A Cold Entity-Chapter Three

I used to live with my mother in the far north, we were both cold entities. We don't don't need the cold to survive, but it is very good if we have it. We don't feel its negative effects. Rather, it makes us feel strong, depending on how cold it is. We love the soft caressing of it on our skin.

It was very beautiful up there, living in the cold, snowy taiga. We didn't live in house like many humans do. Instead, we lived in a very clean cave, surrounded by beautiful pine trees. We didn't want to live with human luxuries. My mother and I just wanted to survive on our own, and to be one with natuure. The ground was always blanketed with snow, and it was always cloudy. The blanket of clouds would keep some light in at night, so it was never pitch black. Instead, there was an otherworldly type glow over everything. It was very beautiful. Occasionally, a blizzard would hit, and I would just wander off into it. I couldn't die from it. I could find my way home after it had calmed down. I knew the area in which I lived very well.

This was seven years ago. I was only nine at the time, and as you might expect, I was just like any other girl of the same age. Young, carefree, and innocent. Everyday I would just go out to wonder. To explore. Sometimes I would go deep into the pine forest, seeing many different animals and trees. Other times I would go down by the frozen pond and skate around on it. I didn't care where. I was young and wanted to see everything around me. To learn more about the world and all of the fabulous things it held. Being so youthful, I didn't understand, nor did I understand my mother's signifigance. "Goddess," was just a word to me.

"What was your mother like? Tobias asked in wonder.

I smiled, as I recalled my mother as she was many years ago. "She was not a traditional mother. She was very different. She never cared that I went out exploring everyday, potentially putting myself in danger. She never worried about me. She hardly ever spoke or scolded me for doing something wrong. My mother was completely indifferent. In fact, she hardly raised me at all. I learned a lot of things by myself."

He looked confused. "How could you grow up like that, being neglected by your mother? How did you learn all of those things with no one to teach you?"

I shrugged. "Instinct, maybe. I am not human. I was born knowing my mother would be indifferent to me, just like a bird is born knowing not to wander out of the nest. I knew she would say and do nothing to me. Reject me, really. I accepted it right from the start, and did not grow up any differently because of it. That instinct also gave me the knowledge that many humans have to learn through being taught by someone. I could teach myself. It's hard to explain, but many things I knew just from being born. Maybe that's why my mother never raised me. Or maybe she knew I would end up the same no matter what."

Tobias stared at me and began to ask me what that meant, but I silenced him with a wave of my hand.

"She was hardly ever around. I was usually left alone to survive by myself. To get my own food and water. I did not need to stay warm, though, because of who I am. When I was sad from something that happened when I was out, such as coming across a dead bird on the ground, I had to console myself, because my mother wasn't there. I was okay with it though. As I said, I was born knowing she would hardly ever be around me and I would have to live on my own. I had no idea where she went, though. I still really don't know. I bet she goes to perform her Goddessly duties, whatever they may be. Maybe I'll find out some day."

I stopped right there for a moment, recalling what came next in the story. I felt choked up thinking about it, and a single tear ran down my face. I froze it as it landed in my hand. I stared at it for a few long moments, recalling the painful memories. It would hurt to tell the next part of this story, But I had to. I needed to find the strength to talk about painful times.

"I remember there was a day where my mother was actually there, sitting in silence as usual. That was the only thing she usually did when she was not away. I was about to go outside, just like every morning, when she spoke. "No, wait here." I turned and looked at her, surprised to hear her speak. She said nothing else as she left the cave. I watched her walk slowly into the pine forest. Even though she hardly ever spoke to me, I still obeyed her. I stood at the mouth of the cave, wondering why she had wanted me to leave the cave. She had never said anything when I left before. I stood there waiting patiently. I must have waited for at least an hour, just waiting. Thinking. Wondering.

I remember falling asleep after sometime. It must have been many hours later when I heard my mother's sweet and melodic voice tell me to wake up. I climbed to my feet, still at the entrance of the cave. The light of dawn had turned into that of dusk, because the darkness falls earlier so far up north. She was standing right there in front of me. In her arms she held a beautiful wolf with a gleaming grey pelt. It was not strugging to escape her grasp at all. Instead, it stared at me with its big yellow wolf eyes as if to say "Help me, please help me." It let off a sad, mournful howl. I noticed at that moment Articuna did not have a scratch on her body from capturing this wolf. I still have no idea how she caught it. Then again, she is a Goddess.

I looked into the wolve's pleading yellow eyes as it let off another howl. "What is this, mother?" I asked in a timid voice. "Why are you holding that wolf? Why don't you let it go?" I was very shy. I had hardly ever spoke to my mother before.

