Mishka Shimo
Legacy Name: Mishka Shimo

Ghost of Winter

I shiver as the wind hits my face and I shrug deeper into my coat. The giant shadows of the buildings around me blocking out the light of the still rising sun. The roads, long stretches of white ice, have been frozen by the snow that had fallen the night before. A cold, constant reminder that winter had set in strong.

Grey clouds above me, grey skyscrapers around me, I'm surrounded by darkness and uniformity. The hard concrete beneath my feet is like a walkway to damnation, leading me to somewhere I don't want to be. And all the while time is slowly ticking away as the second hand ticks by.

Tick...

Tick...

Tick...

To belong. That's what everyone wants. They long to fit in with what's around them, with who's around them. To be a part of the bigger picture and unearth who they are on the inside, while the face of judgement looks down on them. The face of judgement, with its black numbers spaced evenly around it, in perfect balance like a scale. Unstoppable, unchangeable, unretrievable. The face of Time.

The more time we spend the more we wish to buy back. But time has almost no affect on me. I've seen people age and lose hope. I've seen people grow up and do great things, but I don't change. For me time seems to stop. I'm not moving forward, not moving back, just standing still. People look straight through me, like I'm not there.

Some say that life is all about timing... the unreachable becomes reachable, the unavailable becomes available, the unattainable... attainable, but to me time is a constant reminder of how long things have been the same, how long this city has been my prison. This city, it fits together like a puzzle. Everything has its place and its reason for being here. Everything except me. I feel like I'm a piece of an entirely different puzzle that just doesn't fit.

The eerie silence is like a blanket over the whole city, I can almost hear the groans of agony as the towering masses around me move slightly in the strong wind. I swear I can hear crows in the distance, out in the desolate wasteland beyond the boundaries of the city. I can imagine a flock of them sitting, covering a leafless, black barked tree against the white backdrop of the snow, staring at me with their big unblinking yellow eyes.

And the clock keeps ticking, as I walk down the still path, devoid of all life, as the cold tries to claw its way through my big white coat to make my outside match my inside. A black cat darts out in front of me from one of the side streets as I pass, its winter coat hiding how skinny it really is. It looks at me pleadingly for a second, and then, runs over the icy road, sure footed and proud as an also black dog comes chasing it from around the corner, and I am left alone once again.

It's so easy to get lost in life, as it is to get lost in this city. With so many people and so little time in one day, while always having somewhere to be or something to do. It's easy to lose track of where one is going in life. And if one is to lose track of the path they walk it is easy to lose track of their place in the world.

Losing track. It's easy if no one acknowledges that you are even present. Living day to day without being noticed you fall into a routine almost without it occurring to you. You fade out of existence in a way. Not that in a city such as this your existence is really acknowledged. Over time you develope a feeling of being...alone. Alienated and alone in a city of thousands upon thousands of people, and to what end? To die knowing nobody will remember you ever walked on this planet? Your one. One in thousands. Your insignificant, for lack of a better word. And time flies over you and leaves its shadow behind.

I hear the city clock strike six and feel the cold touch of the first of many raindrops on my cheek as I turn the corner into a more densely populated part of the city. Ten minutes later I am joined on the path by people making their daily rounds. I don't really see them, and they don't see me. I feel like the one thing in this city that no one wants to know and no one seems to see while still unconsciously acknowledging that it's there. How many times have I told myself 'I'm going home soon, I can't stand it here anymore.' Home to my country, and still I never make the move to get a plane ticket, or catch a train. And every day I can feel myself growing less and less attached to this world. And for a reason I don't myself yet understand. I just feel lost, confused, defeated, and I don't know why. I just know I do. I feel I do not belong in this city. That I never have and I never will, and yet some part of me compels me to stay here against my will, urging me to stay for some reason unseen. And all the while the sands of time are slowly slipping away. And I keep walking...

I'm on another forgotten street. The one with the cities clock tower reaching high into the sky, and as I stop to look up at the big white face of judgement I find I've been walking around this city all day and all night, without noticing as the storm passed and the day grew dark and changed into night. Its five minutes to midnight, the same time as this centuries doomsday clock showing just how close the world is to perpetual destruction.

I look down but instead of the usual grey of the concrete I see red. An endless pool of red coming towards me and somewhere in my head I can hear the sound of a gunshot. I turn to one of the glass doors that lead to the clock tower and in the place my reflection should be there's nothing. Just a blank space where I should be. I grow icy cold and it hits me. I don't belong here in this city, because I don't belong in this world at all. A plane wouldn't take me to where I belong, neither would a train. The only thing that could take me home is finding peace with this world to pass onto the next...

Mishka Shimo is a lost and lonely girl, who remembers very little about her previous life, her life before death.

The complete opposite to her cousin, Bloody Vengeance, her spirit takes the form of a white wolf and leads those who are lost along the snowy roads of her homeland to safety.

When not wondering the roads she takes comfort with her mate Shiro, and the other lost inhabitants of the Arctic, who although still members of the living, can somehow still see and hear her.

TheDisturbedAngel