A
P
T
He ventures.
He ventures out even though he’d stay forever by the monster’s side, but no, it wouldn’t do – wouldn’t please him, and Rapt is a good boy. So he leaves even though it feels like his guts are being wrung out, even though it feels as if his bones have been replaced with lead.
But he is brave good.
(So good, he promised, I’ll be so good.)
The world is wide and strange to a boy who is not particularly smart, who knees sometimes still shake. But he tries not to let it seep inside him, he smiles (and maybe it looks more like a grimace, maybe it looks more like a corpse’s rictus, but never mind that, never mind).
The land pours out before him, great and terrible – unlike the desert sands he’d been born into, unlike the forest where he met the monster – it is fecund and open, and he feels too vulnerable.
He’s growing, this boy, adding on years so the foal’s scruff of mane is gone, replaced by something smooth and pale, like cornsilk. He shines a pale gold in the meadow’s abundant sunlight.
He sees a man, rough-hewn, and for a moment he thinks it is the monster – but then he edges closer, realizes with something like disappointment that it is not.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice is soft. “I thought you were someone else.”
.