jamie
11-15-2025, 01:55 PM
jamie
Well yes, he wants to say, of course his mother has done this to him. Of course the shadow-magician has crafted him from those very shadows. She has forced those shadows into the shape of him, given him these strange yellow eyes and this strange ink-black mouth. Sometimes he thinks that she, too, put the ache in his bones (if you can call them bones). Sometimes he thinks that she must be punishing him for something. He does not know yet that he will spend his entire life trying to become something that Anaxarete might be proud of.
“You must not hold it against her,” he says, quiet, almost pleading. It all sounds like pleading though, doesn’t it? When it comes out of his mouth, sick. Weak. He cringes against the throbbing in his joints as he shuffles toward his friend. “Beyza,” he murmurs, “she only wants what is best for us.”
But this isn’t true, is it? It has never been true. But his mother has always been a stranger to him. Beautiful and unreachable. Perhaps he had thought that being a shadow-thing might have made her love him by default but that does not seem to be the case. She is more enamored with the young magician in front of him, but he does not resent Beyza for this.
“Look what she has done for you,” he continues, grimacing, referencing of course this new ability to bend time. (How it would have terrified this child-thing to know that it had been, in fact, he who had bent time. Or not time, really, but himself.) He grins, but there is worry in the Reaper’s brow. “What a gift this is.”
“You must not hold it against her,” he says, quiet, almost pleading. It all sounds like pleading though, doesn’t it? When it comes out of his mouth, sick. Weak. He cringes against the throbbing in his joints as he shuffles toward his friend. “Beyza,” he murmurs, “she only wants what is best for us.”
But this isn’t true, is it? It has never been true. But his mother has always been a stranger to him. Beautiful and unreachable. Perhaps he had thought that being a shadow-thing might have made her love him by default but that does not seem to be the case. She is more enamored with the young magician in front of him, but he does not resent Beyza for this.
“Look what she has done for you,” he continues, grimacing, referencing of course this new ability to bend time. (How it would have terrified this child-thing to know that it had been, in fact, he who had bent time. Or not time, really, but himself.) He grins, but there is worry in the Reaper’s brow. “What a gift this is.”
so darkness i became
