this?"

She remained in her silence.

"Why won't you answer?" I asked, slightly annoyed and rejected. 

She didn't reply.

"Well, fine!" I raised my blade, angered. "Nobody'll see you out here, anyway!" 

"Stop."