Sometimes it seems like I have two characters by the same name. To anyone who knows my story "Dreams"- Lute is an energetic, smart-mouthed young kid full of life. To those of my friends who know me best- Lute is a 'shade', a winged spirit walking the line between life and death, belonging to neither, who few know of and even fewer can see. But the question- who's the real Lute?

The answer is 'both'.

As Dania says, everything I say has a long story behind it- Lute's no exception. He was the second original I ever made, and even two years later, he's still my favorite. But back to him.....

Both are Lute, because the child grows into the ghost. The story's too long to tell... too complicated.... but quite simply, there was something wrong with him, and he was never able to mentally mature until something in his life went terribly wrong and he was forced to. But he couldn't get over it, and wilted away into death. He was 29.

Lute as the shade is a paradox- he carries his soul in the form of his wings, which hover behind him- never again to be a part of the body. Left eye looking as it did in life- right eye dead, lightless. Heartbeat, but his body's cold. Which of his eyes is open reflects his mood. He wanders through the living realms, tied by neither the rules of space nor time- bound by little more than his imagination. Only beings he allows to can see him, and that's only if their minds are open- under a dozen in all the realities he's passed through know him.

But as neither space nor time can burden him, memories of Home can..... of a family, friends, a daughter only eight...... regret. And a death felt again, every day, at the very same time it first came. Of the way he has to watch from the outside as his father's sadness never lessens, of the way his friends begin to fight, as his daughter grows up an orphan. Because they can't see him.

And all the godlike powers in the would can't mend wounds, if noone knows you exist.