{Story} Black and White
It wasn’t that easy. Nothing was black and white - there were no absolutes in the world for her, no darkness battling with light, nor good with evil. Sometimes, with every breath she took, she felt that she lived in perpetual grayness, not knowing where she stood in the world, somehow apart from everyone else.
She went for walks, nightly, in the hopes that she might come to an illuminating conclusion on one of them, one day. Something that would alleviate the sense of blandness she had come to associate with life.
It was hard to imagine that she could find truth, least of all enlightenment, in the areas she had taken to prowling. In fact, darkness as well as deception was rife in the darkest alleys of the city. But it was not to those she ventured - it was to the gray areas, the ones where prostitutes moaned on one side of the street, and priests preached on the other, that she walked. Or the warehouses along the river, faceless and nondescript, filled with temporary goods, that she wondered whether she would lead her whole life unknowing.
Darkness always had a slight advantage while she contemplated her path. She loved the ambience of quietness, the feathery touch the absence of light seemed to imbue on everything. In the day, people relied too much on their primary sense, that of sight. This was not allowed at night - and it was those who trained then, who refused to admit defeat in the face of obvious vulnerability due to human fallibility, who emerged the strongest. The fear of darkness was one most primal - but so was the love of it, and it is unclear where the line between both merged.
In this darkness, all that could be seen about her was that she was tall, nondescript, and built strongly from years of training - most people didn’t care to cross her. But in the dark, the desperate and the foolish were blind. She had dispatched all who had tried - the waif with large eyes, who had tried to slit her purse; a giant of a man who had rushed at her with a machete and, inches from hitting her, had stopped abruptly and broken into peals of hysterical laughter; the emaciated old man with hungers aside from that which would be satisfied with food, who had stood under a dimly lit street lamp and, leering, exposed himself to her.
It had been a street lamp such as the one coming up - a lone bastion of light against the encroaching darkness, all the more pronounced on a cloud-filled, moonless night such as this one. Pausing below the streetlamp, she took a moment to savour the quietness and raise her head to the light. She narrowed her eyes slightly against the brightness, and it was this momentary distraction that caused her to miss the light tread of footsteps behind her.
She did not cry out when strong arms grabbed her and she felt the cold touch of a dagger to her throat. Instead, she raised her head defiantly and caught the reek of ale as the man who held her now in a vice-like grip spoke into the shell of her ear, “I…have been sent…to kill you.”
He chuckled quietly and almost lucidly, while she pondered the absurdity of that statement. It was impossible. She had always remained neutral, unmarked by anyone. The only conclusion could be that the man had hit the wrong target. How utterly stupid, and a disgrace to true practitioners of murder - a drunk assassin attacking the wrong target. And he hadn’t even killed her yet, though she was at her most vulnerable at the moment…
Not anymore, though - while the man continued hesitating, she reached into the knife tucked in her left boot, and stabbed twice into the person behind her. She had never before killed - the worst she had done to those who had crossed her was knock them unconscious - and she was surprised to find that the blade bit into vulnerable flesh with astonishing ease. As his dying grip loosened, she twisted quickly away from his dagger and, executing a half-turn, landed a last blow in the man’s back.
Her victim collapsed, sprawling in an indignant heap on the ground, looking like so much rubbish.
She held her knife up to the light - tonight, it had tasted first blood, but she had not seen the possibility for hand to hand combat. It had been almost instinctive, intoxicating, that feeling that still rode her as she replayed the previous moments. Her weapon sinking in, bells tolling in her head as she felt the satisfaction of knowing she had struck with accuracy. And the naturalness of it all, oh the rightness!
And in that moment, she realised she had been wrong. The choice had already been made for her, and she belonged to it. There was no grey area.
With a slight smile on her face, the woman turns from the man lying face-down, illuminated by the harsh light of the street lamp, blood pooling beneath his fatal wound as his eyes stare upward, unseeing. The clouds clear, and the full moon is revealed, bathing the alley in a wash of pale, ephemeral light. But the woman is nowhere to be seen, having already turned from the light and vanished into the shadows, even as the clouds move to hide the moon from prying eyes, once more.
A/N: A young woman wonders whether her path lies with the Light or Dark. But an encounter on a night walk whispers that, indeed, it was all black and white after all. [This is called..no inspirational summaries at 5am. ;)] Piece inspired by Kori, who wanted me to "write about someone who's struggling to find his path between evil or good" (the other two lines he mentioned would constitute spoilers). Being the contrary person I am, I wrote as a female instead. ;) One of my few female perspective pieces, I believe. Can't say I love it (seems to be recurring trend nowadays) but I'm really too tired to read through it yet another time so perhaps I'll edit it to be less verbose and chunky some time in the future.
