this isn't mischief
The trickster can, unfortunately, remember his childhood days (the days before his first birthday spent in self-pity and practice; the days after his first birthday spent in more practice and working hard). He never did socialize much – at least in his youngest months of life. Most of it was spent secluded in the forests, focusing his energy to refine his tricks. He’d developed them quickly (through endless practice, through forcing rabbits with his mind to kill themselves from terror, through making his brain believe the wind was wrapped around him on a cloudless, sweltering hot summer day) for someone as young as him, and it impressed the pink queen greatly.
The trickster can only wonder if the minty colt next to him has as much potential. Most youngsters in Beqanna, it seemed, were born from common things (in this land, at least) like rape or faux love or bargains struck for power. Some children were born without the love of a mother (too many nightmares about the ‘father’), some children were born for greatness and fell short, some children were loved dearly by the parents (oh, the lucky few). The trickster himself is the product of a thirsty, tricky stallion and a mare who didn’t want a child.
However, when the monster speaks, the trickster’s bruised eyes are drawn away from the boy. He can only imagine what a mischievous trio they must make (the undead monster, the mint-green yearling, the chaos-bringing trickster) to the outside world, but rarely ever does he care. Nonetheless, the gleam of something (is it excitement? Prospect? Interest?) causes the silver bay’s lips to creep into that comfortably smirking grin. He’s seen it before, and he knows it means something good.
He asks what he might get out of it (they always do, he regards) and the trickster waits an equally long pause as the monster. “Perhaps,” he drawls slowly, carefully. His tenor tunes melt against the background of meadow-life, but still ring into the ears of those around him. His bruised eyes (blue and black in the right, blue and white in the left – both shining with mischief and bloodlust) glance toward the curious colt for a brief moment. But the trickster has been dealing with the world long enough to not care what a child might overhear or witness, especially if it were his own fault at listening in.
At the colt’s age, the chaos-lover was murdering the bodies of those trying to escape a bloody feast for alien predators.
“If you teach me how to kill better, and all the ways to do it, I will give you my prey as your meals.” He’s heard of the monster before and he knows what or, rather, who he eats. “A fair trade, I would say.” One ear shifts toward the boy again, wondering if those words would send him running for his mother. Welcome to the real, deadly world of Beqanna, boy.
lokii
this is mayhem
