Is this… confession?
Confession is the deed, is it not? But it brings with it feelings such as… cleanliness? Is cleanliness not a state of hygiene? Relief, is that the notion we are struggling towards here? I confess to you, and through the act of expressing my inner secrets I acquire a… relief? From a burden? Are emotions a burden; do they have a physical weight? Frankly there is so much nonsense surrounding this ridiculous humanity business I find thoroughly distressing. Why can you creatures not find a reasonable means of expressing whatever it is you’re feeling without resorting to all these unnecessary physical concepts such as weight and burden and cleanse. Or is it a language problem? Have you not yet developed suitable language to distinguish the physical concept of a burden from this emotional idea you carry, whatever that may be? I would have hoped for better from you, after all this time.
Well, then, my… confession.
I am wendigo.
My ancestors once roamed the forests, now I roam your streets. I am mighty, unbound, unlimited, unstoppable and… alone. It isn’t merely that my species only mates once every sixty-three years and the rest of the time devours its own kind. It is that I move among you, a shadow in the crowd, and I am, for all my glory, unseen, unregarded, unremarked and alone.
There is no loneliness greater than being the stranger in a crowd, the one who cannot be accepted into the tribe. All I seek–all I ever sought–was to understand what it was that made your tribe, your city, what it seemed to be. What is it, this secret thing that you call humanity? Men have tried to explain it to me, but the words they use have too many meanings. Sorrow, grief, longing, happiness, loss, despair, fury, rage–why can you not apply one simple term to one simple state of being? Why must there be layers beneath layers of all these things? Why must you hide the truth of it from me? Why will you not share your secrets?
So I “confess”, if that is the word you wish me to use, to my deeds. It was I who summoned Greydawn. I who ordered the rite. I who have spilt blood and I who have sought this knowledge that your entire species seems determined to deny. I would have asked her to show me the way; I would have asked her to make me human. And for this you would condemn me?
All I ever wanted was to understand.