She looked at me with her cold blue eyes, as if she had just realized I was her daughter. Then she spoke in a soothing melodic voice, one that I had hardly ever heard before:

"You need to kill this wolf."

I felt a wave of shock go through me, and my feeling of dread turned into that of horror. The wolf began to howl mournfully, but suddenly its snout was clamped shut by some invisible force. My mother's doing.

"But-I love all creatures! Why do you need me to kill it!." Then I started to shout. "I won't do it! You can't make me! I won't kill this beautiful wolf!"

I stood there, my hands shaking in rage, a feeling that just suddenly came over me. I knew I couldn't kill this beautiful being of nature, even if I wanted to. My soul could never take it. It could never live with it.

"You have to." My mother spoke in a soothing voice, not sounding angry at all. "You will be a Goddess someday. You must kill this being and harden your soul, so someday you will be fit for the tasks you must perform."

I tried not to listen to her, but they still rang in my ears, echoing in my head. "You're the Goddess! I don't want to be one someday! I just want to be a girl, and explore everything around me and be happy forever! Why should I do this?!"

"It's destiny!" She began to shout. "You will become a Goddess! You can't stop it!"

I fell onto my knees and began to sob into the snow, my feeling extremely sad instead of being full of rage. " I don't want to! I can't! I just won't do it!" Nothing my mother said mattered to me. It all just passed through my ears. I wanted to stay the same. I was so happy with the way I was, and I didn't want anything about me to change.

"Kill it! You must! It's for your own good! It's for your future!" Her tone softemed slightly.

I was torn apart right then, as I sobbed into the snow. I knew I couldn't kill this be autiful creature, but my mother said I must. For the future that I didn't want to face. A million thoughts ran through my head, none of them comprehensible. They made me break down that moment. I knew I had to do something. The thought were makig me go crazy. I couldn't just sit there in the snow.

By instinct again, perhaps, I made a sharp icicle in my hand, something I had never done before that. I thrust it through the heart of the wolf. It gave out a painful yelp, and my mother released it. It fell to the ground, the snow becoming red from its blood. The snow became a darker red as seconds passed. The icicle I had created wasn't cold enough to freeze blood. I had to witness the terrible sight of a wolf lying dead in a pool of its own blood. A wolf that I had killed.

I had killed it.

Even more tears fell, buckets of them. I cupped my eyes with my hands, sobbing away into the snow again, realizing what I had just did. How could i have done that? Why? I didn't want to have to kill! I didn't want my soul to tear apart, my soul to harden, my heart to blacken. I cried until my face hurt and no more tears would fall. My mother said no words of reassurance. I looked up, and she was no where to be seen, leaving me all by myself with the dead wolf close by my side.

I picked up its limp head and peered deep into its closed eyes. "I'm sorry," I said in a cracked voice. "I'm so, so sorry." With tears frozen on my face, I dug a hole with my bare hands in the snow where my tears had fallen, and put the wolf's dead body into it. The snow would preserve it, and I could come back and see it at anytime, still intact. I would return here when I needed to look back at the horrible deed I had committed. Then I stodd up, and walked slowly into the deepest, darkest corner of the cave I could find. I no longer wished to explore the areas around me. After what I had just did, I felt like I didn't deserve to ever again.

I sat down in the dark corner of the cave. No light was shining in, it was pitch black. I wrapped my arms around my knees, surrounded in complete darkness. I cried into my knees for a short time, but I had little tears to shed from earlier. So I just sat in silence, trying not to think about anything at all. No one was around to comsole me. Only I could do that. How to console myself, I had no idea. How does one console themself when they have just killed an innocent creature.

Hours passed as I drifted away in my blank mind, and I fell asleep in the serenity of the cave. I had terrible, terrible dreams of killing, as you might expect from the previous day. I woke up with a jerk many times during the night, my breathing shallow, my forehead wet with cold beads of sweat. Finally, morning came, although I couldn't tell. I just knew it. An entire day gone, just like that. But as I looked around at the darkness around me, I felt oddly different. I didn't want to go out and explore, even though a day had passed. I no longer cared about killing that wolf. It was as if all guilt and grief had left me in the night hours. I felt a black veil fall over my heart.

My eyes grew big as I realized what was happening to me. I was becoming heartless, just as my mother said I would. An odd feeling of soulless sorrow came over me as I realized this. It wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to be myself. To be young and innocent again, to love all things, to not have to kill, ever again. I didn't cry, though. Instead, a single tear ran down my cheek. It was the saddest I have ever been in my entire life. The change was happening. I couldn't stop it. As my mother said, it was destiny, as unmanipulatable as time itself. I was hoping that it wasn't too late, that I could change back, but my hopes were not high.

