02-20-2018, 12:39 PM
There are few things in which Khaedrik wields mastery – perhaps he is yet too young, too ripe to truly rule some aspect of himself with such terse, automated precision. He still clings, coyly, impatiently to the simpler means of his existence; he breathes, he lives. And yet, he remains discontent and ridden by some sighing, ulterior motive of bitterness—grapes of wrath, a sourness that binds him to a genetic mishap.
Once he recalls, it will all become a thousand travels easier, he half-believes, half-wishes.
Somehow, the particles of him grow unruly with electricity, translating into a frenzy that only lasts, courses momentarily through him; an enhanced, gregarious heartbeat, a whim, a wish.
Her question has his mind reeling. It is only just that she should ask such a thing, he thinks, for what place would he have among them if he was a liability. Perhaps if he had known the intricacies of her own abilities, he would not judge himself so harshly.
His shadows twitch around him like a second skin, obscuring the bright-gold of his body. He remembers his fears, the nightmares that made sleeping unbearable, their whisper-voices in his head. There had been a time where he would have given it all up, had someone offered him a way out. He would have given up his power, his curse if someone would have offered to take it from him.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as forgetting what he knows, unfortunately there are no do-overs, no tides of making things undone. And thus, the electricity travels from bone, to flesh, to bone and cuts like venom through his mind. And the boy senses but cannot decipher the contingencies that transform into the meagre, aimless substance he has become.
”They would, if they could.” he answers truthfully – and there is a yearning in his eye, to be something more than monster and shadows. They would hurt you too he doesn´t say. I won´t let them he doesn´t either. But his wolf-beast dissipates into thin air, a mere memory of smoke and iniquity. The shadows in his eyes, however, still burn as brightly as ever. He hasn´t told her how they are part of him, part of the black hole that simmers in his chest, threatening to swallow all that is good and pure about him. But he cannot, not when the golden hairs of his body stand in revulsion.
”I want to be good” he says instead, and this too is truth – though a less volatile one.