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 Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:55 pm
Ataya lay bedridden for three days.
Three.
Days.
It oughtn’t, technically, have kept him in bed. At least by his opinion. But his father insisted, watching over him untiringly as a bird of prey. He chastised both he and his sister for keeping secrets from him, emphasizing the dangers of not divulging information to him and their mother, the reasons they lived where they did to begin with. No one was trustworthy. Anyone might harm them. Everyone was presumed to be the enemy until there was reason to believe otherwise.
But all Ataya could think was that Dysarrin had looked at him the way they looked at him. The way pureblood children — adults — everyone in Taliuma except his uncles looked at him. And it hurt more than he wanted to admit. He shouldn’t care what Dysarrin thought. He was just a wild boy. What did he know? Nothing. Yet, even after only a few moons of contact, Ataya had felt safe with him, as though they shared something. They were both outcasts. Stray children in the mountains with no other friends.
Except that, apparently, he was wrong. Despite his messy, mixed blood, it seemed Dysarrin, too, was capable of being prejudiced, and the injustice of it irked Ataya to an extent that he couldn’t shake as he might have liked. Even at not yet eight years of age, he had taught himself — mostly — to disregard the opinions of other children his age in town. They weren’t like him. They didn’t understand. They would never understand unless he showed them otherwise, and he could accept that, to an extent. He had learned not to expect or even hope for friendship from them.
But Dysarrin had been different. Or, so he’d thought.
By the fourth day, when his lungs had cleared, his skin no longer burned, and his head no longer ached, Ataya managed to convince even his still-bristly, wary father to permit him out of bed. At the earliest instant that opportunity permitted, he headed off towards his ‘spot,’ bringing with him a new book and many pent up frustrations and assumptions. Perhaps Dysarrin would not even be there. He hadn’t come to visit the house again. Perhaps he would never come to see him and had run off home forever, scared and angry because Ataya was exactly what he was.
Ataya told himself he did not care. He repeated it, over and over in his head and half as many times aloud until he almost believed it because he wanted to believe it. He didn’t like feeling hurt, and it was much, much easier to not care at all than it was to be upset. Perhaps, if he practiced, he would get better at it. In the meantime, repetition was his best method, and magic his best distraction.
Upon arrival under the gnarled tree of his practice location and in the gradually chilling gusts of mid-autumn, he began work on his newest focus: killing beetles, and attempting to make them twitch afterwards. Far more interesting than Dysarrin.
Far more.
Ataya gave muted, whining grumbles as he poured dark, coiling magic into the carcass of something the size of his pinky tip.
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Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 7:16 am
There was probably nothing that constituted a more wasteful use of time than sulking. Surely he could find something better to do than mope around, glaring at his fellow tribesmen as if they'd offended him in some way. Which, in his defense, they had. No one wanted their thoughts to be perpetually besieged by negativity and remorse, and, worst of all, the dreaded 'what if?' Dysarrin knew this. He knew he didn't need Ataya as a source of enjoyment and adventure in his life. There were other things he could do. Plenty of other things. Rocks to flip and trees to climb and birds to chase.
But what if everything his family told him of purebloods was wrong? Golden Pet had been scared of him. Of course, she'd watched the rest of her family be slaughtered, so maybe that wasn't her fault. Those other two, Detraeus and Araceli, they'd leaned against each other and hugged each other, and they didn't seem particularly hateful of one another.
And what if Ataya really was their son and they'd actually mated and moved out here to be away from everyone else? That was pretty sad. There were just four of them in their tiny little city, not like the large, protective, loud family Dysarrin had. As far as he knew, Ataya had never lied to him, and this seemed like too extensive a trickery for a tiny purebl- a tiny Ataya to come up with.
What if he went back to Ataya's spot? Would Ataya even be there? He'd always made it sound like he was there long before Dys started showing up, but it was hard to imagine him sitting there being alone and doing... What? Probably not what he'd done with Dysarrin.
