[open] Fragile eggshell mind

[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.   There’s a saying, about sins of the father. They follow, see, haunting the bloodline. Stalking from one generation to the next. He was born, then, already weighed down with them (do twice the fathers equal twice the sins? we don’t know, yet. Perhaps.). He’s too young still, too sheltered to know the exact nature of his sins. And he only knows one father – the one who birthed him, impossibly. Rapt loved him and Cringe was a good enough son, but it was obvious there was more to him – his body healed from damage wantonly, and, when he concentrated, he could make the air about him shimmer black, make his father shake and stumble, see things that weren’t there. Monsters, or something like them.   He’s young, and thus he’s stupid, but he’s smart enough to know there’s a missing piece, something he has yet to uncover. His father doesn’t tell him stories of his making. Of his blood. When Cringe asks, father goes close-lipped and glassy-eyed, and refuses to utter so much as a name. Which makes Cringe want to know all the more, of course. He’s slipped off, though he’s old enough that it shouldn’t matter – half-grown, body and legs still mismatched, but adult enough, or so he thinks.   He sees the convening of the monsters, and instinct mutters run and Cringe ignores it, he moves closer, admiring the men, with their curved horns and cloven hooves. He does not know his father has knelt before them, has served them both and would do so again in a wretched heartbeat, he only knows that they are powerful, more powerful than he, and he is drawn to the power. He calls forth his own fear aura, a shimmer of black around him, some modicum of protection – he recognizes that they are dangerous, at least – but he does not send it out, does not touch either man with it. (He wonders if they fear anything at all, monstrous as they are.) “Hello,” he says, uninvited, unaware this has become a family reunion, now, three generations of fearmongers come to rest in the forest.   cringe bruise x rapt

i am SORRY i could not help it