And that's when everything changed for me.

My mother started to actually be a mother to me, although not in the way you would expect. She was a Goddess, and she began to teach me how to be one. But before that, my heart had to harden even more. I had to exist above good and evil and act only upon judgement. She made me kill even more creatures. First, it was that wolf that srated everything. The next day, it was a baby wolf that looked even more carefree and innocent, just as I had once been. Then it was an eagle, and a baby eagle. I killed them all. I remember thrusting the icicle through their chests time after time, just so I could become heartless. I tried to resist doing in, holding on to the slightest hope I could change myself back, but these hopes soon dissipated, and I killed these creatures without a second thought. I had hoped I could become just a girl again, because a nine year old has no business killing innocent creatures, but I gace up. I cried less and less with every kill, until finally I shed no tears at all. I thrust the icicle without grief or guilt at all. Instead, I felt a deep, soulless sorrow when I the animal I killed fell to the ground, surrounded. in a pool of their own blood. Soon, my heart and soul become as hard as stone. I had finally accepted my fate. To become the next Ice Goddess, whenever that may be. "To punish th evil, and help the good and weak," as my mother said. I have remembered those words forever.

"But why?" I asked at first. "If I am to help the good, why must I kill innocent creatures? Why?"

She told me the same thing she always told me. That I mist become heartless so I could punish the evil. Otherweise, I would breakdown when I tried to kill someone, and no one wouold be punished. I wouldn't be able to help anyone at all.

My powers were still weak, and Articuna taught me how to use and strengthen them. How to focus them everyday and make myself stronger. She taught me how to create an icicle by will, not by instinct like I had before. At first, the ones I made were dull and barely freezing at all, but with progreess, they became sharper than a dagger, and hundreds of degreees below zero. She taught me how to make cold flow through me fingertips into something or someone else. Essentially control the temperature of whatever I wanted. How to make things levitate with my mind. All of these things I could hardly do at the beginning, and I easily gave up hope. But with work and encouragement from my mother, I could soon control these abilities with ease. I felt an essence of power around me. I felt superior.

And I was only nine.

My mother told me that there were other powers I had, but I would discover them as life went on. When I needed them, they would come, she said. It's been seven years, and none have come yet. I'm sure they will, though. I have faith in them. That, and my mother. She taught me so much, even if it was against my will. She taught me how to accept fate. And accept it I have.

I fell silent, having finished the story. I looked at Tobias for a moment. "But do you know what I've learned along the way?"

"What?"

"I've learned that being a heartless doesn't mean not feeling any emotion at all. It's not being someone who wants to kill all of the time. It's taking pleasure in the times where I do have to end one's life. And it's not feeling guilty or bad at all whenever I do something horrible. That's what being heartless is."

And as I finished telling him this and reflected upon everything I had gone through, I suddenly burst into silent tears. I knew what I was. I was a terrible, terrible person, with a horrible past. And sometimes it became too much, and I broke down. This was one of those times. I felt slightly embarassed to cry right in front of Tobias, but I didn't care at the moment.

"Sometimes it becomes too much for me," I said in a choked voice. "Knowing what I am, and how sadistic of a person I am. It's all too much for me sometimes."

Tobias looked away as my weeping settled down, until finally I stopped crying like a baby.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry that everything was so hard for you years ago. That your mother turned you into something that you didn't want to be."

I smiled slightly. "It's okay," I said. "It's all over now. Whether or not I wanted it to happen, it's over now. I'm okay. I've accepted it all."

"But what about everything else?" he asked me. "I know there's more to the story than what you tel me. When and why did you leave your home, the taiga? Why are you living in a tiny town like this? What is your purpose here?"

I looked into Tobias' eyes, smiling mysteriously. "That is for another time. I've tolded you all you need to know now."

He nodded. "Fine. I'll wait until the time is right."

If that time ever does come I thought to myself.

Tobias suddenly became very serious. "Why is it," he said slowly. "That you would tell a complete stranger, someone you barely know, the story of who you are; the story of your past? Why would you tell me this? Why do you trust me?"

I looked at the ground, his question making me wonder the same thing. "I saved your life. Somehow, we're bound together now. Maybe it was fate, or maybe it was instinct just everything else. Or maybe I was finally getting tired of keeping a secret for so long."

Then I stood up. "Come on. Let's go now." I started to walk away down the corridor, but Tobias stood rooted to the spot.

"I just realized something," he said.

"What's that?"

He cast a shy glance at me. "you never told me your name."

I smiled. "I'm named after my mother. Do you want to know my name?"

Tobias nodded. "What is it?"

"My name is Arcuna."