And on the off chance all of this was true, and there really were two random purebloods living out in the middle of nowhere with their two hybrid offspring, and the spot really did belong to Ataya, and he really had been going there expecting to see Dys every day, and then all of a sudden Dysarrin stopped showing up, and left his poor scrawny pet all by himself, what if Ataya was mad at him for it?
It was a lot of 'ifs.'
But as Dys lay strewn across the top of the wall that separated his clan from everything else, scowling down the side of it and towards the trail that led to 'the spot,' he decided that even if it was all a great farce, he hadn't actually been hurt from it.
He had his suspicions regarding the two strange, wrong purebloods, but he'd never seen or smelled them in the spot. Just Ataya. And Akara once. So if he wanted to go down there, just to check and see if his pet really had come back, even after the several day span in which Dys chose to ignore him, that wouldn't hurt anything, right?
Just to check.
Not to stay.
He slid down the side of the crag that would take him off of his own territory. He picked his way through rock, dirt and scant brush more slowly than usual. Obviously not out of fear or trepidation or concern or anything of the sort.
When he caught wind of soft hisses and whines and grumbles that he could positively define as Ataya, he should've turned back. He'd checked. Mission accomplished. Time to go home and- And what? Maybe sulk a little more? So wasteful. Or he could see what Ataya did in his spot without him. Just to be sure it wasn't anything too unscrupulous or endangering to his life.
Yeah.
Ataya hadn't done anything wrong. He didn't deserve to die out here by the claws of some vicious predator while he unwittingly did... things with books. Boring things with books. And magic. And whatever else he was playing with that Dys couldn't precisely make out. Hn.
Poor Ataya. He couldn't have real adventures by himself. He was just stuck here in this spot, alone. Very disheartening.
Dysarrin let out a muted grumble, his wings coiling out behind him and flickering as he crawled up behind the smaller boy and muttered out, "You so sad, Ataya."
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Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 7:37 am
Ataya squawked.
Used to having Dysarrin already present when he arrived — and very unused to being approached from behind by quiet entities intent on stalking him and taking shameless advantage of his distraction — Ataya had assumed that when he found the place empty, Dysarrin was not coming. Thus, at Dysarrin’s voice to the contrary, Ataya nearly fell on his face in his startlement. Overrun in his surprise, his magic, too, bubbled up and over, effectively frying his beetle ‘project’ and leaving it a smokey husk as Ata scrambled backwards across the dirt. After regaining his composure, he narrowed his eyes.
“I’m not sad,” he quipped, remembering belatedly to notch his chin up a fraction and not look immediately pleased or relieved that Dysarrin had shown up after all. He had to know that he had been bad first and look suitably repentant. Then maybe Ataya could forgive him. “I’m mad at you, and playing by myself. Are you sure you even want to play with a hybrid? Or am I too wrong for you?”
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Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 7:59 am
Dysarrin didn't try to conceal his hum of amusement, followed by a low, reverberating chortle, that slipped from his throat at Ataya's surprise. Whatever the younger boy had been playing with smoked behind him, and Dys scooted around to peer at it. He looked down at the blackened outer shell of the creature Ataya had been playing with, a frown creasing across his face as Ataya informed him it wasn't sad. He was clearly blind and misguided. A flick of his fingers right to the husk and it disintegrated into a small puff of ash. Dys turned skeptical eyes back up to his companion. "Pretty sad," he informed Ataya remorselessly. Mostly because Ata thought he could replace their adventures and explorations with- A sharp flap of his wings had the beetle's ashes scattering. -this thing.
Even if Ataya was mad (which he couldn't be too much, considering he was still in the spot), this was no way to show it. He could at least look like he was enjoying himself, instead of being grumbly and whiny and playing with dead bugs. Dead bugs were not friends. "Wanted to check on you," he told Ataya with a shrug. "Still like to play with you, even if you are wrong."
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Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:11 am
“I’m not wrong,” Ataya snapped.
