n i g h t m a r e

Since she was three years old, Marie couldn't sleep at night. At all. She wasn't fully human; she would grow twice as fast and she would die twice as soon as an ordinary person.

There were scars between her knuckles, small ugly slits that never healed. She could form long blades of bone between her knuckles if she wished.

She had two brutal scars lining her shoulder blades that could sprout shadows and smoke as if they were wings.

She used to be scared of what she could do. But all she could do now was embrace it. Long ago, she gave up on trying to save a piece of humanity in her. She belonged to a secretive society, the only people that accepted her, the people that saved her as a child.

She had a job, and she would do it.