There's a crashing noise in his brain, a screaming, thunderous noise, cracking and snapping and furious and the boy shakes his head but the sound doesn't end. The phantom tremor of thunder under his feet, and he knows it is thunder even though the day is bright and shining. It is like thunder when the storm is directly over you, a flash in the darkness that raises your hair and a deafening growl that makes your heart shudder and sets your feet to running - but to where? There is nowhere to go that the barrage will not find you. It is sheer panic that flows through his body, terror and adrenaline building up and up and he cannot determine the source or how long it lasts. It feels like forever, but it's hardly a second. He freezes at her touch, the sneer on his face falling away and she fills his heart with fearsome things. The shadow of a dragon flickers overhead and the boy blinks, gleaming teeth shine in his face and he rears back, baring his own as he does. He reels backward on his hind legs and feels the filly's dully flat teeth with their firm grasp on his wing - and then there is nothing.
He does not hear his own desperate squeal.
Don't touch my wing!
He doesn't hear how he says this out loud, or the way hysteria clips his voice sharp and tight. He only knows the gentle pressure of her grip.
Neverwhere's son is not a coddled boy. He holds the trauma of an early attack and a year of distant mothering. He has not been able to make his mother love him - and oh, how he has tried! He cannot make her embrace him as she does his sister Amarine. He cannot make her scowl soften the way it does when she is with the appaloosa filly and she has never shown the same concern over his boyhood hurts as she has over the year-old scars on red Lilliana with her tattered golden flame. Jealousy flares in his heart, but it is not this that engulfs him. It is something deeper, something older and darker.
He does not remember it. He does not remember the hawk in the tree or the indifferent way his mother swung her newborn son by the wing and bruised his ribs with her knees. He doesn't remember the hoof that stabbed the soil beside his head, ready to crush his soft skull without a thought. His dislocated wing healed itself ages ago, he does not remember the pain or the fear, but the insecurity roused by the nameless girl's bite overwhelms him far worse than anything she shows him.
Don't touch my wing!
His young voice is a sharp scream, but still he doesn't hear it. He sees nothing, yet wheels back around and charges forward like a battering ram with blind, rolling eyes. His other wing flares, teeth bared and snapping, forelegs striking over and over, seeking purchase wherever they fall. Her, the ground, the sky, his mother, Ama, Lilliana, anywhere - anyone - at all.
He does not hear his own desperate squeal.
Don't touch my wing!
He doesn't hear how he says this out loud, or the way hysteria clips his voice sharp and tight. He only knows the gentle pressure of her grip.
Neverwhere's son is not a coddled boy. He holds the trauma of an early attack and a year of distant mothering. He has not been able to make his mother love him - and oh, how he has tried! He cannot make her embrace him as she does his sister Amarine. He cannot make her scowl soften the way it does when she is with the appaloosa filly and she has never shown the same concern over his boyhood hurts as she has over the year-old scars on red Lilliana with her tattered golden flame. Jealousy flares in his heart, but it is not this that engulfs him. It is something deeper, something older and darker.
He does not remember it. He does not remember the hawk in the tree or the indifferent way his mother swung her newborn son by the wing and bruised his ribs with her knees. He doesn't remember the hoof that stabbed the soil beside his head, ready to crush his soft skull without a thought. His dislocated wing healed itself ages ago, he does not remember the pain or the fear, but the insecurity roused by the nameless girl's bite overwhelms him far worse than anything she shows him.
Don't touch my wing!
His young voice is a sharp scream, but still he doesn't hear it. He sees nothing, yet wheels back around and charges forward like a battering ram with blind, rolling eyes. His other wing flares, teeth bared and snapping, forelegs striking over and over, seeking purchase wherever they fall. Her, the ground, the sky, his mother, Ama, Lilliana, anywhere - anyone - at all.
@[Aela]
