06-29-2020, 06:53 PM
He feels it.
At first he thinks he’s imagined it. The chasm that opens up in his chest, turns his breath thin, makes his nostrils flare.
And then, when he’s certain that he has not imagined it, he mistakes it for something that it’s not. He knows that it’s not fear, but he is young and there are so many things that he does not understand. There are so many emotions that he does not have names for.
But then it’s gone, just like that. Just as quickly as it had come and all the air in his chest expands, fills him up. There is nothing left but the stranger’s question, clipped. Not angry but certainly not warm. He feels no overwhelming need to protect their mother, really. It is more a matter of principle now, he thinks, as feeling returns to his mouth and the heart chugs back to its regular beat.
The stranger grits his teeth and Gravitas does the same. He lifts his head, drags in a big breath and holds it, puffs out his chest like he’s any match for the stranger that descends upon them. He knows so very little about magic, Gravitas. He does not understand that the stranger was responsible for that chasm in his chest. He does not understand this dark thing that feels like anger wrapping its cold fingers around his heart.
It takes him a moment to process the stranger’s threat. Or, rather, the preface. I helped create you. The boy frowns and glances at his sister, takes not of the galaxies splashed across her skin and how they compare to the stranger’s. He knows that his are the same.
“Why don’t you go find her yourself?” he snaps, emboldened perhaps by the knowledge that he is their father. But he wonders, too, why he feels no joy in this. He looks at the stranger and feels nothing at all.
G R A V I T A S
