[open] shadows fall over my heart;

[cringe]

how to be a monster:
1. learn the taste of dirt and pain.
2. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed.
3. see if that makes it easier to breathe.

He is bred of a monster, but he does not look it.
No, he looks more like his father (or – the one who bore him; the unorthodox nature of his conception makes titles mixed and strange). Pale gold, like winter sunlight, a diluted version of Rapt’s richer tones. He’s handsome enough, though he’s not preoccupied with such things.
He is bred of a monster, and this becomes evident when layers are stripped away, when his other abilities are laid out – the dark smoke of the fear aura, the clutching hands of possession. He has not been kind with these gifts, is quick to use them, to possess and to frighten.

Sins of the father, they say, but to him, they are gifts.

He has tasted the sweetness of fear, of control, and it melts across his tongue. He’s come to crave it, now. He’d been in distant lands, isolated. It hadn’t bothered him – he did well enough, in such isolation – but what use were his talents in a vacuum?
No, he is destined for more.

He is looking for no one in particular when he walks along the churning rush of the river. The noise of it envelops most else, but Cringe peers out, looking. He feels like something in near, like a word dancing on the tip of his tongue, but he does not know what. And so, he moves faster, searching.
And there she is.
She is younger than he, membranous wings at her sides. He can hear the heavy lurch of her breathing and this excites him in a way he can’t quite articulate. She’s staring up into a tree as if it holds some secret, but Cringe sees nothing of worth in it.
No, the worth is before him, in this impossibly black girl with heaving sides.
“You look lost,” he says, and he touches at her mind, just lightly, to see if he might be let in.

cringe

@[Cineres]