10-16-2021, 09:13 AM
There has been little opportunity for Malik to develop empathy, but he is young yet. He recognizes that vulnerability is inevitable and acceptable - but only in his family, or within the Pack. Everything and everyone else is inconsequential. Prey. To be toyed with - or killed - at his pleasure.
She doesn’t want to kill it, she says. Eat it alive, then? Malik knows to rip the bellies out of sleeping sheep before the fear can sour the meat. But the blood of the dragon-like creature already burns his throat. So she can’t mean that, and just as he comes to this conclusion himself, she says as much.
At first he nods, because what she says is what he knows. Kills make them stronger, better, more Powerful. And Hyaline is the most powerful of all, which is why he cannot understand why his father has gone and his mother struggles to speak of him. This uncertainty is what sours in his belly now, as his mother takes aim at the foundation of the way he views the world.
He is too bewildered to be angry.
“Then we’d go somewhere else.” He says to her question about the deer, and though he is frowning he sounds quite incredulous. They are powerful - they can take what they want. If their deer were all to die off, well, there were surely more deer somewhere else. The idea of wasting life makes no sense at all to a boy who’s been raised to objectify those outside his family.
She’s wrong, he realizes. He just has to prove it to her.
“What if eating its heart gives me the ability to shift?” He asks. Would she deny him then? Can she know if it will or not, he wonders? He hopes not.“It’s just a wyvern, Mom. It’s not like it’s important.”
@Mazikeen
She doesn’t want to kill it, she says. Eat it alive, then? Malik knows to rip the bellies out of sleeping sheep before the fear can sour the meat. But the blood of the dragon-like creature already burns his throat. So she can’t mean that, and just as he comes to this conclusion himself, she says as much.
At first he nods, because what she says is what he knows. Kills make them stronger, better, more Powerful. And Hyaline is the most powerful of all, which is why he cannot understand why his father has gone and his mother struggles to speak of him. This uncertainty is what sours in his belly now, as his mother takes aim at the foundation of the way he views the world.
He is too bewildered to be angry.
“Then we’d go somewhere else.” He says to her question about the deer, and though he is frowning he sounds quite incredulous. They are powerful - they can take what they want. If their deer were all to die off, well, there were surely more deer somewhere else. The idea of wasting life makes no sense at all to a boy who’s been raised to objectify those outside his family.
She’s wrong, he realizes. He just has to prove it to her.
“What if eating its heart gives me the ability to shift?” He asks. Would she deny him then? Can she know if it will or not, he wonders? He hopes not.“It’s just a wyvern, Mom. It’s not like it’s important.”
@Mazikeen