Welcome to Gaia! ::

"With Black." The name came out like a spitting curse, a venomous dart that swam through the air to strike at the hearts of all who knew her. Merroth alone knew her, so the dart struck only himself.

Merroth was not sure how to answer, since legality to him was an abstract concept outside his knowledge base, but he did understand the word adoption. He had certainly been adopted (and sent back) enough times in his short life. "Black 'dopted me. I live with Nerry an'..." He narrowed his eyes, so leaving no question who he was thinking about. "Onna island."

The word safe literally had no meaning to Merroth. He had never known it his entire life. His first few homes, he had been the initiating factor of danger, a trait he had still, but Nerys, Edward John, and Black were considerably less stable than the average prospective parents. They protected him, more fiercely than most parents might have, but that did not make their influence in any way a safe one.

"Dun get it," was Merroth's reply, and he wished Beatrix would go back to asking him math questions because at least he understood them, even if the answers were momentarily escaping him.

"Uhh." The pause was not due to any confusion about the question. It was instead to assess the current inventory of abuses. He pointed to each thing he could remember, his speech falling out of its typical toddler patois as he went. "Here, hit th' wall, and here, this's where I tripped, and here this is from when I hit her leg, and here this is the shoe she threw at me and here this is actually my fault 'cause I jammed it in the door, and then that's from the ickyrocks." He pulled up his trouser leg to show a lovely crisscross of scrapes there. He indicated a nearby bruise. "But that's where she tripped me."

There was something horrifying about all this, but also something amazing. As he went through his injuries one by one, Merroth seemed to be for a moment the person he might be when he was older: clever, funny, even charming and proud. There was a weird little half-smile on his face, as if to say, "Yes, these things happened, but it's not like I didn't have it coming, and, well, nothing to be done about it now except have a laugh and a brag." It wasn't funny, not really, but Merroth was so accustomed to getting hurt in fights with guardians he had never taken the time to think about it. Now that he was doing just that, he could not help but to find it funny and be proud of all the fights he had started. These bruises were proof of his accomplishments.

Beatrix was using an awful lot of big words and long explanation that went somewhat beyond Merroth's llimited volcabulary skills, so Merroth did the totally mature thing and stuck out his tongue and farted. That was even funnier than all his injuries and he began to laugh.

He could not answer. He started to say he did, because he truly wanted to do maths and remember all that was beautiful in the universe, but he had lost the numbers. Shame silenced him. He had lost the only thing that truly mattered to him and Beatrix because of Black, who shouldn't have had any effect on him at all. Because of Nerys, too, and even because of Edward John. He had lost his numbers because in his own stupid way he cared about them and he had stupidly let them affect him. He was supposed to be great and powerful and smarter than everyone else and instead he was weak and powerless and people mattered. Not most people, but some of them. Enough to ruin him forever.

He wanted to do maths with Beatrix, but instead he said, "Dun wanna," in a voice so low it was barely a mumble. He had always pretended to not want to study before, because that was what he did -- yell and fight and protest -- but this time he almost meant it.

He did not get up. He sat there, eyes staring at the floor, not wanting to leave. His hearts were beating more quickly, a low noise in the back of his head, and he could hear his own breathing. He could have heard a pin dropping, his mind was so quiet. Beatrix was asking him to leave?

Something rose in him, some anger and darkness at the idea he could be controlled and told what to do. Black gave him no options, but surely he had control over something, over someone. "I..." His voice was a sigh. He bunched the cloth of his pants in his fingers and tried again. "I still have forty-seven minutes and thirteen seconds. Eleven. Ten." He was now attempting to count down in seconds the time remaining, just to be precise.