Puzzle pieces don’t fit right sometimes, most blame the one trying to solve it, trying to push the parts in when they know it won’t fit. I am one of those that could sit there and idle over the thousand pieces, lose time, lose life, just sitting and trying to figure out the masterpiece beyond the shattered pieces. I spent a childhood solving my sire’s endless riddles, and often it ended in my wrongs and always his rights. I also learnt a long time ago that the old anecdote, two wrongs don’t make a right, well that is equally as wrong. I saw many wrong puzzle pieces thrown around, aimlessly stabbing an trying to fit them in place.
It’s like a King sitting in a Pawn’s place, a Knight hiding behind the Queen. A chessboard of life, white, black, black and white. I’v observed so much in my life, however short it may have been so far — or be in the future. And still I long for the taste of knowledge, the spice that sits in my tongue and hangs sharp in my throat. If I am to be that key my mother was so rigid about, then I must know all. I must see all and I must.. be all.
There’s something about the mare before me; her endless eyes that are bottomless, enticing. Like a well that goes on and on and on. Cold, dark and forever and ever. She draws me in, a siren’s glance, a mermaid’s touch. I can’t help but step forward, close, inch by curious inch. Coffee bean eyes holding Chantale’s far longer than I’m sure is even possible, before finally I blink, my ears swivelling underneath her words.
”Mad. Mad?” I question, sharp poison lingering on my tongue, I chuckle, low, a witch’s cackle lost within me. ”The best ones are Mad. They know all, they see all.” a deliberate and harsh intake of breath. I’m astounded, in awe, lost in a gaze of star-struck amaze. ”they are all.”
I’d grown up on riddling song, damning rhyme and a concoction of death’s serenade. Black as night and cold as winter’s breath, I recall many things, seeing many things, but this creature, this deathly beauty before me was something else entirely. I was besotted. Obsessed. She reaches out and I do too. I inhale her, bittersweet poison, it coats me in a blanket and I just wrap myself up, feeling warm, pleased.
”What are you, Chantale. Who are you? Really?” A reaper, a cold and merciless sword at the back of necks, a glittering eye that lures them in. I’m hers within a heartbeat, she’s my future, my ticket to learning all I need. Like a wild deer I’m trapped, gazing at her with fond eyes and a heart that beats in rigid, unkept patterns. Slowly, I’m dying, slowly second by second, it’s excruciating but I cannot look away. I cannot be away. I must know. I must have what she knows.
Life. Death. She transcends time, space. She is a nightmare, a dream.
”I must know everything. I need to." my voice is crisp, falling leaves in autumn, warm, like the sun in a dying summer’s eve. A whisper, a dying breath in a loved one’s ear. ”I’d do anything to know.”
I’m the key. Without a lock. A Key on a chain that hangs loose from a jailer’s hip. To a cell of a mad man, or woman, rusty old chains and bars won’t keep me at bay. I’d knock them down if it were to find the answer. Anything. Everything.
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