MINE IS THE FURY - 2
see Mine is the Fury - 1 -
Cold darkness.
Scorching pain.
This was what his mind opened to as he lay in the skull. He stood in the pain and darkness, unable to hear or see the terrible light that had seared his eyes so thoroughly. Inside the egg he had been safe. Why on Earth had he left it? Perhaps this new shell would suffice.
'Refer to me as a shell again, girl, and we will not get along,' came the tart voice from the darkness. It was rich and sounded wonderfully like the minute shifts of earth resettling.
'I boy,' said the child, turning around. Before him stood an enormous, imposing greater Guyi, resting both his powerful arms on the cracked end of his club before him.
'I do so hate to be the one to point out the obvious, but you are a girl child. All soft and squishy from the egg with no useful skull of her own. I can only fathom that is why you have thrust your fleshy little head in and disturbed my solitude so?' he demanded.
The child just looked up at the ancestor, not understanding the eccentric syntax. They did not sound like the ones spoken by the Guyi, heard as he grew in his egg.
'Boy,' he said again, pointing to himself to make sure the ancestor understood.
The greater ancestor rested his paw over the hard carapace of his own head, sighing with great forebearance.
'Child, you've taken my dear old skull as your own, so we will be together for some time. I thought I had buried myself deep enough that I wouldn't have to get into this with anyone. I was not like the other Guyi in life and I will not direct you down the path well trod. You have consigned yourself to a life of idiosyncrasy, eccentricity and extreme levels of ... hmm ... how should I phrase this? You see this club? Or the mental projection of it I brought with me into death?'
The child nodded. It seemed to be what his ancestor wanted.
'This was a Blastoise's ulna. I pull off its arm and beat it to death with it. Because I am, or was, exceptional at those arts martial and anatomical.'
'Oh.'
''Oh' is not really the response I wanted, but when you have a firmer grasp of vocabulary, perhaps you will start to appreciate that I am a warrior scholar to fear and respect. And you have, for reasons surpassing understanding, picked your greasy wee way over here to wear me like a jaunty hat. You will likely regret this decision but it is made and even I cannot condemn this particular custom of our kind.'
The child just stared up at him.
'You ... don't seem to be reviving out of the bonding trance. I don't remember mine taking this long. Oh ... wonderful. We're unconscious.' The ancestor put his hands on his hips and stared down at the child. One of his eye sockets was empty, a gnarled mess of cracked bone and lumpy scar tissue. There were burn scars and scorches on his skull. Finally he sat down so the child could see him more easily. He offered out his paws.
The child took them instinctively.
The ancestor squeezed the tiny, bleeding paws in his own.
'You have clearly suffered to come and join me. I cannot imagine what drove you to such lunacy but I think I admire it. I will name you now. You are Fernyon. I am Jyrshyrliang. But I suppose you could contort my wonderful name to be just Jyr.'
Fern blinked at the ancestor, nodding gravely as if he understood. But his name, Fernyon, was already sinking into his bones, becoming a part of him. He smiled.
_'Jyr. Fern. Fern, boy,'_he said.
Jyr patted his tiny head in his huge paw.
'We will get along splendidly. You are quite different straight from the shell. Very well, you are a boy. Certainly I've never heard of a girl wearing a male's skull, nor the reverse, so perhaps, regardless of what is happening down there,' he waved his paw in the general direction of Fern's nethers, 'up here with me you are male. Now, since you are conveniently unconscious and not going anywhere, let's work on your diction, shall we?'
'Boy?'
' ... yes, Fern. You are a boy.'