Hindsight

There are days when I wonder if I will ever find peace.

Days when I sit and stare out the window and know that this will not last long.

Everything in my life has come at a price. At first, the price did not seem high; I simply had to leave home and though I would miss my brother and miss the trees of my youth, I knew that the life that was laid out before me was worth the cost.

How foolish those days seem now in hindsight.

I thought that he would hold me gently in his hands like the bird he’d been quickly whispering to when I first saw him. I was wrong. Oh, how I was wrong.

I look around at the cage I’m in and I know that it’s not even a gilded one to keep me safe in the comfort of my captivity.

If only I could go back in time and stop myself from letting him take me in his hand.

But I can’t.

There are things that my kind can do, crossing time and the space between one world and another is one of them, but to change our own timestream is something that I cannot do. I cannot go back to myself because it would do nothing. I would be invisible to myself and unable to make any kind of action that would change what has already happened.

My brother used to tell me stories about those that tried to change their own past and it never worked. They couldn’t even find a loophole to do so through another person. It just wouldn’t happen, no warnings or moves that could cause my doom to be turned from me. I couldn’t even go back and affect his timestream because that would affect my own.

I could do nothing about the past, about my past, but I could try and do something about my future. I can travel away from here should I be able to harness my own abilities in such a way that he doesn’t detect. He keeps close watch on my energies and everything that I can do. He makes things from my blood and my abilities. Makes himself rich and powerful while I am left with only enough to survive through the day and then the night.

My words have been silenced as there isn’t even enough in me to be able to speak words of power to focus what little life force I have to escape.

My husband certainly did his research before he captured his ‘pretty little bird.’

This little bird will peck her own eyes out if it will help me escape. I have seen enough animals gnaw their paws off in order to escape when necessary. I may hold the shape of a human but I am just as wild as the birds beyond my barred window.

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This was actually a little work hat I started several months ago, but hadn’t been able to finish. I was inspired to finish it by the picture prompt from the First Monday prompt for the Light and Shade Challenge. Sorry it’s kind of depressing, but this little story universe is really sad in my head.

image: courtesy of Wiki commons, taken by monica navarro aranda and used under the Creative Commons Agreement