FSE

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How can it be constant? When Damien breathes, he can feel the pauses too clearly. Breathing isn't constant, when you think about it. It's full of starts and stops, and shuddering gasps, and sighs, and increases and decreases in tempo... he can hear it. And Siber just said there were pauses, didn't he? "How is it constant?" he demands in his childish voice. His back hurts. He never thinks about it for long because it never hurts for long and there's nothing wrong with the scar when he looks, but it hurts, and it makes him furrow his brow.

"It's... think about a bird."

"A bird doesn't breathe any differently."

"Birds are always breathing in... kind of. They breathe in, and when they breathe out, they breathe the first breath deeper, and then that starts to go out when they breathe in again, and then finishes when they breathe out again. They have... two... sets of lungs... almost." He rolls his paws, trying to explain. When Siber is not being intentionally enigmatic, he is actually a much less stolid force than his acting makes him seem.

"It's still not constant," Damien snorts wryly, thinking he has caught his teacher. "They still stop and start over and over again. It's not constant. I don't know what you want me to do."

"Plants. Plants always breathe."

"How can I breathe like a plant? That's not fair."

"Breathe like a plant."

"I can't!"

"Breathe like a plant."

"That's impossible." He doesn't even consider stomping away, though it does occur to him that other children might have at this point. It's just not in his nature.

Siber stares at him, and seems, like anyone with a past, almost to stare through him. "Human skin is responsible for about ten percent of excretion. Whether you know it or not, you are always breathing like a plant."

"Then why should I have to try?"

"Because you don't know you are."

"Then why is it important?"

"Because you don't know what you are, demon." He only stares.

Damien stares at the creek in front of him and it doesn't stare back. Tetra's lifeless body, laid over with vines and grasses and branches, lies on its back to the side. It's morning. Damien is still cold, though he doesn't shiver. The creek is choked with the same grasses and vines that cocoon Tetra. It has risen up over its banks to find a way around, and haplessly dribbles through the surrounding foliage. Damien's back pounds at his consciousness like Thor's hammer, full of biting electricity that makes him twitch with every heartbeat. His gaze is impassive.

In the tangles of vegetation that keep the creek from following its normal path are no fewer than three black cloaks and beak-like metal helmets. Pieces of iron claws are strewn about, as well as a steel spear and two scimitars. Everything is rusted and torn through. The rising sun makes the water laugh, but it's nervous laughter under Damien's stony gaze, and all but silent near the graves of the Black.

Siber and Tatrix are still not there. Damien doesn't understand. They always arrive with the Black. They always kill the Black and take them away. But now, now that the Black has killed Tetra, they're gone. The wind blows halfheartedly, the trees anxiously sway in their places, and the bubbling of the stream is stunted and sick. Everything that once loved Damien withers under his hatred.

He finally awakens. He has been standing, yes, with his eyes open, yes, with his arms crossed, yes, but he has been stunned and hardly alive. Now, he blinks once and with hardly a second's warning, spreads his feet and howls.

The sound is damped against the trees and skitters helplessly along the water. It chokes out of his throat, incomplete, while he stares at Tetra. He has not examined her body. He only knows that the last thing he saw was its piercing, and now what he sees is that it is covered. He does not want to verify her death. So he sends his thoughts into the earth, listening to it, and tries to summon its voice into his own lungs.

His desperate fury aids him. The rocks underneath the soil vibrate themselves into a sounding board. He watches the grass flatten into a reflective sheet at the behest of the wind - no - he feels it bow down as he asks it for help. The bark of the trees shudders, releasing loam that would otherwise steal the sound. And Damien howls.

Hordes echo out of his voice. From the earth, golems of sound amplify the deepest registers of his bellow. The wind lifts up winged chariots of his alto and soprano, buffeting them out to the landscape and beyond. The forest ricochets the middling pitches around and out of it, gossiping with dryads and elves and flowing through to seek out every nook and cranny that a sound can reach. The entire world shimmers and explodes to let his call find the ears it needs.

