09-26-2026, 11:35 PM
It is so devastatingly simple, the way she reaches out the tip of a wing to touch him, that it should not make him tremble. It is neither flirtatious nor suggestive, merely a gentle, probing touch, a way for her to gauge whether or not he is dead. But it is the first time he has ever been touched. Not even the dark magician had touched him as he’d led him into the depths. His mother certainly hadn’t, as she had merely turned her face away in disgust before the boy had even had the chance to clamber to his feet. Before he’d spoken a word.
He barely feels it, the water that skirts across his damp skin, and he thinks that maybe he is dead. In all the time that he’s been standing here he hasn’t drawn a breath. He blinks his milky eyes.
“Oh,” he says. And tilts his head, unaware of just how frightful a sight he is. Ugly, dripping, the skin bloated like it might come sloughing off of him in great strips. “Does that mean you’re dead, too?” He asks. Because he’d thought she looked a heavenly thing, though he does not tell her this. He merely stands there, uncertain why she has positioned herself alongside him. (Downwind, perhaps, so that she does not have to smell him. Or so that she does not have to look him in the face.)
“I don’t think I like being dead,” he muses. He turns his head then to peer back at the darkness from which he had emerged, unaware of how much time had passed since his father had led him to the water’s edge. “I think I drowned.”
He barely feels it, the water that skirts across his damp skin, and he thinks that maybe he is dead. In all the time that he’s been standing here he hasn’t drawn a breath. He blinks his milky eyes.
“Oh,” he says. And tilts his head, unaware of just how frightful a sight he is. Ugly, dripping, the skin bloated like it might come sloughing off of him in great strips. “Does that mean you’re dead, too?” He asks. Because he’d thought she looked a heavenly thing, though he does not tell her this. He merely stands there, uncertain why she has positioned herself alongside him. (Downwind, perhaps, so that she does not have to smell him. Or so that she does not have to look him in the face.)
“I don’t think I like being dead,” he muses. He turns his head then to peer back at the darkness from which he had emerged, unaware of how much time had passed since his father had led him to the water’s edge. “I think I drowned.”
- SON