Part of his heart hopped at the portion where Dysarrin admitted he still wanted to play with him, and that portion was almost tempted to let the subject drop in favor of pretending nothing had happened and playing like before. Almost. Pride, however, and a refusal to be only some second best thing to Dysarrin however ridiculously unfair the other hybrid boy’s assumptions were, made him stand his ground, picking up his book and holding it tight to his chest as he took a half step back from Dys.
“You’re wrong. If I’m wrong, you’re a hundred times as wrong. I bet your parents aren’t even purebloods. You probably don’t even have one pureblood parent. If you even have parents — you never did tell me where you were from. Maybe I don’t want to play with you until you admit I’m not wrong…” He frowned, eyeing Dys as his gut took a fearful lurch at the thought that the wild boy might not understand and might actually take the words as serious incentive to leave. He forced out a verbal consolation prize: “Thank you for…checking on me. I guess. Though I don't need it. I can take care of myself, you know.”
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Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:34 am
Dysarrin groaned in annoyance as he took up a post next to where Ataya had fried a dead beetle as a substitute for the enjoyment of his company. Clearly depraved boy. Sad, depraved boy edging off on another rant at him. Dys tipped his head back, finding interest in the patterns of light that fell through the tree leaves as he waited for Ataya to finish up his tirade. He didn't know what they were. Maybe just wrong because his parents were different. Maybe just wrong because he shouldn't be here. Still wrong, though. Still wrong.
And for whatever reason, Ataya didn't like wrong things. Dysarrin hadn't imagined he'd be that impressed by them either. But if Ataya- and his sister -were wrong, they must be okay. Wrong must not be bad. "Like wrong," he told Ataya as his green orbs wandered back to earth. On the other hand, Ataya didn't like wrong. He even thought Dys was wrong, ludicrous as that was. His wings dipped, skimming the ground and flattening to the earth. "But you don't, huh?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 8:54 am
Ataya blinked.
Dysarrin liked his being ‘wrong?’ Or liked being wrong himself. Or liked the way Ataya was wrong? Or liked doing wrong things. Or…?
It was confusing, to say the least, to try to make ‘wrong’ compatible with ‘likeable.’ He had taken Dysarrin’s looks and accusations as slurs. As a sign that Dysarrin liked him less. That he wouldn’t want to be around him anymore or, if he did, it would be a compromise. Something less appealing than he was before. Everyone everywhere disliked his wrongness. So, he had set out not to be wrong and prove to them that he wasn’t. The idea that someone could like his wrong, however, exactly as he was, accept it, and find positives in it was…
New.
And insanely appealing on a level Ataya wasn’t quite sure how to grapple with quite yet. He liked the idea that everything everyone else found fault in, whatever it was, was still good. As Dysarrin’s wings dipped, Ataya winced and shook his head, stepping forward again.
“No. No,” he said. “I…I like it. If we’re both wrong, then maybe it’s okay…we can be wrong together? And if you like it…then I don’t mind it. I just thought…” He nibbled at his lip, shifting his weight uncertainly. “I didn’t want you to…” He quieted his voice, frustrated by the admittance to come, but convinced it was necessary for clarity, “…not like me anymore. I’m going to be a hybrid forever, you know, so…if you like that, then I don’t care if it’s wrong. We can be friends.”
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Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 9:24 am
Dys hummed softly, tipping his head in confusion as his brows furrowed at Ataya's words. Now he did like wrong? Then what was he throwing such a fuss about? All that upset over... Over thinking Dys wouldn't like him anymore? His chest puffed up defensively. He wasn't a liar, like some people. Anything he'd ever said was still true. "Already told you like to play with you," Dysarrin reminded him in a low grunt. "So if you still play the same, that's okay. If not, might not wanna play, anymore."
It was still weird for a hybrid to have a hybrid pet, but weird wasn't bad either. Just different. Unique. A once-ever type of deal. So it was important that nothing bad happened to Ataya. He said he could care for himself, but that was unlikely. If he was eaten or killed or maimed or otherwise ruined, he'd probably never get another.
This one was important. Definitely better than Golden Pet.
"Okay," Dys agreed, sidling towards Ataya's side with a nod and fanning his wings. "I like you better now. We can be friends."
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