Venom

7: Scale Skin, Sharp Eyes, Hunters Heart

Reincarnation sounds like a wondrous thing the first time around. The idea of returning from death into a new life, with your memories still intact. You, but not really. A new you.

Awesome. If you ignore a few things.

Such as dying a violent death in every life, not receiving those intact memories until too late or if you do receive them, they come in a painful way, there's also the fact that you realize that the person who you thought you were was nothing more than a shell of a person holding your body until your true self-came through. Let's also not ignore that after a few years of reincarnating, you realize the truth about the bittersweet promise behind it.

Reincarnation isn't a chance at another life. It's the chain preventing me from reaching the peace which comes with a final death.

To say I was tired would be an insult to how I was truly feeling. I could think of no one who longed and feared death more then I, nor more lost in my purpose in this odd world my life was trapped on. I knew that I once lived with a purpose, I could feel those long ago memories stirring like ripples in a watery surface, but for the life of me, I could not recall the emotions those adventures brought with them. Trapped is what I felt. But wither it be by my own body, a curse or imaginary chains, not knowing what held me prisoner meant I did not know how to break free. There are creatures in life which live far longer then the mind can fathom, people made of magic and wonder, lives which understand and accept this with little notice because it was meant to be. 

I am not one of these creatures. I was never meant to be. And yet...

Cold sweat trailed down the side of my face, an uncomfortable contract against my clammy cold skin. Gripping tight the sheets under me I gritted my teeth from the sensations over my body. I was chilled yet warm, sensitive to everything and yet numb at the same time. Everything that touched my skin felt as soft as natural as water running down my skin while also feeling like jagged stones pushed against my flesh. 

I tried concentrating on my breaths, four in, seven out and repeated the count. But the problem in trying to shut everything out and focus on one thing was that I became hyper-aware of the one thing I had rather hoped to ignore. Or rather him.

My legs rubbed against one another under the covers, my hands slide down into my lap as my nails pressed down onto the bare skin of my thighs until it stung, needing movement, any feeling to both distract me from him and to warn my body of what it would not get. Because I would not lay with him even if it's what my body wanted. Craved. Being bitten by him left some rather perturbing side effects on people. The main one being death. So, how was it that I, out of no doubt thousands of people who have met the ill fate of having those dangerous lips close to them, have not only managed to survive the bite, but to have been tied to him in such an intimate and personal way? That his bite both pained and tried to please me? His bite was my salvation which damned me.

I scowled down at the blankets on my lap as if they were to blame. But they weren't and I knew that much, just as I knew why his bite had both saved and doomed my, literal, existence. The fire was beginning to die down, the only light source diminishing like all things in my life, it was soon to die off. Flickering my eyes over I met with an unblinking golden gaze. With the fire dying down it was as if his golden gaze as was where all the fire was going.

Venom.

He who walks with me in the dark and fears no shadow of mine shall become my light and the fire which will consume the ashes I leave behind.