06-16-2016, 09:48 AM
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, so 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 a wrenching feeling of agony radiating 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
(loved)
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. He is the same thing that begs to be broken, his existence now an affront to nature twice-over.
Yet.
Yet he breathes. Yet he continues, moving and living and persisting even if his state is sometimes wretched. His veins still map a living thing.
His interactions with others since his resurrection have been few, scattered conversations that meander nowhere. And maybe that’s for the best. Skim the waters rather than sink.
So when he sees this girl, he smiles. The sun shines through his skin and highlights what lies beneath.
“Hello,” he says, “I’m Contagion.”
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark