Chapter 1

Introduction to Clearwater Dreams. A poem and a prologue.

Broken Wings

Staring at my reflection,
I look and see rejection.
The pieces of my wings
break away into the abyss
lost in the slopes of time.

It's hard to breathe,
My anger seethes.
Relapse back inside my mind.
The chains on my heart unbind,
It spirals like a dropped dime.

My old withered wing
can no longer cling
It's been chopped and clipped.
It's been cropped and stripped.
Does it look sublime?

Someone is going to pay,
for taking my wings away.
Oh they'll surely regret
that we ever met.
My ticking crime.

Prologue:

My present, past, and future have all been filled with the smell of rotting corpses.

I'm sick of it.

Unfortunately, I was a guardian of death. My duty was to collect souls and cut the life threads off of those who were meant to die. I also had an obligation to kill those who resisted. Vengeful spirits were ones I especially hated to deal with. I remembered when my first kill stared at me with his bulging, terrified eyes. "Shinigami," he croaked before I cleanly sliced his body in half. The Japanese man was right though. 

"Shinigami" I repeated the name through my teeth. Roughly translated, it meant that he called me a death god. I didn't know whether I should show remorse or gratification as my refined blade shattered into a thousand black butterflies and carried the murderer's soul away from this pit of endless despair. As the butterflies traveled further away from me, I knew what I had wanted all along; To be out of this hole.

Regrettably, I asked my patron to set me free, to let me be free from this killing spree. He mocked me, chastised me, and finally made an example of me.

"To be free," he said, "You have to become a human."

A bright lit tunnel appeared before my eyes; the alternative solace.

Will I finally be able to find myself in humanity's graces?

I traveled into the glowing tunnel away from this dark place. My old companions didn't stop me.

This was one of the few memories I had of my past life.

Many nights ago, my grandmother came inside my room wondering why I was crying.

She gave me a Japanese talisman, an omamori, to ward off evil spirits thinking I was scared of the dark. I thought it would burn me, but it softly glowed in the tiny palm of my hand, feeding me warmth. Apparently the charm had been passed down for many generations and it was my turn to have it. She hugged me and I felt completely safe in her arms.

Around elementary school, my parents made me accompany them to the hospital, most likely because they want me to follow in their footsteps. I was the chairman's only son, it was expected of me to take after the family's business. But I absolutely hated hospitals. They reeked of disease, unhappiness, and not to mention death. Old nurses prodded my cheeks and friends of my parents always complimented my blue eyes or my black hair, saying I was a mini version of my parents.

I swung my legs in one of those rolling chairs. But my father's stern voice told me to stop and follow him. Today's patient was special. She was dying of an incurable disease. Her sallow skin resulted from a damaged liver caused by the aggressive cancer. Underneath her sickly appearance, her features still retained the same comforting warmth I saw as a child. I clung onto my grandmother's omamori as I stared helplessly at the white wings sprouting behind her back.She was flat-lining and there was nothing I could do to save my dying grandmother. The white wings grew bigger until they embodied her entire sleeping state and then beautifully fragmented into white butterflies. They fluttered through the gray walls and no one could see them but me.

The same nauseating smell from my dreams made my eyes water. My father slapped me. Dying was part of life he said simply. It was then, that I learned how to cope with death.I closed myself off to the world and molded my heart into a cube, locking it inside Pandora's box.

I went with him all the time to the hospital, learning medicine in a new light. I became unfazed by death, like it was a friend that you never wanted to see but always showed up at the front door somehow.

I got better at reading people's emotions. I said what they wanted to hear, told them what they should hear, and kept to myself about their secrets.

I smiled. I cried. I laughed. I thought it was brilliant, this trickery.

In middle school, my father and mother switched to another hospital and I had to transfer to J. Clearwater Academy during the second semester. This was no problem of course. My ex-classmates threw me a farewell party, which was annoying to an extent. I continued to play along until I got to walk out the door.

Being human was so boring. I wondered if this was why my patron and companions laughed at me.

I needed a new game and the perfect opportunity presented itself on my first day of class.

Author's Note

What do you think? Does it hook you in? Do you get what a shinigami is?
It's my first progressing novel ftw! I'll upload more chapters later. I have about 30 at the moment, currently working on the 31st.