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[mature] Baby, you’re a wreck; - Printable Version

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Baby, you’re a wreck; - Zekharyah - 11-02-2020

“The Gods are smiling down on us, Zekharyah.”


Fresh from the sac, covered in blood and fluids, the colt was more concerned with the sudden lack of warmth he was presented with than stargazing. Still, one indignant snort from his red-spotted mother and his sight slowly shifted towards her. He twisted one black-tipped ear back and pressed the other one forwards, signaling that he was listening. He shivered.


She beamed, covered in her own blood and prancing in place despite it. He wondered if she was in pain. He hoped she wasn’t, some small part of him recognizing that she was Blood and that he should Care For Her—


The snow crunched noisily beneath her hooves and she continued her lesson, despite the colt’s obvious discomfort. “Gods are loooovely beings that live up there—high, high up above us! Beyond the moon, among the stars, in a place far too beautiful for me to even begin to describe! Heaven, Zekharyah, is where the Gods reside.”


Is it warm?’ He thought long before he even knew what it meant, the blood around him already chilled by the snow and his sac losing all its warmth in the minutes that followed. He tried shifting his little wings around, but they ached, and they ached, and the ache travelled from his wings down into the rest of his bones.

She didn’t seem to mind, too busy prattling on and on about Gods and Monsters.


Zekharyah felt his eyelids beginning to droop, his body wracked with tremors. He was cold, so cold—


“—They’ve been speaking to me for a long time, Zekharyah.”

There was a change in his mother’s shrilly, singsong voice that snapped him right back to attention. Something that spoke to a part of his brain that he wasn’t familiar with yet. It needed him to get up, it needed him to run. But he hadn’t even taken his first steps yet. He didn’t know how to use his legs though now seemed as good a time as any to try.


She kept talking while the colt struggled to stand.


“Whispering to me since I was a chiiiiild!” The chestnut-spotted Pegasus sighed, like a woman remembering a lover she was particularly fond of—and she was, sort of. There was no greater love than the love of her Gods.


“It’s why I sought your father out, my sweet boy,” she cooed, her red lashes fluttering; he had managed to stand, though his legs were wobbly and his steps uncoordinated. He nearly faceplanted under the intensity of her glare.


“Black as night, they said, and though he was handsome, I still made him wait. You see, the Gods can see us more clearly this time of year,” she cocked her head, letting him stagger towards her—he ignored the sirens going off in his head, ignored every little part of him that was telling him to at least try to get away.


There was another part of him, after all, that recognized her as his Mother and Mothers promised safety, and warmth, and a full belly, if his instincts were to be believed.


(Were they?)


“And I didn’t want them to miss it.


There was a thud and then an explosion of pain in his chest and then his shoulder. Someone was screaming and it took a while for him to realize that he was the one screaming. He had slammed back down onto the snow on his side. His mother prowled around him like an old jungle cat, giggling madly—which eventually turned into a full on cackle.


“Do you see, DO YOU SEE?!”


Zekharyah thrashed around, unsure as to whether she was screaming at him or the stars—her Gods.


“They want you, Zekharyah. They want me to send you to THEM—“


His mother went silent and still, though the baby boy still balked and kicked and writhed around in agony. All his Gods’ damned thrashing was starting to uncover the others—she could see some of their noses, still covered with flesh. She could see their little broken bones and rotten, spotted bodies, little babies that all looked like her or bore her spots and she hated it.

She had done it for the Gods, she reminded herself, for the Gods—

“My babies, my sweet babies...”

Zekharyah snapped his eyes shut, certain that this would be the end. She was running at him, thundering closer and closer, his heart mimicking her pace—but then she charged right on past him, the sound of her footfall growing increasingly muffled by the snow.

He didn’t see her run into the tree, though he heard it. He wandered over to her a few minutes later, following her prints though they were being quickly covered by falling snowflakes. Her head was twisted at an awkward angle and blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. He almost thought to suckle, but the thought itself made him sick, and so he opted to snuggle up next to her corpse while it was still warm to... wait.


RE: Baby, you’re a wreck; - Aedan - 11-03-2020

He does not usually come to the Den, though he has managed to adopt another child regardless. Still, he often finds that he walks by it, just in case, ears perked in the direction just listening for any sound. There were not that many children in the Den, at least when he passed by, and he is thankful that the land stays largely empty.

