There is a too thin cloak wrapped over my otherwise nude form, a scant barrier between myself and the chill of my surroundings. The hood is up, and as I sit against the cold stone to my back, I tuck my knees to my chest, and let the cloak fall to the ground around me, acting as a shield against the world that I inexplicably find myself in.
This is not my home.
My grey skin is cold to the touch, but I am barely aware of it, as I sit and listen to the skittering sounds in the darkness that ceaselessly rise and fall around me. My mind drifts, aimlessly, for I am truly lost. This...place..is not my home. I know this to my core, but where home might be, when...it was...I can not remember. I feel hollow, vacant, shattered. Something has gone terribly wrong, and somehow, I find myself huddled in the dark, among the vermin of a city I do not know.
They are human, of that much I am certain, though the uniforms, the street names, the smells, are completely unfamiliar to me. I struggle in the darkness beneath my impenetrable cloak on trying to recall how I got here. My mind begins to wander and attempts to settle for a time upon an abstract conversation I had with an infuriating man while I was perched upon a floating chair. But even as I knew this man had refused to part with anything but the most mundane information, for some reason, I could not clearly recall anything he specifically said. It was as if, I could recall the meaning of the conversation, I could lock in on the intent and message of the words, and yet not recall a single phrase spoken.
A low, frustrated growl rises from my downcast hood, and it scatters a few rats that had wandered unaware to my vicinity. I was getting no where sitting here and waiting for answers to miraculously appear. I was going to have to figure out exactly where I was, and how to ensure my continued survival. I may be able to live off of sewer rats if I must, but that will never suffice for long. I need to find a way out of this damned city, and soon.
The meaning of the conversation once more presses into my thinking, while the words escape me, I knew he told me, that my world was gone. Everyone, everything, that once had been, was no more and now, I am here. He refused to say why, he would not tell me where here is, just that here was all there was, and I best get used to it. He also mentioned that I would likely be despised in this world. Well, thanks for that. Just what I needed, to be unceremoniously dumped into a place where I do not belong nor will I be welcomed.
Something else sits with me though, something that was spoken, but not from the antagonist who beckoned me here, no, this was a kinder voice, who challenged me to continue on, and do what I have always done, but do it in a world, where I might make a difference. It is this concept that I finally settle on, and let my mind weave the idea into my consciousness. Words lift into the dank air, little wisps of vapor rising from my lips along with them as I speak with a quiet, stony resolve, "I am a Guardian". It was the only thing I knew for certain, and that I desperately ached for the green places. I could smell them from the streets above, but it quickly became clear the walls around this damned stone cage were meant to do precisely what they accomplish.
Oddly, the thought strikes me like a blow to the chest, and something brings a sudden sob to my lips that I can not explain. A pain in my chest of overwhelming loss just hits like an attacking mountain bear and I am unable to contain it. 'The Stone Cage', the words echo in my brain, I KNOW it means something, something important, but I can find nothing more than that in my misted memory, and suddenly it is too much, and without warning, I let rise a long, horrified howl of misery for those I could no longer recall, but ached for none the less. My strangled cry fades to another agonized sob, and leaves me exhausted. I do not know for whom I mourn, but it does little to wipe from me, the burden of their loss.
I linger there a time before I am able to struggle again to my unsteady feet. Focus, I MUST focus, I need to get out of here and back to where I belong. If I am discovered by those I was warned of, I may not last long here at all. As I begin to get my bearings, and map out my new hunting grounds, I am left to wonder if that infuriating man who left me in this foul smelling place, bothered to warn the world of exactly what he had released into it. For as I took each step, a renewed sense of self began to take hold of me, and I felt more and more at home in my own skin. He said, 'You will be despised here', and so I brace myself for it, but I think to be fair, he should have warned them as well, they may just bite off more than they can chew when they tangle with the likes of me.
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