Blackwater Islands bruise

when you look on me, you see a young woman. you see dark fur and mismatched eyes. this is the vessel i occupy, yes, but i existed long before my birth. long before the birth of my mother, or her mother before her,

the listener turned to face him, eyes of night and day ablaze.

once i was a creature of the void. a prince of the great beyond, where no mortal has ever tread. a god in my own right. or so i thought.

that night when she had thrown herself into the sea, she had learned the truth of it. yet the prophet had refused to speak of it, refused to think of it even in the most private of her thoughts. she had cast it from her mind, that endless sorrow of loss at a magnitude she could no longer truly grasp. to speak of it now tore a hole in the fabric of her.

there were many of us, but one by one the princes of the void traded power for mortality. i do not know why.

that decision was my own, once, though i do not remember it. i cast myself down for reasons i do not yet understand. in many ways, mortality has changed my nature. but the creature i was still resides within the flesh, the prophet's voice tightened with displeasure as she continued. i exist with one paw in each realm, forever caught between. a union between myself and a mortal soul cannot exist. to wed me, you must become...

the unknowable; the untouchable.

as i am. it is a great price to pay.