the glass candles are burning; any

[Wayra]

Wayra felt an emptiness in her soul. She felt like the ice imbedded in her heart had grown, leaving nothing but cold in place of love, fear, anger and desire. Some days it was a relief, and somedays it seemed worse than what she had endured with Carnage. She had learned, slowly, through broken bits of whispered stories, that Carnage was his name. Wayra couldn’t think of him as anything other than the gray god. Naming him made it that much more real. Thinking back on her time in his lair had felt like a dream. Thinking about her life before his lair felt like someone else’s dream.

She had thought that returning home would be the answer. She thought that returning to the place she had been stolen from would ease the pain. It had not. She had grown colder and colder. Now the little blue girl felt like ice and snow. She couldn’t stay there, she couldn’t look at the place she had died and remember what Carnage had done to bring her back.

She sighed and exhaled. The breath that passed her lips was like snow, like a cold, bone chilling wind. The meadow grass around her feet turned frosty. All around her the world was warm, and bright and beautiful, but Wayra felt like the middle of winter. In her little world, there was no hope of spring.

Wayra looked up at the sun, and blinked as it blinded her. Some day, she thought, she would forget what it had felt like, to feel the sun’s rays on her back and have them warm her. She took another breath, and it hitched in pain. The literal chip of never melting ice poked at her heart. Abruptly, Wayra looked away. It would do no good to mull like this, she knew.

Her life was different now. She was different. The girl she had been had died on the ice. Carnage had brought her back, but the creature he resurrected had not been the same as the one he had lost. That girl was gone, and now Wayra felt like a stranger. She stared off into the trees, and little snowflakes of her own making danced and swirled for her. It was a comfort, some days, to play with the cold.

As always her mind wandered to the same question. “Who am I?”.