01-27-2018, 07:52 PM
It is his mother that pushes Khaedrik from his makeshift bed amongst the rushes this morning; he is mussed and drowsy-eyed from lack of sleep, ill-humored and snappish in the wake of his nightmares. But she, with her mane tangled with weed and briar, tail matching, has decided that her son too, must learn to appreciate these things. Poor Insignificance, intent on giving her son the childhood she never had, stubbornly ignores the dark, dark circles under his eyes and the haunted look he carries in those beetle-black eyes. She leaves him in the Playground and he – equally stubborn and too proud to admit his fear – says nothing.
The sun is faint in the shadows, and they lap at him like a kitten after fresh milk, wanting more of his flesh, more of his blood, which he cannot – WILL not – give. He belongs in the shadow, he belongs and he is aware that he belongs but it doesn´t make it any less terrifying. Sleep fades from his eyes and he becomes alert; he is fawn abandoned in the wilderness, motherless and alone; but he is wolf too, forgotten of the pack, left to fend for himself with a pack of puppies nipping his heels. His eyes are sharp and his gaze pointed as he moves, silent and forceful – intent of finding somewhere to rest from shadows and nightmares. Asunder, afraid, uncanny as his small feet find leverage upon the rotting leaves of the forest-floor, slipping only once and casting a foreleg from its brethren, so that he is half-sprawled in the shadow of the dappled ground; he yelps, a high-pitched strange sound, the tones burbled and silver in the darkness – and before he can set himself to right he becomes slowly aware of a light weight pressed against his withers; and with a slow, half-frozen movement, his muscles contradicts as he sets himself straight and flexes his neck around to stare into the yellow-gleam eyes of an arachnid. It was gruesome in his point of view; but were it not for those eyes he might have marveled about how well Nature had hewn it! How smoothly she had bonded flesh and blood and created such a monstrous and perfect being. But those devious eyes upon its forehead – gleaming yellow-bright – disgusting, insidious being.
”Not real, not real, not real.” - Khaedrik chants and squeezes his eyes shut. The eyes that are dead where they should shine with innocent youth and curiosity.
The spider, meanwhile, taps a leg in impatience with its master.
The shadows, meanwhile, curl around him, and whisper, whisper, whisper inconsistencies.
KHAEDRIK