06-13-2024, 10:29 PM
bael
What a shame that he cannot smirk in turn.
How devilish the smirk would be!
Instead, he merely clacks that beak. Had he any feathers he might have preened them with the way she looks at him, though he clocks no admiration in her gaze. (And what would he have done with it if he had? What would it have meant?) He clacks that beak while she considers that he’d look better without it and had he been privy to her thoughts, he could have told her that he’d ached so desperately for a mouth once that the wish alone had nearly cannibalized him.
He might have asked her if she knew what it was like to starve.
But she asks if any of them are real and he exhales sharply. (A laugh, perhaps. If he’d known what it meant to laugh. If he’d known that it was meant to be a thing of joy and not whatever dark shape it takes in his chest.)
(What a concept! To think that maybe they are all living in a dream. No, if it were a dream, he would not have known what it meant to be ravaged by hunger. The pain of it would not have made a permanent home out of the valleys between his ribs.) She looks away from him then, as if she might find the answer in the sky. Or perhaps she has simply grown bored with the question already.
He watches, intrigued. Intrigued to think that she might wear her disdain so plainly. (If, in fact, it is disdain.)
And then she returns her gaze to him and if only he could have smiled! But it is likely his inability and its cause that give him the appearance of something not-quite-real. If he’d had a mouth the same way she has a mouth, she might not have said so.
“Real as you,” he tells her. “I can see your bones.” As if she is unaware.
How devilish the smirk would be!
Instead, he merely clacks that beak. Had he any feathers he might have preened them with the way she looks at him, though he clocks no admiration in her gaze. (And what would he have done with it if he had? What would it have meant?) He clacks that beak while she considers that he’d look better without it and had he been privy to her thoughts, he could have told her that he’d ached so desperately for a mouth once that the wish alone had nearly cannibalized him.
He might have asked her if she knew what it was like to starve.
But she asks if any of them are real and he exhales sharply. (A laugh, perhaps. If he’d known what it meant to laugh. If he’d known that it was meant to be a thing of joy and not whatever dark shape it takes in his chest.)
(What a concept! To think that maybe they are all living in a dream. No, if it were a dream, he would not have known what it meant to be ravaged by hunger. The pain of it would not have made a permanent home out of the valleys between his ribs.) She looks away from him then, as if she might find the answer in the sky. Or perhaps she has simply grown bored with the question already.
He watches, intrigued. Intrigued to think that she might wear her disdain so plainly. (If, in fact, it is disdain.)
And then she returns her gaze to him and if only he could have smiled! But it is likely his inability and its cause that give him the appearance of something not-quite-real. If he’d had a mouth the same way she has a mouth, she might not have said so.
“Real as you,” he tells her. “I can see your bones.” As if she is unaware.
( they won’t muzzle the mouth that just bit ya )