RIPLEY

Prologue

RIPLEY is a girl with many scars.

Her swollen bruise on her left shoulder is still fresh from the rage of her last fight. Her steps diplomatic, done with ancient grace, thus brought a sneer to her unmarked face.

He could count each line that tattooed her skin. One, bisecting across her neck. Two, thinly representing from the planes of her back. Six, embedded like single claws to the swell of her stomach. And another, although engraved with the absence of her enemies' fury, a scar that fed her desire for blood. Hidden just beneath like cages to her fingers, cutting to the middle of her palms where oaths often linger like ghosts.

He could remember, although concealed from the shadows of his loss, the feel of that hand on his skin. The touch aged centuries ago but his brain seems to still manage to regain the memory.

Her scars and her palms were the only remains of his past. On each waking time, those are the things that reminded him of his humanity.

It's been 355 days since the time of his rebirth.

It's been 355 days since he met RIPLEY.

He would count the days when he's still awake and remembering. And begin again when he forgets.

He'd forget the taste of food in his mouth, the feel of water on his throat and the sound of music to his ears. He would rouse up again and meet the void of darkness and a pair of ocean-blue eyes, clouded with his own reflection, and he would wonder about the amount of grief he'd see as his own met hers.

Who are you RIPLEY? He'd thought and lay out the same conclusions to his head.

He'd live in the past and the future, he'd live across an endless tornado formed in a metallic circle, he’d live under a floor drenched on the blood of her doing.

He'd live with the constant longing for scarred palms on his own. He'd live and remember the feel of her skin under his touch, colliding with different flaws stitched on her body.

RIPLEY is a girl with many scars.

One to her neck, two across her spine, six on her stomach, and one that causes her thirst for blood.

Someday she'll use that pain as fuel, to produce more scars to the world as much as she had inflicted them.