03-01-2016, 12:50 PM
He tried to fly, once.
The wings are strange things, a delicate membrane stretched thinly over hollowed bones. They do not bear him aloft, as wings are meant to do. So little of his body functions as it should, it should be have been no surprise to him when he once saw horses take flight and beat his wings to join them, only to hear a thin crack, like a twig snapping, and feeling the agony radiate from his left wing and into his skin.
(The fracture had long since healed, leaving only a slight twist to the line of his wings, unremarkable to the untrained eye.)
He still thinks of flying, aches for it in the same indefinable way he aches for so many things.
He is a glass house is a world of stone-throwers, a boy who should not exist – indeed, a boy whose existence was snuffed out, fate met whilst torn between two women he loves – love d – and should not have.
He is resurrected, now, through magic he does not begin to understand, but he could not tell you why, or to what purpose. He is no stronger now, he is still the same frail glass thing, with papery wings and skin so delicate it’s translucent, a network of veins and arteries mapping his livelihood.
There is movement and then there is a girl, camouflaged like the woods. He had not realized anyone was so near – an embarrassment for a prey animal such as he. The tears in his eyes burn as she calls attention to him and his heart beats out a mantra: weak, you are weak.
“I came back,” he says, and his voice feels strange in his throat, broken from disuse, “I was broken, then I came back.”
Yet there is another confession, deeper down, one he does not say: and I am not sure I wanted to.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark