She walked furtively along the road; her blonde hair glowing softly and her stiletto heals making a resolute clac clac on the pavement. She was very pretty and seemed to know it. Usually, her walk was more of a strut; but tonight the moon was full and she was rather superstitious, so she quickened her pace. She seemed to be alone, and there wasn’t anything unexpected about that either. She lived in a nice neighbourhood, and it was unusual for people to be walking around at this time of night. Strict regulations meant that the place was green, tidy and mostly residential. There were a few shops at the bottom of the road, known as the market place but nothing much else. And yet tonight she felt uneasy, like she was being watched. She looked around nervously but she couldn’t see anyone so she walked on. As she turned the corner, her senses eased and she soon forgot all about it.
The pretty girl wasn’t just imagining things; there were a pair of eyes glowering down at the stranger who had disturbed peaceful musings. A dark haired girl sat in her windowsill scowling with apparent distaste. She held her head high staring avidly at the night. Gemma was a strange child; her moods swings were just as fast and unpredictable as her imagination was vivid and wild. Her gaze was unsettling and intoxicating. She wasn’t particularly stunning, but there was something fascinating about her smile that made one want to look at her again. Her ferocious eyes were captivating, they were a burning passion, a cry for help barely disguised by a determined proud presence and the drop of sarcastic mirth bubbling dangerously in the corner of their aura. She looked stubborn and passionate which contrasted strongly with the natural innocence she seemed to radiate. She held herself perfectly straight her expression betraying a mixture of childish naivety and precocious maturity.
As she exhaled softly, a whisk of smoke curled and uncurled into the cold night like the shadow of her smile. It was her daemon, or her spirit or her soul making it’s bid for freedom. Her smile widened at the thought. Away from her body, it could dream of one day becoming a great cloud in order to shield the untamed lands of her imagination from the scorching sun or to send down the cleansing rain. And in the shape of a cloud, her pride made her invincible, nothing could hold her down; their hands would slip through her intentions like electricity through water and they would never be able to tame her. She dreamt of floating over to the moon and back again, of kissing the horizon goodnight, of laughing with the twinkle eyed stars every night, of plotting to outshine the sun… But she didn’t dare. She would be free forever! Free to choose for herself; whether to fly low and skim the tall mountains of reason, the patchwork fields of logic and the shimmering lakes that held in their depths boundless mysteries for her to unravel; and her confidence would grow until the greater winds blew away the heavy excess of her ego. Or else she could soar in the limitless skies of emotions in order to feel so alive that like Icarus she would fly too high; and the exhilarating sun would scorch her wings until she fell crippled back into the ocean.
But she did have the freedom to choose, even as she was, and she might as well cry all her rain or throw a storm tantrum and it would all be in vain for the simplest reason of all. Having the freedom to choose did not mean she knew which one she wanted.
Gemma sighed heavily; she must think of something else, she was on Holiday! That meant that she could quiver under the endless horizons of a clear sky. She was young and the sun would smile at her and talk of freedom and friendship and adventure and other such things that only happened to other people. But wasn’t she becoming other people? In the course of one year, she’d changed so much and not all for good she feared. She was afraid of not being able to be that person again, afraid of having lost too much. And how had she simply stopped caring? She was irritated; she supposed these were the sorts of adolescent changes mentioned by every coming of age story and by every patronising adult, search for identity etcetera. She frowned, that was just stupid, she knew perfectly well who she was, she was neither an orphan, nor a changeling nor an adopted child nor did she have any misgivings about who she was.
The real problem at hand was what made her who she was, and why did that seem to change so much? In fact it felt like she was experimenting with different traits, as if her personality was a fluctuating energy of some kind. It was all very difficult to understand, she supposed she might one day be all those things at the same time and surely that would mean truly being herself. However she was doubtful that would ever happen, how was she expected to be all those things at once when some of them were so entirely contradictory?
She was also disturbed at how change averse she was becoming, that was the worse of it: to be, to become, or not. In all the questions she’d once asked, that was the one she hadn’t even started to examine. But she had stopped asking questions, she’d lost interest. It felt so liberating to reason once more, to think to try things, to hope that her once ruthless curiosity would return.
