The mistake walks out from the shadows and into the ruins. He likes it here, the strange inexplicableness of it, the faint smell of salt in the air. He feels a sort of kinship with this place, two things never meant to be but here, existing somewhere out in Beqanna.
He is a mistake because he was not supposed to be born – his mother had told him that often enough – and when she kept him, he wasn’t supposed to be him. He was supposed to be part of some strange ritual, a line of daughters and absent mothers, but he was not. Even with all his power – the ability to raise the dead, the horns that curled from his head, the way his body stretched and contorted – it was not enough. He was a mistake. And so she left.
That mattered more, once. That she left. He tries not to let it matter now, even if he still calls himself a mistake. Even if he lurks in the ruins like he belongs here. He is old enough now that the woes of his childhood should be shed. He can reinvent himself, he thinks, moving further amongst the rocks, the sun catching his dark coat and making the gold sheen of it catch.
He is here and maybe that can be enough.
who protects the shadow better than the dark?