Cryptids Part 2

Cryptids part 2

When someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal...

Where I go, the earth burns beneath my feet and when I leave it, it remains infertile.

Where I go, misery will come.

Where I go, death follows after me.

 But I cannot halt. I cannot settle down in a place and let it be the epicenter of the destruction I bring. It would split the world in half. It almost has once, and I will not let allow myself such recklessness again. So I must keep going and pray where I go, no home will lie.

It is a cruel presence, my existence. I do not know what purpose it does serve. Maybe I have no purpose at all. Maybe there is no reason for the misery I bring, no great higher purpose.

Maybe misery is just misery. Maybe there lies no beauty in destruction and no peace in death as I once thought in my youth. Maybe my existence has no grand meaning and I am only here to serve as messenger of the wars to come.

 So long have I wandered this world, seen day become night and night become day. Seen seasons change and empires fall but still I could not find an end to my journey.

Maybe it’s not meant to have an end at all, and I am chosen to wander this world until I have corrupted every town, burned every field and poisoned all the waters. Maybe the apocalypse will not come in one great war but will be brought upon by me, each day a little bit more, step by step.

But I do wonder, if my journey has no end how could it have had a beginning? Because despite all the time that has passed, I still remember my days as a boy. I still remember who I was before my wanders.

I still remember when I was…human. Or at least, when I was still close to it.

 I was born in the cold months and my mother died of childbed fever, not short after she first held me in her arms. I was a sickly child and my skin was ashen, the doctors were certain I would not survive until spring. But oh, how wrong they were.

As I grew, my skin remained ashen and my body stayed gaunt, but no sickness or harm could ever take me down. No fever could kill me, and no wild animal could mangle me. No bruises would remain on my skin for longer than a day and no wound would become a faded scar. It would just…vanish. As if it had never been there at all.

Not even my father could kill me, and god bless, he tried to.

He hated me more than anything and I could not blame him. He loved my mother, he loved her dearly and she was the light of his life. I was merely the darkness that had claimed her. If he could find a reason to hurt me, he would take it.

 If I forgot my chores or brought home a bad grade, he had reason enough. His hands were coarse from the work on the fields and his voice still rang in my ears when he was done. The taste of blood became oh too familiar for me and I would be quick to learn how to walk without making a sound. If I just stayed quiet and hid from him, I would be safe.

 My sister tried to look after me, our father’s rough treatment of me concerned her greatly. She did not hate me like he did.

But still, I know what lied beneath her eyes wasn’t love for me, not at all.

It was fear.

And pity.

 I think she always knew that I was not as human as I was meant to be. It frightened her, but she wanted me to be safe and happy, nonetheless.

So I can bear no grudge against her, even if she never tried to stop him.

 Of all the people that died at my hands, she was the only one I truly wished I could have saved. But I now know that could have never been possible. It was just a matter of time and place, to be frank.

 I was fifteen years old when my father last laid his hands on me. It was nightfall and he was yelling so loud, the walls of my room where shaking. He had found my journal and as he had gone through it, he discovered that my best friend and I would not go out fishing like I always told him if he ever asked. He didn’t like knowing this and he was sure he would beat those sentiments out of me if he was just rough enough.

He raised his fists at me, and I could feel a burning ache coming over me, before he had even touched me, and then he was aflame. I watched how my father feel to his knees, screaming in agony and begging the gods for mercy, and then he was quiet.

Nothing more than a charred skeleton lying before my feet.

 When my sister came in, she was scared, I tried to explain, tried to tell her what happened but as I tried to approach her, the floor burned where I set my feet. She wanted to escape but the fire consumed the house and her along with it. The flames wandered over to the houses of our neighbors and soon the entire street was blazing with an orange glow.

When the sun set the next morning, all that was left of my hometown was a pile of ash. And so I began to wander.

 My journey has lasted many centuries now and it has been a lonely one. No living soul has survived its encounter with me, has proven the ability to overcome the misery I bring, so lonely I will remain. Lonely and without a purpose.

 But as I wander, I now see a figure far in the distance. A figure that seems so…very familiar.

And where he stands, the earth blooms.

Raven Familiar ✨

🕷🦟🦗🐜🐝🐞

lil something I drew to celebrate Adventure Time coming back 👀