World

Segment I: Veritas
I’ve returned to this world permeated with memories of things that hurt me. There is no safe place for me, not in this world, not in the world I have just come from. School and here are two very different worlds. When I left here four months ago I was running from pain. For a time I found freedom in the world of school. I found some peace, for a time.
But now I’m back here again. Not a person to mince words am I; I hate it. Hate feeling here. Not being here, because I do love my parents. There is no place on earth I really hate being, rather it is the feeling that comes with each place that I love or hate. The feeling of this place, once called home, is now torturous.
Images, memories, faces, voices of people haunt me constantly. I love them. I love her. I don’t know what I did, only that I did something. I want so badly to have her back, to go back to the life I had a year ago with them. I would do anything, explain any wrong, change any action past or future, and undo any habit. I know that, were I given the chance, I could explain whatever it was that turned her heart against me. I know I did wrong, but so have others. I wish I could fix the hurt I cause her. But I will never get that chance.
And, what hideous truth that is for me to admit; in the very feelings I express for those in my past, I know I am hurting those in my present who I do care about. Friends, a new little sister, a new life I’ve found, yet somewhere deep inside me I would long for that all to be washed away so I could go back. How traitorous and disloyal I am.
School has been my escape, but more so it has become a place in which I have forge a new identity. Everything I was has been torn away and I am still searching to toll the holes that remain. The first months I was away gave me solace, a place to find rest from the pain of losing her. But even as the days went by that solace faded, not in the return of the pain of loss, but with the advent of a new kind of pain. It became an indescribable nightmare. Not indescribable in terms of awfulness, it has been no better or worse than any other hard time in my life; merely it was indescribable as it was simply pain for pains sake. No reason behind it, not logic. Just hurt. Hurt that would not stop. Each time a victory was won, the pain would return.
Why so downcast, oh my soul? Hope in God. As much as it was for me to try, all attempts at hope failed. Again, there was no reason. Perhaps the pain of losing Rieola was simply coming back, manifesting itself in new and unforeseen ways. Whatever the reason, my place of solitude was gone.
Now I’m back here, where I started. I’m not the same person, how could I be. From an onlookers perspective I’m better in every visible way. Stronger, smarter, harder in the right places, and softer in others. But it’s only been days since I've returned, and I am already being overwhelmed. Not an hour goes by where I don’t miss her. I hate being here, being reminded of how I failed and hurt others and was hurt by them. This cannot be my home.
The faces in my mind are changing once again. Each time it gets harder and more painful to see them changed. I have an image of my wife, a beautiful woman, who, once again, has no face. A little sister whose name I know but whose face I cannot see anymore. My own face, the image I have of myself, so long defined by my imaginary measures of control, changes without changing at all. Faces of past loves, friends, and enemies, all now jeering at me through broken memories.
Constantly overwhelmed, I continually fall back into the daydreams of my mind, where I am something else, something stronger. TO a world, of my own creation, where all the dangers and harms that would come to others I could bear on myself. Where I could save those I love, and they could see me as in the form I wish I could be. Everything under my control. But this world is fake. Wrong. I go there when I feel empty, lost, alone, and most importantly when this world is out of my control. I must accept that the world I want is not real. The world of reality is not under my control.
This world is not my home.

Segment II: Antirihen

Wind and waves crashed around him as he stood on a high rock, a solitary tower of stone rising out of the sea. The storm that raged around him pulled at him harshly, but not causing him to sway. He did not even twitch as the rain pelted him at unnatural speeds. Beneath the wings wrapped tightly around his person he could barely feel the elements assaulting him.
Eyes closed, head bowed, his long strands of white and black hair dancing in the wind, and he searched his mind for an answer to a question he couldn’t find words to ask. He had chosen to come here. This place where nature itself seemed in chaos was somehow peaceful. Any sailor would be brought to his knees before the bower of this storm, so unbelievable was its intensity. Perhaps it was indeed not to believed.
Was this storm reality? It was so confusing at times to him. What was real? There seemed to be so many worlds, so many places for him to find himself. So many people who could be real or not real, living or mere constructs of his desperate mind.
He loved someone. But who? Names and faces flashed through his mind. Emiri, Rieola, Raquel, Meaghan, Hanna, and other faces he could not name. Each of the names came with an accompanying story. Some story of pain and loss, many involving death. Sometimes it was she who died, sometimes he.
There was a sister, though she too had many faces. Alyssa was the most common name, though even that varied. She had been younger, older, his twin. In one universe she was adopted, in another related by blood, and in yet another they were related only out of desire to stay close to one another. Was she dead? He couldn’t remember. Some of the time she was.
Even he was different from place to place, from world to world. Here he was simply stronger, harder, and gifted with wings. Other forms he knew had powers, gifts of magic and alchemy. Dark variations existed, with vampiric teeth, horns, and glowing red eyes. In other forms he was an angel, with white wings. Bladed wings, metal wings, and even skeletal wings had he from one from to the next. Which was he really? Perhaps none of them at all.
Yet, as many and different were these worlds that he saw, none was perfect. None were happy. There was always war, whether personal or external. He fought in every form, for there was always an enemy. The darkness was always strong, and regardless of which reality he saw, there was never enough power in him to overcome. He fought on anyways. He accepted the pain.
In one world his power had caused the death of his little sister. Rather than have anyone feel the pain of her loss, he used all of his power to alter that reality, so that only he would have to remember her, and all the sorrow and guilt over her death he alone would bear. How weak. How selfish.
Perhaps that was the point. That explained the current reality, the storm around him. Why he found peace in the chaos around him. As the thought grew, he unfolded his wings and opened his eyes. Conflict and pain were a constant. Struggle was what he wanted, in a roundabout way. He chose the storm because if offered him something to fight against. All of his worlds were drowned in conflict because conflict gave him something to work and fight against. It gave him a purpose, and the strength to aim for that purpose. Where all the forces around him to be reduced to nothing, he would not become unstoppable; he would become pointless.
So as the rain came down, he smiled. He would not overcome. He was not supposed to, he had merely been called to fight. Whatever reality, whatever world would come, he would fight on, because the struggle was a part of who he was, no matter which version of himself he became. No matter which world…
This world is not my home.