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Lord Snow... It hits me for the very first time today how...apt the name that I had given myself was. I've had many such names over the years, right from the time when I discovered that it was sort of interesting to fashion a new name for myself that only I knew of. Of course, nobody back in those days had any idea that I was toying around with the idea of an alias or another name of sorts...who would I tell back then? I'd run through many such names and ideas for names in my mind...most of them simply because I liked the way that they sounded at the time. I thought that the word or the collection of sounds that made up the word sounded interesting. And until I found this one, none of them lasted for more than a few days...a week at most. This one was different...I picked it up from a book called 'The Game of Thrones' by...some guy that I don't remember anymore...but regardless of that, I picked up the name, the title from a character in the book, a man named John Snow, the bastard child of the lord of the realm. The people around him took to calling him Lord Snow as a way of bringing home to him the fact that he was nothing but a bastard child...but he turned it around on them by keeping that title and living up to what it meant on the cold towers to the North as a borderguard from the constant threat of the evil that hid in the might of the eternal winter. From that book, I discovered that name. Lord Snow. And somehow, I've kept this one. I've kept it and what's more, I sort of live by it now. At first, it was just another name...just another in a long cycle of names that had come and gone before. I fully expected the hold that this one had to lose it's grip on me eventually as well. It didn't. The name...it and it's own attendant personality grew within me. It has actually grown to a point where I would answer to this name whether someone addresses a letter with it or if one were to call me aloud by this name...I would answer to it as my own. With this name however, as it grew, came something else. It's own personality...or rather, it brought to the surface a facet of my own personality that I had long hidden simply because that was what people do. They hide their sorrow and anger and evil thoughts for the ease and comfort of the people around them. The growth of this facet of me freed me from that constraint...now, if I'm unhappy or angry, the people around me know that I AM...what most don't know are the reasons why. I ran into this name and I took it as my own because I had never seen anything like it before and because I thought it sounded cool. In time...it grew to something more... In time, I came to realize that this name...more than anything before, anything during, or anything to come perfectly represents that darker side of me. Without a single question left in my mind, this name is a part of me now... Today was the first properly cold day of the year...there was snow and the wind was wild enough to warrant warnings spread across the news in the morning. If you were to jump straight up, by the time you came down, you would be at least two feet further than where you started. The wind, if you walk into it becomes a serious force to be reckoned with as it does it's best to throw you to the ground for daring to try walk into it. Trees bare of leaves whipped around in a frenzy as the wind pushed and pulled the bare branches around. For me...especially after the dark thoughts entertained by my mind on the way home last night from my late class...it was perfect. The other people that I saw walking in the streets...they were bundled up, arms held crossed together in an effort to conserve heat. Their hands, were armored with thick winter gloves or tucked withing deep pockets or at worst, just slipped backwards into the sleeves of their jackets. Their faces were miserable...a plain desire apparent there on their wish to not have to be out and about in such horrible weather... Me? A simple sweater and a pair of normal pants under my unbuttoned coat. Where other people hid their hands, the most vulnerable parts of their body to the cold, I left them out, spread at my sides. People wore hats to warm their heads and to keep their hair in place. I wore no hat and let my hair whip about as the wind pleased. People kept their heads bowed low as they walked into the wind where mine was held high, glorying in the force of the wind, the occasional snowflake that hit my face. Other people...they despise such weather as they miserably wish once more for the hot, balmy warmth of the summer. I revel in it...partly because I love the cold and the winter...but a good deal of that also has to do with who I choose to be... I have named myself the Lord Snow...and that is now as much a part of me as anything ever could be... |