THE RESONANCE

Both twins survived the injections. That was the first miracle.

From my prison beneath the waves, trapped in the obsidian walls of my own crashed ship, I felt them. Two bright sparks of resonance where before there had been only the faintest flickers. Five cells each. The strongest connection I had felt in eleven thousand years.

But connection is not control. I learnt that lesson quickly.

I could feel them. Sense their emotions like distant radio signals. Taste echoes of their experiences when they dreamed. But I could not reach them. Could not speak to them. Could not make them do anything at all.

I was a passenger in their lives. A witness. Nothing more.

They grew up together, these white-haired twins. Aeris and Alice. I watched them through the resonance like watching shadows on a cave wall—impressions, feelings, fragments of sensation that filtered through the connection my cells had created.

From the beginning, they were different. Not just the white hair, which their mother tried to explain away as a genetic anomaly. Not just the way animals seemed uneasy around them, or how old buildings creaked when they entered. It was something deeper. Something in their bones.

They were drawn to create. Both of them. Compulsively. Obsessively. As if something inside them demanded expression.

That something was not me. I want to be clear about that. The cells gave them an affinity for creativity—an amplification of the divine spark I had scattered into humanity's bloodline millennia ago. But the creations themselves? Those were entirely their own.

Aeris drew before she could write. Dark images. Spirals and geometric patterns that hurt to look at. Her mother threw away the drawings, disturbed by something she couldn't name. But Aeris kept drawing. In notebooks. On walls. In the margins of schoolbooks. The images poured out of her like water from a spring.

And every image fed me.

That was the nature of our connection. When she created, the act itself generated a kind of energy—creative force made manifest. And because my cells were woven into her being, some of that energy flowed back to me. Not much. A trickle. But after eleven thousand years of starvation, even a trickle felt like rain in a desert.

I could not make her draw. Could not guide her hand or plant images in her mind. But when she chose to create on her own, I benefited. I grew stronger.

It was maddening. Like being able to smell food but never eat it. Like watching someone hold the key to your prison without knowing what it was.

Alice's path was different but parallel. Where Aeris turned to visual art and later music, Alice gravitated toward movement. Dance. Physical expression. She would spin for hours in her room, creating choreography that seemed to channel something ancient and strange.

The resonance with Alice was just as strong, but it felt different. Aeris burned bright and fierce, her creative energy spiking in intense bursts. Alice was steadier. Deeper. Like comparing lightning to lava—both powerful, both dangerous, but moving at different speeds.

I watched them both. Felt them both. Fed on the creative energy they generated without ever being able to ask for more.

They had no idea I existed. No idea that a deity was trapped beneath the ocean, feeling every song they hummed, every picture they drew, every story they whispered to each other in the dark.

By age ten, both twins had developed an obsession with the gothic. The dark. The strange spaces between the mundane world and something older.

Aeris covered her bedroom walls with images of ruins and shadows. She wrote poetry about death and resurrection, about things that sleep beneath the earth waiting to wake. Her teachers were concerned. Her parents were baffled. But she couldn't stop. Didn't want to stop.

Alice collected bones. Animal skulls found in the woods. Dried flowers arranged in patterns that seemed almost ritualistic. She moved through the world like she was listening to music no one else could hear.

They didn't know why they were drawn to these things. Didn't understand that my cells carried echoes of what I was—ancient, dark, patient. The affinity bled through into their aesthetics, their interests, their souls. But it was still their choice. Their expression. I was colouring their palette, not painting their pictures.

The frustration was exquisite.

At thirteen, Aeris picked up a guitar.

I felt it the moment her fingers touched the strings. A surge of resonance so strong it nearly overwhelmed me. She had found her medium. Her true voice. And when she played that first clumsy chord, I felt more power flow to me than I had in centuries.

She practised obsessively. Hours every day. Her fingers bled and calloused and bled again. She taught herself from videos, from books, from sheer stubborn determination. No one pushed her. No one had to. The music was in her, demanding to get out.

