06-12-2020, 01:15 PM
YADIGAR
there’s a hole in my chest but it’s mine, baby, it’s all i got.
His milk-white eye flutters open when his sister touches his shoulder, and for a while he does not move. He worries that Ghaul is just waiting for him to awaken so they can resume his awful hunting lessons. Yadigar does not have the stomach for cruelty and gore that his father has – just the teeth and claws. But he quickly realizes the only sounds around him are Asphyxea’s steady breathing and the distant hush of the waves washing up the shore. Their father has returned to Pangea and left them alone for the day. When he tends to his kingdom, he does not return until nightfall, grinning and mad.
The boy rises up from the nest and watches Cirilla set off toward the sea that borders them. Her warm outline approaches another, one he thinks he recognizes, and he is drawn closer to the pair with his wings tucked firmly to his sides. He has not seen her since he lost his eye and he finds an inkling of shame when he comes near them. Yadigar turns his head slightly so only that blind eye can be seen by his friend. The eye glows weakly and swirls with some foretelling of their future, a path that twists and turns and knots itself up into some tangled friendship.
But he remains perfectly unaware of it. For him, there is only this moment. He glances at Cirilla and he wishes their father favored him the way he does her – the way he never throws her to the ground and holds her by the throat as he demands obedience. She is too much like their mother for him to even consider laying his claws on her. He knows because that is what he hisses in Yadigar’s ear when he is especially angry. Cirilla is beautiful in every way while Asphyxea is powerful and wild. And what is he?
A coward. A dog with no bite.
But he forces himself to smile because he loves her despite all this. Because she curls against him in her sleep and calms him when he finds himself dreading his own existence.
“She’s my sister,” he explains in a tone that is desperate to seem excited about anything at all. “Did you come here by yourself? I’m glad to see you again.”
And this time his voice is sincere in its happiness. She is, after all, his only friend outside his family.
The boy rises up from the nest and watches Cirilla set off toward the sea that borders them. Her warm outline approaches another, one he thinks he recognizes, and he is drawn closer to the pair with his wings tucked firmly to his sides. He has not seen her since he lost his eye and he finds an inkling of shame when he comes near them. Yadigar turns his head slightly so only that blind eye can be seen by his friend. The eye glows weakly and swirls with some foretelling of their future, a path that twists and turns and knots itself up into some tangled friendship.
But he remains perfectly unaware of it. For him, there is only this moment. He glances at Cirilla and he wishes their father favored him the way he does her – the way he never throws her to the ground and holds her by the throat as he demands obedience. She is too much like their mother for him to even consider laying his claws on her. He knows because that is what he hisses in Yadigar’s ear when he is especially angry. Cirilla is beautiful in every way while Asphyxea is powerful and wild. And what is he?
A coward. A dog with no bite.
But he forces himself to smile because he loves her despite all this. Because she curls against him in her sleep and calms him when he finds himself dreading his own existence.
“She’s my sister,” he explains in a tone that is desperate to seem excited about anything at all. “Did you come here by yourself? I’m glad to see you again.”
And this time his voice is sincere in its happiness. She is, after all, his only friend outside his family.