Polaris Reye [D7] ~ FIN

They say I'm cursed to never be more than the shadow to her light, mimicking the actions of someone better. The shade that clings to her feet as the sunlight wept through the windows and painted fragments of reality along the wall and left me with a reality of pseudo greatness.

I would never cling to her feet for my two minutes in the sun and yet when I stare at the ground I still see streaks of red along the asphalt and feel the bruises along my flesh. They called it uncivilized, looking back I think it's only primal instinct, the rabid snarling of my teeth and the clenching of my knuckles when they told me 'why can't you be more like your sister?' I told them I'd kill her if they ever compared me to her again.

I knew their patience is limestone and my threats are acid rain, it would've only lasted for so long.

We come from the same womb but there's an opposition in our polarization as clear as the sun breaking through the clouds and the moon hidden behind the stars. She lives her life dominated by respect for a greater good, something bigger than herself. I don't believe in dragons or fairy tales or magic forests, only myself. She skips over cracks in the ground and always made sure her hair was cascaded down her face a certain way on a certain side because it made her lucky, I've always made sure to give my elders the finger when they're not looking, forgotten to say my please and thank yous because I could and only brushed my hair when it suited me.

Same mother, same womb but sometimes you'd think we're nothing alike. While she would rather spend her time with knitting needles between her nimble fingers while I'd rather have a closed fist on my left and a joint on my right, she says the drink and drugs have fucked me up.

She'd never dare curse, I take that back.

I draw faces on the windows by night and mirrors in the morning. The green eyes that stare back telling a story of either boredom, intoxication or anger. She blames the drink and drugs and I tell her it's none of her fucking business -- why the fuck should she care about her own shadow anyway? Besides, I've never dared play the hand of addiction but I'd rather be anything but sober, I'm tired of remaining vagabond in reality, it's an eternal plane I'm tired of exploring.

Maybe these green eyes stare back with anger because they're tired of seeing smiley faces drawn onto mirrors and windows everyday in the fog. There's a reason my strong jawline clenches at the sight of reality, a reason my blood boils when I run my hand through my short brown hair, the occasional slight grease and blood marking my hand and all. Slightly tanned skin, spots dotting my body, slender and tall -- I don't care if all these features become marred in death.

Besides, I'll only whither and shrink when her season comes to pass.

I was never told to be strong for my sister and I was never asked by her for so much as a favor either. And yet I showed I was stronger than she could ever be, scraping my knees against concrete as fist connected with jaws, ribs and noses. Barely taller than her by an inch or two, slightly more filled out than her by a couple of pounds and a mountain of wounds leave me on the opposite end of the spectrum to her. Not once did I ever see her raise her so much as a finger to someone -- she doesn't see the strength in shades of black and blue.

I wonder if she would still say that if she'd seen the things I'd done in the name of living in my own season, the things I'd seen in my perfect fantasies. She'd see me sometimes, the look in my eye, the grinding in my ever yellowing teeth; she never saw strength.

"Polaris, do you hate me?"

It's easy to just feel nothing. Easy to just say 'no' even though it's the truth and I'd burn every fiber in my being to say 'yes.' There's a look in her eyes when the moonlight passes over her, as revealing as words scrawled across a series of blank pages; a step by step guide on how this girl can break and I'd give nothing more than to have every single letter tattooed beneath my skin.

I want to burn past the end of her winter.

We want different things -- I don't want to wither when her sun sets while she wants to go back to being nine and ten; she's supposed to be someone better and yet she's stuck in the past. Stuck in the days of being nine and ten where we'd sneak out of our grandparent's house and climb the trees and watch for globular clusters and shooting stars, imagining that one day we would catch my namesake's light in the sky. "Make a wish." But I was never naive enough to think that the star falling through the sky at untraceable velocities could give me anything I wanted. She wants us to be nine and ten years old again, I don't know what I want anymore.

I never did.

That's where we differ; she always planned ahead, had a library of back up plans from B to Z, has every inch of her future tattooed in the back of her brain so she remembers everything from the job she'll do to the color of her children's eyes. I always improvised, never went with a sense of direction, I always followed the direction of my shadow or followed the smell of smoke from a joint. I could never have the sense of direction she has, I never knew what I want. She trusts the rhythm of her pulse and the directions mapped in every corner of my mind while I trust -

(no one)

-I was never an emotional one, from childhood to the edge of coming of age. They said that's not normal, to exhibit such a lack of empathy or sympathy for another human being. That's their problem, they feel a chord to everything they meet and let themselves feel bonds to other people simply by the virtue of being human. That's not normal, I never had these chains shackling my feet to my humanity. That's why I could always make someone cry for taking the stuffed toy I wanted, or could hit someone so hard their skin broke and not so much as bat an eye lid, that I've spent seventeen years muttering fake apologies when I needed to. It's just easier to hurt someone than to hug them.

Violence; if it isn't solving your problems then you're not using enough of it. If you can't hold a grudge for longer than a week then you need to fix your memory, if you feel bad after hurting someone for wronging you then you need to fix your heart, not their arm. They just need to learn not to fuck with me, leave me to get high and we haven't got a problem.

I haven't ever hurt her though, not with my fists at least, but there's more than one way to break a woman.

They say she was a gift and I was the curse, before I even grew up to be this kid with a propensity for violence. A year after my mother had my sister came me, a 'gift' forced on her by a man she didn't want, a violent man she could never want. I've heard the whispers in the night by the adults. "That man should be shot for what he did." But he's long gone, ran away because he knew people would realize what he did -- but I suppose we all leave behind pieces of ourselves, imprints of our existence. That's what I was, the remains, a gift forced upon her by a man she didn't want, a complicated birth followed by the kiss of death -- we had to go to her parents soon after. They named me Polaris because apparently that's what she wanted when she was pregnant, honoring their teenage daughter's last wishes I suppose.

I don't need to be told it, I was born a killer through and through. I've seen her picture, mother, my first victim. In one of the few pictures they could afford, framed from whittled wood. My grandparents are wood whittlers, not the best living but we lived, we survived on half-decent clothes and a table of food. We survived, the four of us -- but it's obvious who was the better one. Not the fuck up of a cunt who doesn't seem to care about anyone but himself or think about the consequences of his psychopathic, selfish actions (like father like son, eh?) but the girl who had it all. The looks, the brains, the respect for her elders, damn I wish I could hate that bitch. That when I saw her my blood would boil, threatening to spill over like molten lava from a volcano with my fists clenched and my nails digging into my flesh. I always wished she could see the killing intent in my eyes and hide behind her trembling skin.

But she just wants to rewind back to the ages of nine and ten.

We memorized the the district like the back of our hands and crept out the house, through the shrubbery and up to the tallest tree, racing each other to the top and searching for shooting stars and my namesake twinkling in the sky. She dreamed of us becoming stardust and found a thousand pretty pictures in the sky, joined by the celestial orbs decorating the night sky. 'Make a wish Polaris.' I tell myself I hated her back then but I'm not even sure if I hate her now.

We could never go back to that tree. Not after I turned fourteen and found had my first joint and went through my first hangover. Not since she told me these things would kill me and I told her to fuck off and leave me alone -- I just wanted to be anything but sober because it meant cutting through the bindings tethering me to the concrete ground of reality. She says I lost my way but I never had a direction to begin with. Three years later and the distance between us rivals the length of galaxies, we can never go back to that tree, not while her apologies and pleads ring deaf against my ears, not while the only noise I want to hear her make is a scream.

('Do you hate me, Polaris?')

A killer, a shadow, a curse -- I refuse to whither past her sunset.

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