Mom might be right - any

[Offspring]

something has been taken from deep inside of me;
the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.

  It is slow at first – a gentle and unhurried burn, boiling over within the very pit of his stomach, as it carefully unfurls from within. He is uncomfortable, as he has become all too aware at how the flame flickering inside of him is stirring from more than just his own restlessness – it is calling out to her; it is reaching out to its own kin – a realization that settles like heavy lead within his veins. As his dark, burning gaze bores into her own, the flame burns hotter, and the fire threatens to envelope him in its entirety.

  Perhaps, if it had only been appearance (their dark, inky black skin – their vivid, burning red eyes – their broad, muscled build), he could have ignored it and brushed it off as coincidence.

  But then --

  You have fire, she utters aloud, and the fevered inferno inside of him burns brighter.

  ”I do,” he says, almost breathlessly. While her muscles are coiled tightly, wary and uncertain of him, he is rife with emotion. His mind drifts away for a long, quiet moment, remembering the heat of her mother’s skin against his own (so pale in comparison to his own; russet and tangerine – but there had been many that year; he couldn't be certain who - a brief tryst; nothing more than sex shared between them), and the brief warmth of her kiss along his jawline.

  The realization of what lay before him draping over him with its heavy weight, all-encompassing in its truth: even if she does not realize it, he does, and he is looking in the eyes of his own daughter.

  ”You do too,” he murmurs, his voice a rumbling murmur, though it reverberates off of the dense foliage surrounding them. It, too, is a statement – not a question. He can feel his own fire longing for hers; a kinship he did not understand– a kinship he had not even felt with his own son, who too carried it inside of him.

  But he is drawn from his awe-stricken reverie, his steady gaze shifting to a heavily built stag, as his eyes trace the length and height of the antlers perched precariously on top of an otherwise graceful, carefully molded creature. There are too many colors for him to process, and he grimaces in discomfort, as tension boils inside of him – magic has touched him too many times before for him not to know it when he sees it; and for this – he is wary.

  Hello, Jinju, it says, but in her veiled form, he is none the wiser as to who lay beneath the cloak.

  Alas, he says nothing. Jinju is not his to protect – but still, the fire grows stronger.

wounds so deep they never show; they never go away.
like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.

Offspring