It’s just a boy.
It’s just a boy and in some ways I’m disappointed. I wish he was a monster. If he was, this interaction would be easier.
It’s just a boy named Kibou and a monkey named Saki. This feels like the start of one of mother’s stories, except this time I’m in it too, and it makes me uncomfortable. How would she describe me, if she were not my mother? Would an unbiased narrator reveal all my uncertainties, all the plain ugliness that lies at my core, beneath the magic and the wraith wolf and the angry twist of a horn? Would they mention how I search and search for words but don’t know what to say, or how to say it?
My breath feels caught in my throat, like it wants to be daggers but finds itself just warm, empty wind. “Aspara.” It takes me a little too long to share my name. Does it make the boy uncomfortable? I angle my head just slightly to the wolf who still stands hunched, bristled and growling. I think he wishes the boy was a monster too. “Furfur.”
The boy is so… so small. Smaller than me. Younger– and my whole entire life, to this moment, I’ve been the youngest character in my story. There was a sort of power to that, a power that you had to humble yourself to accept. I would never be the first in any way: the wisest, or the fastest, or the strongest. But I had more time than everyone else. If I was careful and cunning, I could watch the others and learn from their mistakes.
This boy ruined the illusion I clung to that I was special in some way. He took the one thing I felt was mine (the one thing I wanted that was not the magic or the wraith wolf or the angry twist of a horn).
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” It’s a petty thing to say, I know. It’s the first thing that comes out of my mouth and if I could, I would be blushing at my own hypocrisy. Maybe he can see how embarrassed I am, how quickly my face changes into a look of surprise. I realize I’m still poised to run my horn right through his small golden chest, and I straighten. I soften. Furfur, waiting for my cue, relaxes as well. He slinks off into the shadows, out of reach of the boy’s golden pool of light.
“I like your light,” I say quickly, to detract from my impulsive rudeness, and it is not entirely a lie.
@
