live free & die young
I watched as she left. Emotionless flames burned bright as her pale, ghost like form slipped into the mists that embraced the swamp she had chosen as the perfect place to deposit her unwanted spawn. She had never wanted me, that much was obvious. Rather than whispering sweet nothings and tales of what a great prince I would one day grow into, she stood there silent as I nursed, sulked in the shadows crying and cursing fate for leaving her with me.
Other children would probably be crying, screaming after their mother's to come back and love them and then when they kept walking the orphaned child would likely succumb to the whispers of the thick, unforgiving mud. But not I. At six months old I felt I was already much more jaded than even the most fierce of warriors. Midnight ears flicked back as the ghostly figure disappeared from my line of sight. She was gone, and I was here, left in a swamp where she hoped I would stumble into the murkiness and never return.
A snort escaped through flared, ink stained nostrils forcing the mist that wrapped around my small frame to swirl out in wild clouds before they settled down once again. Orange pools pulled away from the place they had last seen her, and instead drifted around my new surroundings. This was a dull place, full of danger, mist, the stink of mud and rotting foliage, the only sunlight that could creep through the thick canopy was a murky grey color as it tried to break through the fog. It was perfect.
My features twisted into the small ghost of a smile while inky limbs forced my presence forward, a thin line of blood crept its way down my chin when my lip cracked with the tightening of a smile. This strange land would do quite well, plenty of unfortunate situations to find myself in that would cause pain and discomfort to those who were normal, those who would roll their eyes in fear and lips to curl back in aggression over the oddity that is myself.
I kept walking until I found myself stuck. A thicket of life snatching thorns had been in my path, something I wasn't worried over since I could figure out someway to stop the bleeding later once I had found where I wanted to stop for the day. So, instead of finding my way around the blade like plants, my limbs kept walking. I could feel the thorns as they pressed into the thin flesh that covered my cannon bones, knowing only because my mother liked to spit the venom in my ears, that I was different and that this pressure should send me running in the other direction. But it didn't, I kept walking until the thorny vines wrapped themselves around all four limbs and I could no longer figure out how to get myself out of the mess I had found myself in.
"Shit..."
"speech"
ULYSSES
leave a beautiful carcass