And yet... after long minutes of waiting... there is nothing. Long minutes pass, and the only sound that comes is the resumption of the birds' singing. The world has given him his time of grief, and moves on. The wind finally blows again, whispering gentle condolences even as it tells this news every direction that it flows. There is empathy, but time cannot stop for the death of a girl.

Behind him, he hears the sounds of footsteps. He is wet and shivering in the caress of the morning dew without a shirt or shoes or socks and a fox girl is lying blanketed nearby him and the corpses of a trio of Black are collapsed under green. But... he can't care. Siber always tells him he lives in the world. He sees the looks exchanged. They want to make Damien a wolf-man. Not that Damien minds terribly much. Humans have never granted him much life or comfort. Damien is a spirit. An innocent. He has only just begun to become something else.

A man he knows looks at him out of sapphire eyes from under a sort of wreath of black hair. This man's name is Glen. "Damien..." he begins. His eyes move around the entire scene. Other men spread out around the area, with guns and machetes. "What happened?" he asks, kneeling.

The boy has known of Glen. Glen is always around, in the background. He's a scientist who commutes to work every day. He's strange and awkward. His physique is... well, remarkably similar to Siber's. He has pale skin instead of fur, but his muscles are lean, if not as fully developed, and his gaze is deep, although it does not have the same obvious lack of playfulness that Siber's does. The man is dressed in blue jeans and a black tee shirt, both of which hang loosely on him, even though he is well over thirty. "We heard you," he says in his light baritone. "That was an incredible sound. What happened?"

Glen is always around. That is his thing. Everyone knows who he is, and has spoken to him. He is polite and friendly, appearing on the fringe of every major gathering, but aloof. He has always known of Damien, and watched him. He knows the boy is strange, though he has never approached. Damien feels the same. His granite meets Glen's sapphire, and the boy realizes Siber and Tatrix and Tetra aren't there, and they might never be again. He trembles, and his gaze narrows, and he walks towards Glen as though he has been starved. It almost occurs to him that he feels he has not slept tonight. He feels like he can trust Glen just like he can trust Siber. Why didn't he think of this before? Why didn't he tell Glen about the wolf-men? Why should he have? He hasn't thought about humans. He has thrust himself into the world of wolf-men and ignored the place he came from. He has ignored... he has ignored his mother! He panics. His mother will want her breakfast soon. It's morning. He's never spent all night out. His breath quickens. He buries his face in Glen's shoulder, and tells him everything.

Other men overhear. Damien is tired, and has forgotten what Tatrix has taught him about sound. Tetra's body is taken to Glen's house to be examined, along with the overgrown vegetation. The Black are burned and their metal is melted down. Damien's scar is found and he is given local anesthetics when he shouts from the pain. Through the whimpering nebula of being drugged, he mumbles answers about the wolf-men. He is taken to his mother, who snorts at him and tells them to take him to the hospital.

Within the week, scouting parties have delved into the woods.

"Why did you trust them?"

"Tell them not to fight. Those ones don't want to fight."

"They could have lied to you."

"They taught me how to sing and dance."

"Why?"

"Because... because..."

"You talked about a cave. Where's the cave?"

"Siber flew me there..."

"I'll take you there, Damien."

"Glen..."

"Why are they here?"

"Scout- I think they're scouting."

"For what?"

"The Black."

"No one scouts for the Black, Damien. You know that." He has known that. But that doesn't mean anything.

"They saved me."

"... then they were scouting for you, Damien."

"... Glen?"

"Let me take you to the cave. Tomorrow."

"Is Tetra safe?"

"The girl is hurt. She has a big scar and she may not wake up for a while."

"A coma is better than dead, I guess."

"She was dead?"

"..."

"Was she dead, Damien?"

"I don't know."

"A Black spear went through her, didn't it?"

"..."

"She's alive after being stabbed with a Black spear. Through her spine."

"..."

"We found blue wolf fur on the Black cloaks."

"Siber?"

"They will want her back. We should take her back." Energy crackles through his voice. Damien's eyes are half-open and see he's grinning. "Let's go to the cave, Damien. Tomorrow. Sleep. Yes." There is a moment of very tense silence. "Yes!"