fetch

At first it was confusing to you why all of a sudden your sister, the only one you had ever known, went berserk at you and ran off, claiming you weren’t real. Suddenly, you were alone. Suddenly, you were hungry and hurting and wounded and sad, unable to make ends meet in a tiny, expensive city apartment. Then you were homeless. Then you were wandering the streets. And then, you left the streets and wandered into the wilderness.

You always felt at home here, but you went with what you could get. You missed her, but you did what you could. Out here, you were somewhat happy. You made your own home with scraps and plywood and made your own food with seed packets you bought with your last scraps of change.

One day, though, the depression came back to haunt you. Worse than ever before. Somewhere, in the pit of your stomach, you knew she was right. You weren’t the real you, a fact that haunted you every day after that. Somewhere across the continent, you somehow knew that the real you had escaped a grisly fate. She was far from home. She was as scared as you had been.

You couldn’t make yourself feel angry. Not pity. Only sympathy and echoing hurt.

But that didn’t stop others from trying to prey on that hurt. Try to twist it into hate. Somebody found you, eventually, and called you out for what you were. A fetch. Animated by the shadows of the Divine Fire, made to replace somebody that ‘the masters’ took away, but they probably deserved it somehow. He taught you the echoes of faerie power, but he was hellbent on destroying his copy, and talking you into doing the same. Proving he was real. It scared you, more than anything, that twisted sociopathic desire. He bought you a plane ticket to Vancouver, and gave you the money to buy a ferry ticket. Urged you to take the life back that you were somehow owed. Told you to make her pay for escaping ‘the masters’ wishes’.

In exchange, you gave him an abandoned clearing, with all the things that had made it a home stripped away come morning’s light. You wandered even further into the wilds. Full of fear. Full of emptiness.

That ticket still weighs heavy in your pocket. You wonder what she’s like. You wonder if she’d just try to kill you like he said.

You wonder if “sister” was ever real. You have your other’s memories, you know that it was drastically out of character… or was it? If you went back, would you be able to call her as being a ‘fetch’? Or was she that twisted all along, a mess of insanity brewing underneath jealous green eyes?

You wonder if it’s better to take your chances with the changelings.