She went for walks, nightly, in the hopes that she might come to an illuminating conclusion on one of them, one day. Something that would alleviate the sense of blandness she had come to associate with life.
It was hard to imagine that she could find truth, least of all enlightenment, in the areas she had taken to prowling. In fact, darkness as well as deception was rife in the darkest alleys of the city. But it was not to those she ventured - it was to the gray areas, the ones where prostitutes moaned on one side of the street, and priests preached on the other, that she walked. Or the warehouses along the river, faceless and nondescript, filled with temporary goods, that she wondered whether she would lead her whole life unknowing.
Darkness always had a slight advantage while she contemplated her path. She loved the ambience of quietness, the feathery touch the absence of light seemed to imbue on everything. In the day, people relied too much on their primary sense, that of sight. This was not allowed at night - and it was those who trained then, who refused to admit defeat in the face of obvious vulnerability due to human fallibility, who emerged the strongest. The fear of darkness was one most primal - but so was the love of it, and it is unclear where the line between both merged.
In this darkness, all that could be seen about her was that she was tall, nondescript, and built strongly from years of training - most people didn’t care to cross her. But in the dark, the desperate and the foolish were blind. She had dispatched all who had tried - the waif with large eyes, who had tried to slit her purse; a giant of a man who had rushed at her with a machete and, inches from hitting her, had stopped abruptly and broken into peals of hysterical laughter; the emaciated old man with hungers aside from that which would be satisfied with food, who had stood under a dimly lit street lamp and, leering, exposed himself to her.
It had been a street lamp such as the one coming up - a lone bastion of light against the encroaching darkness, all the more pronounced on a cloud-filled, moonless night such as this one. Pausing below the streetlamp, she took a moment to savour the quietness and raise her head to the light. She narrowed her eyes slightly against the brightness, and it was this momentary distraction that caused her to miss the light tread of footsteps behind her.
She did not cry out when strong arms grabbed her and she felt the cold touch of a dagger to her throat. Instead, she raised her head defiantly and caught the reek of ale as the man who held her now in a vice-like grip spoke into the shell of her ear, “I…have been sent…to kill you.”
He chuckled quietly and almost lucidly, while she pondered the absurdity of that statement. It was impossible. She had always remained neutral, unmarked by anyone. The only conclusion could be that the man had hit the wrong target. How utterly stupid, and a disgrace to true practitioners of murder - a drunk assassin attacking the wrong target. And he hadn’t even killed her yet, though she was at her most vulnerable at the moment…
Not anymore, though - while the man continued hesitating, she reached into the knife tucked in her left boot, and stabbed twice into the person behind her. She had never before killed - the worst she had done to those who had crossed her was knock them unconscious - and she was surprised to find that the blade bit into vulnerable flesh with astonishing ease. As his dying grip loosened, she twisted quickly away from his dagger and, executing a half-turn, landed a last blow in the man’s back.
Her victim collapsed, sprawling in an indignant heap on the ground, looking like so much rubbish.
She held her knife up to the light - tonight, it had tasted first blood, but she had not seen the possibility for hand to hand combat. It had been almost instinctive, intoxicating, that feeling that still rode her as she replayed the previous moments. Her weapon sinking in, bells tolling in her head as she felt the satisfaction of knowing she had struck with accuracy. And the naturalness of it all, oh the rightness!
And in that moment, she realised she had been wrong. The choice had already been made for her, and she belonged to it. There was no grey area.
With a slight smile on her face, the woman turns from the man lying face-down, illuminated by the harsh light of the street lamp, blood pooling beneath his fatal wound as his eyes stare upward, unseeing. The clouds clear, and the full moon is revealed, bathing the alley in a wash of pale, ephemeral light. But the woman is nowhere to be seen, having already turned from the light and vanished into the shadows, even as the clouds move to hide the moon from prying eyes, once more.
A/N: A young woman wonders whether her path lies with the Light or Dark. But an encounter on a night walk whispers that, indeed, it was all black and white after all. [This is called..no inspirational summaries at 5am. ;)] Piece inspired by Kori, who wanted me to "write about someone who's struggling to find his path between evil or good" (the other two lines he mentioned would constitute spoilers). Being the contrary person I am, I wrote as a female instead. ;) One of my few female perspective pieces, I believe. Can't say I love it (seems to be recurring trend nowadays) but I'm really too tired to read through it yet another time so perhaps I'll edit it to be less verbose and chunky some time in the future.