04-17-2015, 11:39 AM
He is still learning how to live. How to draw breath.
(It hurts, sometimes. All the time? Maybe. Maybe not when he’s asleep, but he doesn’t sleep much. Glass shouldn’t sleep.)
Some days he wants to throw caution to the wind, knowing his minutes have long been up (were up, really, the moment he was born, translucent and pale, paper-thin wings at his back). When he’s already beaten the odds, what’s a few more dollars on the bet?
Other days he thinks of leaving, of finding somewhere safer than this, somewhere not speckled with horses of all kinds, more than a few with a sadistic streak who would find pleasure in breaking him, the way children pluck wings from butterflies.
(Not that he’s a butterfly, he’s nowhere as lovely as they. He’s not ugly, but he’s odd, the look of him, the way you can trace the veins beneath his skin. It’s unsettling, sometimes.)
There’s already been a few scares, roving groups of men and women who’d drink blood just to smile at you. And once, a woman in the night, black and odd-angled, with a monster gibbering at her side. Her eyes had glided over him and he’d felt himself turn cold.
They’d walked on, the lady and the tiger, but he remembers them all too well.
He’s been nowhere but here. Here, and the beach, once, telling mother and father goodbye as they marched into the sea foam, beautiful and damned. He knows there are other places, herdlands and kingdoms, but the idea of anyone wanting his fidelity is laughable. What use is he?
The there’s a woman, strong and there, filling up the empty space before him. He regards her (gawks, really), trying to process her words, trying to process her.
“Hello,” he manages. His voice is quiet, slightly graveled from disuse (he doesn’t speak often, not since Adaline left). “My name is Contagion.”
Wait. She’d mentioned where she was from. Where is glass from?
“From…nowhere, I guess. Here?” his voice rises like it’s a question, like she’d know. Truth is, nowhere is home, it’s all transient.
His mind still churns over the rest of her words - stunning - and he doesn’t know what to say. He’s never seen himself that way. Curious, perhaps. Fragile, certainly. But not stunning.
“Thank you,” he says, because even if he doesn’t speak much, he knows how to be polite, to not make trouble.
“I like your mark,” he says, nodding to the blue etched across her, like a piece of the sky came down to rest.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark