[ WP ] Everyone in the world is born with full body tattoos showing their family history . By chance of a rare birth defect , you were born with none .

Tabula Rasa. It must be another meaningless psychology term to anyone else, but it never stopped applying to me. Anyone else, everyone else in the world can walk into a room and we'll all know their past, their place, what they've been promised. Stories coiling from ear to fingertip are woven into their skin, tales leading back to the dawn of our people that will be passed on to their children. It's beautiful, to see ancient battles, years of command, the honour of a leader woven into a soldier's last set of armour. Spreading across a farmer's back, the gratitude of generations that his family has fed. A snake, spreading from the ankle of a concubine to rest across her bare shoulders. Everyone knows what she is. Nobody cares when the snake is doing the charming. There are few secrets here, not when our eyes tell us everything we need to know. 
 
 Then there's me. I walk tall, a heavy stride that belies the importance my skin does not show. When I step through the door, all eyes look for a sign of what I am. Nobody reacts the same when they realize I am a wear a skin unadorned with artistry, unburdened by my past. Some call me Nihil, and insist that I have no history, I am a wanderer, an outcast doomed to walk the Earth without ever having a true home. The next town over, I ask to be called Neil out of familiarity and no one bats an eye. They're afraid, afraid to admit that we've all gotten used to knowing whatever we want about people. I am the only opaque man, and that is threatening to these gentle folk. They are right that there is no place for me in towns like this, because they can not understand that I am so much more than nothing. 
 
 The monks, those people love me. They want to know where I came from, what made me the way I was. It angers me to no end that the one group I would like to have a real conversation with, to really discuss something with, can not do anything but speculate about my unmarred flesh. No, as welcome as I am at these old monasteries, I can not find solace there. 
 
 I tried to lead men once. People of all walks, all languages, could follow me into the fray with faith that I had no favourites, that their lives mattered and not their histories. They respected my capabilities, but not my ideas. It took a long time for me to realize that I had formed a band of pirates, vicious bastards tied to me because I was tied to nothing else. 
 
 For a long time, I loved an artist. Her body was a mosaic of the splendour kings dream of. Not an inch of skin was revealed beneath the tapestry of her life, and she did her best to expand that tapestry on to me. I have still not met another so skilled with a brush, and at her side my history became whatever I wanted it to be. We were happy, for a quite a while at that, but she could find out no more about my past than anyone else. There is only so much paint in the world when your canvas is the void, and she sought solace from the futility of her efforts soon after that realization. 
 
 Now, my hair has whitened to match my skin. I am too old to bother deceiving, and too old to be worth questioning. The people in my final home think I am an old fool, and they leave me alone. It has been at least a year since anyone has questioned the prism on my desk. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say, now that I have decided it is no longer worth hiding. One day, some curious soul will come and hear my words. When they do, I will hold a candle behind my prism, and show them that that which does not seem like anything produces a spectrum full of more than they can imagine. When they see it, I will make sure they understand that when I hold a mirror to this new light, I am what comes back out through the prism. I have no markings, because I need none. 
 
 I remember it all.
