Thursday, March 3, 2005

Gargoyle-Chapter 1: My name
My name is Kukri. That much I can tell you. I can't tell you my last name, or where I came from, or who my parents were. I can't tell you my age, or my descent. I can't tell you who knows me, who likes me, or who hates me. I can't tell you what others think of me, or if they even see me at all. I can't tell you much about me. I don't have the answers.

Sometimes I think I am old, sometimes young. I often see myself as naive and foolish, acting as weak as a child. These moments are followed be stretches of time where I feel as though I have borne the burden of all the eras this world has seen, and that they are bearing down on me; crushing me. I estimate that I am 17, but I look younger. I say I am 13, for people are always kinder to strangers that young. When you get older, they change their perceptive of you from a victem to a vagrant.

I don't know my birthday. I wouldn't care, anyways. There is no one there to wish me luck in the new year of my life; no one to give me a small gift or a kind word of encouragement; no one to congradulate me on having survived this long. Not knowing my birthday is better, for then I do not have a single day during the year where I cannot help but dwell on these facts.

I can't tell you who knows me, but I know no one. I can't say who hates me, but I am sure there must be many. Living as I do, a loner on the streets, fighting is the only way to defend yourself. They see a girl who looks to be vulnerable and they attack. Perhaps they are justified in their surprise and anger when I not only fight back, but win.

But I can't tell you who these people are. I don't know their names. I don't even know my own last name. My parents, if I had any, didn't leave me with a hint of what mine was. I don't remember them. I don't remember much before I became who I am now.

I can't tell you exactly when I became who I am now. I simply woke up one day in some ruddy gutter on some random street in an unnamed part of an unknown city. I opened my eyes and knew that I was me: a person without a past hunting for a nonexistant future. I looked at my reflection in an oily puddle on the road and decided that I was strong and unbendable, and in that instant I became me. I can't tell you the day or year, but I can recall that instant.

For in that moment, there was only one thought that ran through my mind, one connection to the past that I had and still have left forgotten: My name is Kukri. I don't know why I would be named after a weapon, a medieval knife, an assassin's toy, but it is the one thing I can be sure of. Whatever lies flow through my brain and settle in my heart, in the end my name is still Kukri.
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