Wing Clipping/1

It's growing.

Actually, for something to grow, wouldn't that have to make something alive? The question of whether or not the monster inside of her is alive is beyond Blakemore's intelligence. And the less time she spends thinking about the monster, the better.

Some days the voices are louder than others, which makes it hard to ignore them, but they all tell her the same things. Hurt herself, hurt others, don't eat, don't sleep, the mildest of what they want her to do is stealing a prized relic from the treasury.

She never gets a break from them, and she's grown out of expecting to get a break from them. Usually she doesn't succumb to their demands, which surprises those that know about her role. Her real role, not the role that most people thought she had.

Blakemore spends her time avoiding people. It's safer that way. Because she can feel it growing and knows that soon it will not be happy with how much control Blakemore is allowing it. And it will take control, forcing her to step into the role of the Black Swan. And it will go after those she loves first. She knows it, though no one has ever told her. She just knows, on a deep, instinctual level, she knows.

Her favorite place to go, in Ever After, at least, is the abandoned cottages. They say that they're marked for demolition, but no one ever comes to them to do said demolition. There safe. And she can write in her notebook, her only gift from an Uncle Luke.

It was monogrammed with her name, Blakemore, It was the nicest thing she owned and she guarded it with her life. But she only opened it to write in in the cottages. At home, she was locked in her room and no one could come in, which made it okay for her to write in it. But since coming to Ever After, her days of assured privacy were gone.

It made the dark side of her happy, but it made Blakemore worried. Especially since she knows the day is coming soon when she will no longer have control, and there's that many more people to hurt.

At least the cottages were empty. Blakemore should have known not to get her hopes up because as she was losing herself in her writing, for once letting her guard down, someone came in.

Blakemore slapped the notebook shut and stood up, staring at the intruder. She ignored the voice in her head that instantly declared to "''Destroy them." ''and contented herself with studying the stranger.