Journal - The Storm Entity
“I just wish you’d give me some warning!” she huffs aloud as she paces her room, not for the first time. Not that she needs to speak aloud for me to hear her - our dialogue is internal. But when she’s in these moods, vocalizing her thoughts seems to be her preference.
“I do,” I remind her. “I-”
“Five minutes is not a warning!” she snaps at the mirror, her reflection glaring back at us. It’s not as if she can see me there, but I suppose when she needs someone in front of her to yell at, it’s a fair approximation. “Not when I’m in the middle of an exam!”
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” I answer. I try to keep my tone even, but it’s difficult. How many times do we have to go through this? “As soon as I know we’re needed to guide a storm, I tell you. I can’t do more.”
“You could leave me alone!” she argues, flopping on her bed, folding her arms over her face. “I’m going to fail. And I have no friends since I keep just disappearing and they think I’m flaking out on them just because you have to go and make it rain somewhere.”
“You agreed to this.”
“I didn’t know what I was agreeing to.”
For a moment, I feel a twinge of sympathy. She sounds as tired as I feel. And she’s right, of course. It wasn’t fair to do this to her. It’s never been fair to do this to anyone, but this one is so young…
“You ruined my life,” she whispers, and the sympathy is gone.
I didn’t ask for this either. But no host has ever thought of that. None has asked what I do when I’m not trapped in their tiny human bodies. Or whether I have friends or family. If they did, I could tell them about the freedom of spreading myself out, so that I’m everywhere in the ocean at once if I want to be. About all my siblings, how we all blend and flow together, how we never feel alone.
Alone. That’s all I feel when it’s my turn to enter a host, and this girl is the worst of all. At least the others I’ve had were resigned to what happened, instead of attacking me at every turn as if I wanted this.
I didn’t. None of us do. But this is the arrangement that’s been made, and the Water won’t listen to our pleas to change it, and won’t even let us talk about these things to our hosts unless they prompt it.
There’s more we could offer them. If they truly accepted us, and saw us as partners instead of invaders. Which I’m sure many would, if they could see things from our perspective. As it is, however, the Water considers this a test of their character. If they’re kind enough to learn more about us without our prompting, then they deserve the reward.
But few are the humans who think of this on their own. As such, being assigned to a host is akin to a prison sentence, confined to a body and only free when it’s time to paint the storm across the sky, returning to one’s cell as soon as it’s complete.
I didn’t ruin your life, Noeul.
You and your kind ruined mine.
