09-11-2016, 09:07 PM
There are things that still stir in his chest—memories of when Fear had been but briefly a weapon in his hand—that will stick with him in the coming months. They are dangerous and cruel things on his tongue that he finds he hungers for more than the milk that had so briefly dripped down his chin. His stomach churns with want as he thinks of the way her eyes had glazed over with things of his own making, the way she had hit her knees and then gone limp. He thinks of it, how it had played out even with his own clumsy handling of Fear, and his heart thumps painfully in his chest. Gifts—such brief gifts.
Gifts wrenched from his hands.
His dark eyes lift when the stallion approaches him and although there are no horns for him to know him by, nothing for him to recognize as a mirror, he knows.
He knows in the same way that he knew when he had spilled onto the ground and looked upon his mother, weak and spent from exertion. His shuddering stops and he remains silent in thought—quiet for too long, past the point of propriety. His mother had not named him; she had said nothing before eyelashes had fluttered down and shuttered her face.
So he says the only word that comes to mind, the word spat from the mare when his teeth had sunk into her flesh. “Bruise,” he says, finally, the word solid on his tongue with the weight of his decision. “My name is Bruise.” And then, to the second question, he swings his childish head around toward the mountain behind him, rising into the sky with such vicious, cutting lines. “Still up there,” he contemplates before rolling his shoulders.
“She had fallen and did not wake; I grew tired of waiting.”
He had grown tired of nudging her, of the hunger twisting his stomach. He had not felt loyalty enough to stay and wait; he had not cared if she had ever woken. The thoughts cause his lips to curl a little in the corners as he looks toward the stallion with wings stretched wide, chin rising in defiance. “And what of you? What did your mother call you?”
Bruise
head like a hole; as black as your soul.