Kura Lightstorm
A curious occurrence, Kura writes,Ive already spoken of the strange wonder and composition of human body. The river of tiny red... I still don’t know what to call them. The tiny pieces that flow through us, collectors of life and history and power and genealogy. But occasionally, these parts get corrupted. Some misfiring of identification. They stop recognizing each other. They become hostile. Screaming I am this, but the others refusing to accept them. This misdiagnosis, this miscommunication breeds contempt, corruption, there are wars in our very blood. Until you erase these bits of a person. Render them without identity, without history. Then there is peace.
The pen halts. Dried at the tip. Kura fees a storm swelling in his chest. He breathes heavy. His eyes suffer. He wipes at one. Blots the pen again. Takes more notes.
Tiny Kura, wayward and unsuspecting, walking the streets, cobbled and wet from dew, a group of kids who in another world would have better games to play see the tiny boy with a trail of blood cleric whispers trailing him like a shadow.
One of them whispers, another laughs, there is pushing, a tiny scrum. Kids. One of them gets an idea. Remembers a trick they saw. Two of them are needed, even his struggles are tiny, watching, the shiny of a blade spinning, spinning, splintering sunlight and then sinking into the dark of the alley, further, through his finger.
too far
Gasping, some moderate alarm, running away, a lot of blood.The tiny boy, pained, but curious, playing with the remaining digits. Making a fist with a cavity. The bleeding stops. Somehow, he tells it, too. He leans down. His lone finger, carefully plucks it between his fingers. Pain, so much pain, as he pushes against the rendered stub, hold it there. Pain, but also understanding, dark red, tinted threads start to curl out, drawn by invisible threads.
ten years later, ten finger grip.
He's kind of a fuck. He's definitely a fuck up. The older ones, the ones who know their shit, can name it. That boys got chaos. Chaos wrapped around his fist. Chaos in his mouth. A storm in his chest.
What do they know of thunder?
But he hears so little. As Kiana is carrying the weight of her crown, her long sword, Kura is hidden in the corner of the library. He has a weight, too. He has tried hard to let it, but it's a growing kind of anchor, less intrusive than the bludgeoning she takes, literal for now. He doesn't see the bruises. Doesn't see Kiana, not for days after. He only sees it later, an echo released as a flinch, a hollow in her eye. She's sparring with him - he's honestly hopeless, but getting better - and a move catches her by surprise. She's not at her best. He doesn't persist.
The light at dinner catches the white of his finger, the scar tissue sickeningly straight. She might think he doesn't know what she did for him. He knows this secret. Quietly, in his own way, he's thankful for the blood shed for him. He hates this feeling. Pain breeds pain.
He writes to other churches at night. Places he only knows through whispers. The clerics frown in the morning as he sends his parcels. But maybe if somewhere there is someone who knows more about what he is, if there are books about it. Maybe one day he can protect her as well as she protects him.
They tell him Lightstorm like it might mean something to him. They call him Aasimar like that clears anything up. It happened so long ago and he was so young and the rain was pouring and the thunder crashed and the windows were so large and the trees swinging looked like giant's limbs coming right for him.
Hey, look it's the king orphan - the boy with wings. I know - what do you say - give us a look. Jump off the ledge.
It gets blurry like a dream. Each day he remembers less and less. Did he jump to prove to them or himself? Did the bright lights come to him as he hit the ground or right before? Or did he just want to get away.
She never came to him then. Not when he tried to fly or after he cried, the white of his bone peaking through the skin, and his eyes fluttered like the wings he dreamed of having and all the world sank into black.
Hattlee. It's the first curse word he ever learned. She was the first thing he ever disappointed.
'Two Aasimars so close together, after so long. And I get you? I've heard she's already ascending. You can't even climb a tree.'
It's days after, he is sore, drunk on pain potions. After months of silence, years of celestial disappointment, of apologizing to empty air, the tiny boy begins to retreat into the mist. There was no crown on his head. There ere no wings at his back. There never was.
He laughs. He was dropped off here before he made up these visits. Even if she were here, he's sure he disappointed his parents first.
They are young. Kiana with all her star-bright, and Kura whose hair glistens when the oil slicks in his hair and he's too stubborn to wash up before dinner. He is greedily slurping half through his soup before he notices. Kiana with her bread undipped, with eyes in haunted places, a vacant sign on her face. Kura doesn't know why, but he feels people in ways he's not sure they welcome him to. He touches her wrist gently with the back of his hand, bread still tucked in his tiny fingers, and she looks up, alarmed, woken up from her torpor.
"It's not so bad," he says.
"What do you -" her voice is accusatory.
"The soup," he gestures, ripping another bite of bread with his teeth, soup dripping down his chin.
She tries to cheer up. A flashlight with dying batteries, flickering, desperate and fading.
He watches her explain to the cleric. Not hungry. Stomach upset. There's a lecture. How much she has that so many others are dying for. If you can't eat all the hard work put into you, you can go clean it up then.
They were always so much harder on her when she didn't live up to what they wanted.
He followed her into the kitchen. He coughed, making a polite interruption, as she struggled with the hand brush on the stone floor. An unusual wince in each movement.
"Kura, what are you doing here?" And then as if she could read his mind. "No, this is my fault. I should do this alone. It's bad to not appreciate what we've got."
"Your back," he says it as reflex. He can read things in her, too. There's a quiet moment, a building tension, some great secret on the horizon with a still too bright sun.
It feels almost indecent now, to think back to him raising the back of shirt, just barely, revealing the small of her back, the part of skin you never really mean to show anyone. He thinks this must be wear she hides the things no one can know about, and he thinks further, that maybe she doesn't even realize are there.
"I can," there is blood and its strange familiarity, an almost pull to him, but also something else. These wounds have been touched by something maybe only these two people, in this moment alone, could understand. "I can help," and he waits for her to nod.
His hands touch her skin then in a way for the first time. There is a warmth and a cold, as the blood dances at the end of her cuts, as the pain is absorbed by regrowth.
He looks up towards her, but can't make eye contact. This power of his, was just a whisper around these halls, easier to make peace with the monster in the shadow when he isn't showing his teeth.
He asks, because it's important, "Do you want to keep the scars?"
Social
Religious Views
Relationships
Journals
Kura Journal 1Kura Journal 2