Thief

There are some things in life that are expected of you. You are born, you learn, you get a job, you raise a family or you occupy yourself with your job or a hobby, you age and you die so that others like you can get their chance to live their lives and continue the preset quest that you and so many others began before you.

And you have to pay for everything in this pre-made adventure, even the name you’re given is not yours: and you pay for that gift with as many lives as you can muster. However, sometimes in this scripted world that you interact with, there is the wild-card– the random encounter–to consider.

Because sometimes, you want to follow the rules and stay within the familiar but you can only replay the same game the same way only so many times. And one day, you find this element that changes you, that scares you, and the next thing you know you take it: just as it takes a piece of your heart. But even theft has its price. For just as you are given a name to live to, others give you a name for what you have done.

And it is called Thief.

No matter where you go, or what you do, what is all you will ever be. That is all of who you are. And sometimes it wears on you, as though everyone knows what you are and what you truly were. If you let it, it can become a bitter realization that slowly eats at you inside, poisoning your soul with sourness every time hear someone say your new name.

Thief. Thief.

But, if you live enough, over time you begin to understand something. After a time of existing, hurting, doing deeds and learning, you realize that it wasn’t so much that you stole this moment, this person, this joy, this life it’s that they captured you. And sometimes it takes being Forever Alone, or becoming a Monster or a Coward to understand that what you may have found long ago and did not pay according to the script has changed from a fragment of your soul into a Heart of Gold.

And then you remember that before all of this, you knew Virtue and found Love. And when the scarlet letter become an entire alphabet cum your name reflects the light of that new shiny Heart you know it is transfigured and that to be Thief is to be someone who dared, and found a whole new level to what, on the surface, seemed like a worn and monotonous game.

And another game is a small price to pay for a name that can also be worn away and become arbitrary: become the meaning that your subsequent actions have finally given it.

Congratulations, Thief.