COSMO'S GALA
Ever since I was young, I never liked being me. But saying that doesn't seem to cover it. I'm sure those of like mind will get it immediately while those who don't, never will. I suppose it is more that I was never content being just myself. I was always imagining.
My parents weren't bad people, but they didn't seem to understand. They recognized that I was smart and curious, and they encouraged me to read and learn, but I don't suppose they felt the same way. My mother tried hard, and worked to bring forth beauty in the world. My father was a storm-watcher and was always away keeping the ships of the fleet safe. A brilliant man, but with little time for myself and my siblings. My grandmother taught me about art, but most importantly taught me to question everything, and my grandfather taught me to persevere through whatever life threw at me.
But nothing they taught me and nothing they gave me could ever make me comfortable as just me. My mind was always looking for something new, something more. I built cities and nations in my mind between the lessons of letters and numbers, populating them with the traits my youthful experience did not realize were so integral to people. I didn't realize that most people couldn't change what they were like as easily as they changed clothes.
Acting was a secret passion, and I studied the acts of performers intensely, taking every opportunity to imitate their voices and mannerisms as closely as I could. I could amuse what few friends I had made for hours recounting humorous scenes from plays or reading off stories I had committed to memory. But it wasn't enough to have this, because no matter how I tried, I couldn't escape being myself. I couldn't experience someone else's life, I couldn't be anyone else and then come back to being me again. I was stuck.
The straw came when I watched a series of plays put on by a troupe from the mountains. The stories were about a crew of soldiers and scholars who manned a fort that had been captured during a war of liberation. Among these was a being who could change their shape at a whim, a fey creature that played at being a single being. The irony being that this shapeshifter wasn't very good at convincingly imitating folk and despite the wonderful freedom to be anything, worked to maintain law and order and stick to one shape.
I wanted that power. I wanted to be able to change into whatever I felt like at the time. But I had a thousand possibilities and uses for it, far beyond that one character's narrow scope.
And my dream loomed closer when the social powers-that-be recognized me as an exceptional scholar. I was taken to the grand halls of learning in the northern mountain forests to learn as much knowledge as my mind could hold. I would learn the secrets of reality and the structure of the cosmos. I would learn MAGIC!
I spent years in those hallowed halls training to be a wizard, finding the spells and honing my energies to bring forth my will upon the world. Armed with the power of my mind and a book of spells, I set forth to reshape my destiny. Transmutation was my specialty of course, but I took every secret that I could come across. Magics of the mind, alchemy, gastromancy, illusions, anything I could get my hands on.
But in a tome of rituals I found the key to my future. It was a ritual that invoked the three most fundamental beings in our world to remake the celebrant into a whole new being! I had to know. I had to experience this!
But it wasn't a simple ritual. Fiendishly complex in fact. I had to gain the favor of the three great powers of our world, which meant I had to perform acts that would get their attention. This would be not only challenging, as the great powers were so far removed from mortals as to be nigh incomprehensible, but their very attention could be fatally dangerous. Never-the-less, I had my goals and either success or mindlessly insane demise awaited!
