Name:
Toby Petrel Wyres
"What are you but a quiet ghost, a bruised up cadaver brought back to living, moving existence. Everything you do holds such a tinge of open aired, blank minded confusion. You're too afraid of the world, too afraid of change to let the world become better for you, too scared of hope because it hurt you so badly the first time around. Second chances fly over your head at hurtling, screaming speeds, and you've gotten used to acting stable in a world where you're not. Death scares you, and so you avoid all thought of its truthful reality, yet you surround yourself in the most painful kind. You're trying to suffocate yourself, because you appear to think its what you need. And who could deny you that place of purgatory? Rules escape you. After all, what are rules anyway? You block out feeling, you're tough. The blood on your fists, the cuts on your knuckles, the tears fallen onto your wrists, they're all your secret little story, and you hide them well. You give yourself a new life, a new identity, with every new surprise you reevaluate the speed of your suffrage. What is life without such things, anyway? You pine in woe, you rarely smile... Yet, you always try so hard."
The shadows, they waited, creeping along the underside of grass blades, virulent amongst the bleeding, narrow strings of red forming rivers and pearls between families of grass. Everything was dark, a hand grasped, and was both frail enough to diminish like dust, and strong enough to bring his dying heart back to life. Still, some residue of life drifted off into the air. If it was not his life, who's was it? In his few years of existence he'd been fragile, heeded every warning, always listend... That's what he was taught, with love and admiration he was taught the politics of politeness. So, it was hard for him to understand why... Why now they weren't listening to him. The time came for them to sleep, but that was nonsense talking, instead they pushed their voices through the wreckage of their throats and sang, their lullaby. Sang it, and just about everything else the last time in their lives. As he asked for them to stay, and they sang, and nothing really happened except that... the wind picked up.
There once was a windmill by the old forest, it's green expanse gathering on for miles, where the children used to roam. There once laid no flowers, no memorium, no stones. No twisted notions buried limbs of momma and poppa deep under earth. But that windmill came down, and sent him flying, until the crashing of stones against velocity and the tremors in his skull, subsided and everything drifted away sweetly. Nowadays people knelt by the old remains of the windmill flowers in hand and stared at the open earth as it blanketed life beneath, losing their own grounds with life. Two gravestones marked lost bodies, broken bones and bleeding souls. All that lay there, a scene becoming an art piece all in itself, corpses, two lonely corpses calling for their baby. Baby baby ba--bye.
---
Blood and guts shouldn't be what a young child is used to, but his small brutish form had seen such things so many times that he could go ahead and name to you all of the different parts and how well they burned in a fire, how well he has to maneuvere to get to them. A burden came upon him as his thin fingers slipped through the organs of a freshly dead creature without rupture or recklessness. He was a killer too, in this regard. The poachers nudged at him and his bruised up arms, their vibrant purple and ghostly orange shades hidden beneath semi-rolled sleeves. Once white, now splattered by blood just like the stones that his own blood had hit during his accident all of those months ago, the fabric unfurled at times in a thick coated body of red. Towering over him, one man taken in by the shadows of his own height grabbed at a rare, vividly colored bird with its limbs hanging low, and it's viscera hanging out, dangling lifelessly. "This one now. Hurry it up."
Poor creatures. Poor babies.
He'd heard of the witch who lived in the forest way over. Sure, there were many, but there was more so one, a witch, who toppled over the others in spectacularity. Once she'd made a boy a frog, he'd heard. Once she's given a girl wings, he'd heard. Once she'd sent someone to the far north with her magic, he'd heard. The rumors were a thick bevy, unreliable though hopeful. Once, twice, tens of times she'd granted wishes. Many had heard that at least. He was too distant, too stuck to the new ways he'd grown familiar with to run towards a witches house. It wasn't a kind life, it was more or less reliable though. The other life had been kinder, more reliable, and it had left him, and when it went it did so painfully. So, he'd rather stay firm where he was, where things were reliable.
Of course, where he was was not a good place to be. He loitered, he loitered in his expanse of life, and did so with eased adaptability. He broke the law so many times in his short little lifetime, in that little town with a lot of roaming space, that the only way to fix things entirely may have been to outlaw him all together. A 13 year old child.
He made his way to the little white building at the centermost place in the town, walked around it with very perceptive innocence, as much as one can have when covered in blood, and hoisted himself in through the only open back window. The progeny house has no records of him, of course he wasn't orphaned as early on as the others, but he pretended to fit into its walls and it's inhabitants pretended he did so. It was a symbiotic relationship in his society if there ever was one.
A little thing called Eloise came scampering over, holding her nose, smiling wide. "Petrel, the nurses won't like the smell!" Petral... He took a moment to react, he was, after all, Petrel. He'd have to react. A young man with dark ebony skin walked into the room, pat his musty head and grabbed the mop beside the window. The mop put there specifically for his messes, Petrals messes. "Hey there kid, you're making a mess." upon the three standing in the room, he was the only not to smile.
"Run along, Emmy made a bath when she saw you coming." He did as he was told. How much did they care for him? How much could he live without? How would they get on... If he were gone? Just fine... Just as he was without mother and father, as sickening as the words were. The world goes on, and if he were to stand in the center of it, and stop going on, how long until he'd die too?
It wasn't a kind life, but sometimes it was warm. Warm, like the bath water on his flesh. Warm like blood on his hands, like hands scrubbing the blood away, warm like soft bed sheets he'd slept all night, had to wake up in at 6 in the morning.
Birds weren't easy to catch either. The poor things fought so hard. Poor babies.
His face became even more smattered with deep red than before as he wiped at it carelessly, closing one eye to ease the sight away.
