Sitara Tempest
All those flashes of images I thought were just dreams... it's something more than that. Dios, all these memories... these thoughts aren't mine. It's frightening, sometimes I feel I'm in a trance, taken over by something lost. Something gone coming back to life. Clara laughed when I told her, and so did everyone else in the orphanage. "Dolores, only 19, already crazy loco!" they all teased.
Date unknown
Dios mio, what's happening to me? I can hear other people's thoughts, I slip into another language now and then.
February 25, 1995
I guess I'm lucky. Than others, at least. What would anyone give to have this power, that I feel so easily thrumming through my veins as if it were always there. Immortality to such a degree that I might never stop coming back to this waking world, a gift that I know someday will be a curse. Oh, but I've been running for far too long now. And even with my skills and strength heightened I'm still uneasy about facing the Lethe. I know. I know. It is ridiculous. Death is only a release.
March 15, 1997
Hmm... I'm planning to visit India again sometime this month. To catch up on what's been happening there, see the land I called home again since a long long time. But it will be funny, when I see the palace again. Or what's left of it anyway. Just ruins now, a few broken walls and fountains, jars and archways... A museum where father used to greet his guests, glass cases filled with our belongings up for display. Funny, when I'll remember how it used to be. Rich colors and fine tapestries, soldier's footsteps echoing in the halls... councilors arguing in the next room and how the temperature was always a bit cooler in my chambers than everyone else's... *Sigh* I guess this is what they mean, so close and yet so far. Now the only thing I see when I think about the palace is the sound of a whip lashing, cracking. Swords clashing and people screaming. It bothers me to think I'll never know what really happened to my family that day, after Kasib and I were rushed out of the city. But I swear I can hear my mother crying, her tears blood on her cheeks.
Maybe... maybe I shouldn't go.
July 2, 1997
No one really knows about my family in Spain. I haven't told anyone, because I'm afriad of what might happen if I let myself remember. Mamita and Papa, they loved me. I know. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, bad dreams about clowns and monsters still vivid in my head. Little Francisco would still be asleep in his own bed, my brother snoring loudly. I remember walking around the house, seeing Papa stil awake. He'd be sitting on the porch steps, smoking another cigarette and staring into the dark sky. He would always know when I'd standing there behind him, and he'd smile as I sit next to him on the steps. Six years old, I'd watch in fanscination at the red star at the end of the cigarette, Papa would notice me staring and laugh, then point to the twinkling lights up a thousand years away.
Then a few nights later, it happened. Those few hours of a blur changed everything. There'd still be nightmares, and Papa would still be on the front porch with the angry red star on his cigarette reflecting madness in his eyes. But he wouldn't smile for me anymore, Mamita would take me away from him. The next morning I would wake up with hurting black on my skin.
No one knows I ran away from an orphanage just a few blocks away from home a few years after that. No one knows what happened before and after I ran, only I do. I remember running after something I couldn't place a name on, with only a feeling to keep me going. Chasing after something I couldn't be sure of. I don't want to remember anymore... Someone please take it away.
January 22, 1999
"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out, but from here i can pretend. I can pretend that things last, I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last, stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend."
I read that little paragraph somewhere, I don't remember where. But as soon as I finished, I sat silent for a while, thinking. It put a few more things into perspective for me, planting my feet back on the ground where it belongs. My own little life seems so helpless suddenly, even with all this power and passion and sadness. But I want to live. I want to make it matter, I want to be reckless and make mistakes, cry over sappy love songs, embarrass myself in front of the whole Clan. I want to be on Broadway or discover a new element, play my sitar on concert and lose my voice from singing the whole night long. ::Sigh:: I feel like a child again.
It's early morning now and here I am sitting on the roof, writing in a notebook, watching the stars fade into the sunlight for the very first time in a long while.
August 15, 2000
It's something in the air here in the Mansion that makes me feel so unecessarily soulmatish every once in a while. Not that I'm complaining, haha. I told him I loved him this morning, and I'm sure he already knew that. But I haven't heard myself say it for a while, and the look on his face when he heard it spoken so entriely out of the blue... priceless.