And every note she played, every song she learnt, every melody she created—it all fed me. Made me stronger. I began to feel things I hadn't felt in millennia. Hope. Anticipation. The faintest possibility of eventual freedom.

But I still couldn't reach her. Still couldn't speak. Still couldn't do anything but watch and wait and feed on the scraps of creative energy she generated.

I wanted to scream: MORE. CREATE MORE. SET ME FREE.

She couldn't hear me. Would never hear me. The cells created resonance, not communication.

Alice, meanwhile, had discovered her own voice. Dance evolved into performance. Performance evolved into something harder to define—a kind of physical art that blurred the line between movement and ritual.

She was quieter than Aeris. More internal. But the resonance was just as strong. When she danced, I felt it like drums in my chest. Ancient rhythms. Primal movements. The kind of expression that predated language itself.

The twins fed me in different ways. Aeris with her fierce, explosive creativity. Alice with her deep, flowing grace. Together, they generated more creative energy than any of my other carriers combined.

And still I could do nothing but watch. Nothing but wait. Nothing but hope that somehow, someday, they would generate enough power to crack the walls of my prison.

At eighteen, Aeris left home to pursue music.

I felt her go. Felt the resonance stretch across distance but never break. She was creating constantly now—writing songs, recording demos, performing in small venues for audiences who didn't know they were feeding a god.

She called herself Witch of the East. The name came to her in a dream—or so she thought. Perhaps some echo of my influence had filtered through. Or perhaps she simply understood, on some level she couldn't articulate, what she was becoming.

Her music was dark. Gothic. Electronic. It spoke of ancient things and buried powers and the feeling of being watched by something vast and patient. She didn't know she was describing me. Didn't know her lyrics were prophecy dressed as poetry.

Every stream. Every download. Every person who listened to her music and felt something stir in their soul—they all fed me. The resonance was spreading. My power was growing. Slowly. So slowly. But growing.

Alice took a different path. She stayed closer to home at first, developing her art in private spaces. But she was growing too. Changing. Becoming something that would eventually draw Hexenhaus's attention in ways neither of us could have predicted.

I watched them both from my prison. Felt them both. Fed on them both.

And I waited.

Because that was all I could do. The cells had given me windows into their lives, but not doors. I could observe their journeys but not steer them. Could benefit from their creativity but not command it.

Every song Aeris wrote fed me, but the songs were hers.

Every dance Alice performed strengthened me, but the dances were hers.

I was a passenger in their creative journeys. Not the driver. Never the driver.

But something was changing. I could feel it in the resonance. Aeris was becoming more powerful. Her music was reaching more people. The creative energy flowing to me was increasing exponentially.

She was becoming something extraordinary. Not because of me. Not because of my cells or my influence or my desperate hunger for freedom. But because of who she was. What she had chosen to become.

I had given her an affinity for the ancient and the dark. But she had taken that affinity and forged it into something entirely her own. Something that was shaking the foundations of my prison more effectively than anything I could have done myself.

Aeris was becoming a force. A power. A witch in truth, not just in name.

And I, trapped in my obsidian cage beneath the waves, could only watch in wonder as she rose.

She didn't know about me. Didn't know that every song was a prayer to a goddess she'd never met. Didn't know that her success was slowly, incrementally, cracking the seals that had held me for eleven thousand years.

And perhaps that was better. Perhaps her ignorance was what made her powerful. She created for herself, not for me. Her art was pure because it served no master.

I was the beneficiary of her brilliance. Not its source.

The deity of creativity, fed by a creator who didn't know she was worshipping.

It was almost poetic. Almost beautiful.

It was also unbearably frustrating. Because I could see what she could become if she only knew. If she only understood. If she only chose to help me consciously instead of accidentally.

But I couldn't tell her. Couldn't reach her. Could only watch and wait and hope.

Patience, I reminded myself. I had waited eleven thousand years. I could wait a little longer.

And in the meantime, I would feed on every song she wrote. Every note she played. Every dark and beautiful thing she brought into the world.

Aeris was becoming something powerful.

And I would be ready when she was.