Tonight though there is sound, unusual sounds good. Not the gentle footfalls of children roaming or even adults, who slip in and out to leave their children beneath the watchful protection of the fairies. No, he hears screaming, running...it is too distant for him to get there quickly, and the snow that falls does not make his journey any faster. Still he runs though, as fast as he can, across the slippery ground, feeling far too slow the entire time.

By the time he arrives, managing to find the boy in the forest tucked against a dead mare. He has no idea what has happened and from the scene probably could not guess anyway. He assumes that she slipped and fell, leaving a boy motherless, though he knows any number of things might have happened.

There’s a soft glow around the star covered stallion, giving him enough light to see by and making him easily spotted as well. Aedan slows his pace, approaching gently now, hoping not to frighten the child more than he already must be. It is clear the mare never even cleaned him, which somehow makes him wonder what actually happened. The pieces don’t quite add up, but at the moment, they do not matter either. ”Hello,” he says, voice soft and gentle. ”I’m Aedan. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”

aedan

the night is more alive and more
richly colored than the day.



@[Zekharyah]


RE: Baby, you’re a wreck; - Zekharyah - 11-03-2020

Zekharyah wasn’t certain how long he laid there; thoughts crept across his mind like wayward slugs, the air hurt his lungs. Darkness lingered at the edge of his vision and he smiled, as if recognizing an old friend. It was beckoning him, whispering to him, telling him it was okay to let everything go.

(You don’t have to stay here, you know. I can take you Elsewhere.)

Elsewhere, somehow, didn’t seem like such a bad spot to be—not when there was blood trying to freeze on his coat and the bruises from his mother’s kicks started throbbing in his chest and shoulder. It was a miracle she hadn’t caved some part of him in.

Gradually, the dark started clouding more and more of his view; he was sinking down, down, down into the snow, down into a sleep from which he’d never wake up. The fairies would find them frozen together, no doubt—a mother and her son, victims of a tragic ‘accident.’ Animals would scatter the bones of the others, the undergrowth would grow over and conceal the bodies, as it did every year.

He shifted uncomfortably, trying to will his eyes to stay open, but the task was starting to prove itself almost impossible to do. Almost. Until he noticed a glow from the corner of his eye.

Zekharyah lifted his head, his heart again starting to hammer against his ribs. Before him stood a God, a creature spun out of starlight; there were stars on his skin, starlight pouring from his very being. The colt wondered what he wanted, if he had come to finish what his mother had started. Because they had wanted him and his mother believed that they had wanted him dead.

He started clumsily scooting himself backwards, pressing his back into the lukewarm belly of his mother’s corpse. He pinned his ears and snorted, baring his teeth and gums in a weak attempt to ward off the potential threat.

The stallion didn’t seem deterred, though. He approached calmly, kindly—Zekharyah blinked slowly in his confusion, though he started to visibly relax. There was nothing about the starlit stranger that came off as hostile, nothing about him that made the colt think he meant harm. His voice was gentle, soothing to the boy’s ears, and though he struggled, Zekharyah pushed himself up out of his ‘sit’ and slowly inched towards this so-called ‘God.’

“Help,” he repeated weakly (his very first word), reaching out with his black muzzle as if to confirm the other horse was real. It was the beginning of... something, though he wasn’t quite sure what that something was. Zekharyah only knew that he wanted to leave this place behind and never see it again.


RE: Baby, you’re a wreck; - Aedan - 11-11-2020

If he could read minds, he would laugh. Not at the boy, but simply at the idea of being a god. He is no such thing, certainly. Honestly, were there such things as gods at all? The faeries, but they were not beings really, just magic incarnate. There was power in the world they would never fully understand, but gods? Perhaps, but not in this life.

The boy fights, but only for a minute, and it’s weak and feeble and certainly nothing Aedan couldn’t handle. But it does not take long for the child to realize that Aedan isn’t there to hurt him but to help. He manages one word, a small ‘help’, and Aedan nods. He calls to the stars, surrounding the boy with their soft, warm light. It is not warmth, necessarily, but it is warming and comforting, and it will help keep him warm as they make the journey out of this place.

Aedan reaches down, helping the boy to stand. ”I live on an island. It is much warmer than here. Can you walk?” He waits, making sure the boy isn’t so injured that he couldn’t move. Probably Aedan could find a way to move him with the darkness that surrounds them, but he’s never actually tried such magic. ”The water there is warm too. We can get you clean.”

aedan

the night is more alive and more
richly colored than the day.



@[Zekharyah]