A Cold Tale
pomella was a joyous girl of a rural area. She lived in a house with the simple necessities a
good hour walk from the city, surrounded by sunbleached fields of swaying wheat and dark green corn stalks. Her family seemed to match the area they lived in as well, her parents differing shades of yellow or brown, humming to themselves as their muscled work hands easily chopped at the wheat and carried buckets of corn in an arm. They were all serious and good humored workers, the sun seeming to lift their spirits even as it beat upon their backs. Unlike the rest of her family though, Pomella did not find scorching heat and enough work to make your back arch at twenty as good work.
She was a pale white color, her hair being a golden yellow with wisps of white running through, and her eyes shined strangely blue and almost glowing in low light. She was giddy at most times, and could make relatively good guesses even though she hadn’t even been homeschooled as a child. She did not enjoy the idea of working in the fields, her white hide could easily scorch and smoulder in the sun causing her to overheat, while her sensitive eyes couldn’t handle the sun’s rays. Her frame was petite and smooth like a birds, nothing like the strong mule like stature of her parents. She couldn’t help but toil with them constantly, the two wanting her too work while she wanted nothing to do with the back breaking work.
On a chilly day in the middle of winter Pomella felt an urge to leave her home for the day and explore the bustling city. It was like a feeling on her chest, as if a chain were attached to the center of her chest and was tugging, and without a word to her family she walked out of the small home and turning closed the creaky wooden door slowly, trying not to make a sound. She felt as if her parents had the ears of a bat sometimes, as if any movement she made echoed to their head so they knew exactly what she was doing. It seemed this one day the house was silent, her home quiet with sleep.
Her ears felt clogged as she walked down the streets of a dark road, her mind filled with whispers and ideas flickering in but before she could catch them they were out of her head like flies, buzzing away just out of reach. Shaking her head to loosen the cobwebs seeming to form in her mind she sat down and clutched her head, covering her ears and closing his eyes to let her mind clear and think about what she was doing. On the entire walk here and down this nearly abandoned street she had almost been in a haze, unsure of her actions and simply following the feeling of - just absolute need - coursing through her chest. Now that feeling was gone, and she couldn’t fathom why she was on this street. Or for that matter how was she on a single dark street in the morning with barely anyone passing by. Without, anyone, passing by.
Her head shot up as the whispers suddenly had a direction and when her eyes reached directly ahead she saw a shadow, a black menacing shadow with fiery blue eyes that sparked and flickered with promises of death and immolation. Staring into those eyes her mind seemed to cloud over again and she reached back, finding a shard of a broken beer bottle sharp enough to cut flesh and bone. The shadows around the figure dispersed and what stood in its place was a black void in the form of a being, its mouth being a mask of a smile with flames licking up from the black hole that was its mouth. she felt like she could see through it and couldn’t, like she heard whispers but was deaf, and like the very hand holding the piece of glass was actually her right foot.
It snickered and laughed as it continued towards Pomella continuing to emerge, her eyes locked upon its own as she did her best to raise her arm. But her arm instead went down smacking her hand into the ground and she cried out in joy, shocked at the sounds coming out of her mouth and the seeming reverse of her movements. When she managed to look back at the creature though it was right in front of her, and without a second thought she sliced. The see-through green glass flashed in the darkness as it glided through the air gripped by her hand. Before it cleanly sliced through her left hand. She screamed again in pure exuberance, but no blood emerged from the wound as the creature stared at her hand curiously, before tapping her forehead with its oblivion wreathed hand.
Her thoughts became its as it seemed to rip her very mind to shreds with a single tap, her body feeling so - so unbelievably cold - as it seemed to speak to her dying brain. “I am the incarnation of confusion and opposites, not nice to meet you,” it teased in a chilling voice, before suddenly dispersing, everything seeming to go to normal around the two of them. It suddenly became a tall man with pitch black fur yet white eyes and a cocky smile, while he wore a black tuxedo but a beggars pair of pants, with ragged holes barely holding onto his lean frame. Her mind felt normal again and thoughts made sense again, except for the fact her hand didn’t hurt. When Pomella looked down though she saw why.
Where her hand had been now growed a chunk of ice, shimmering and freezing without melting or even letting a drop spill from its surface as the ice spidered into a shape she couldn’t tell yet. The man - creature, thing she wasn’t sure what to call it - reached out its left hand and instinctively Pomella reached out her left arm only to find her hand was back as she shook it’s, or at least it seemed like her hand at first. It was made of ice yet she could move it like it was her own, and as she watched it smoothed over with her skin color and stopped freezing so much, going to the same temperature as the rest of her body. That’s when she noticed the fact that nobody was noticing them, not this weird shadowy man or the fact her old hand was now disintegrating into snow.
“Welcome to the world incarnation of rebirth,” he said calmly, pulling his hand back before shaking off the little bits of frost that clung to his inky-black fingers.
“Wait a minute the incar-bobble of who now?” she asked confused, tilting her head at the unfamiliar words. With a sigh, he stood up and stretched his back, each pop of his back sounding more like a cry of a cat then bones popping into place. “Basically your an entirely new being fitted with certain attributes and abilities based on what you represent, and each incarnation tend to have some tilt on the moral scale almost like a DND game,” he droned, then smirked. “Funny how an incarnation with ice abilities ends up being created where it is usually so hot it could send most into a heat stroke,”
“It's not that hot her-”
“Oh thats right thats right I always get those two places mixed up silly me, well hello,” he said with a wave, before poofing into thin air as if being dragged by a giant hook from oblivion.
She blinked, shook her hand and standing up muttered to herself “If i find that guy again he is going to find a boot shoved so far up his a-” before being interrupted as a random child ran through her torso. She gave a little surprised “eep!”, but then looked confused as he continued right past with a shiver. Her usual joyfulness of being around people was muted as she noticed nobody could see her, even though she stood in the middle of the street. It was almost like… she was a ghost.