I came into this world fully formed, yet blank and senseless. It matters not a bit what I may have been before that point in time for it clearly had no effect upon what I became. I spent centuries wallowing in what I can only describe as a semi-sentient state of existence, never questioning or seeking to know anything beyond the immediate challenges presented at that time. Somehow I survived and always remained unnoticed and unremarkable for close to half a millennium without making any conscious effort to do so, or even understanding that I was fundamentally different from those surrounding me.

I do not know exactly how or why that blanket of thoughtlessness frayed and fell away from me but when it did I found myself despondent and afraid. Fear has been my constant companion since that time, even when I believed myself to be divine and powerful above and beyond all Men it was fear fueled the illusion. I had loved, and had seen that torn from me by the inevitable passage of time. For a span of centuries I became practical, easily inserting myself into clans and villages to live out a span of ten or twenty years before inveigling to move on to another place, another people, one step ahead of the inevitable suspicions I aroused. Eventually I withdrew from the world of Men, thinking to embrace what I must be, believing I could not do so when surrounded by mortals whose ignorance and brief lives must always make them less than me. In solitude there came a purity of thought and belief reinforced by the ignorance of others to become a grand and murderous madness.

All my life I had sought to remain outside the sight of the powerful and superstitious and yet there I was, ruling over an ignorant people by threat of death and believing myself so far above them… until I came to the attention of a powerful man who sought me out, believing as I did that there was a touch of Godhood in me and that he could take that for himself. He conquered me, made of me his Goddess, his lover and his slave. In the end I destroyed him as thoroughly as had I driven an arrow through his eye. I did not understand my culpability in his death and lashed out at those whose sick and twisted society I felt had robbed me of my godhood and destroyed the one hope I had of forever transcending the world of men. Over more than a decade close to one thousand died at my hands before I finally understood the truth, and found myself naked and alone in a world I could not understand: a world that could not understand me.

I went to ground again and drew the anonymity of slavery about myself, slowly moving through the Roman Empire until I was free of it. I took what solace I could with the Church, never a believer in the God and His Son, but willing to find a kind of faith in those who did believe. I remained a creature of Pagan gods and sometimes inscrutable motivations, but I would not draw attention to myself by challenging the orthodoxy of the day. I was not then, nor am I now a rebel and their faith was no threat to me so long as they never came to suspect the truth about me.

I existed in the shadows, always in the underbelly of those societies I joined; whore, thief, mistress, and sometimes healer, confidante or even teacher. It ate away at me, the bites so small, so incremental I hardly noticed until the rage within sought outlet and I seemed to stand outside myself, watching the ancient creature I was yet again plan murder and mayhem with grim satisfaction, helpless to stop it, perhaps not even desiring to. I awaited only the trigger, the one last burden I would refuse to bear and then I would punish them, all of them.

And then I met Jeremiah.

Posted on February 16th, 2009 by Zsallia
Filed under: Immortality, The Past