It is the bittersweets you didn’t see grow,
And you must flourish your cactus’s,
Have your oleanders for tulips grow in the roots.
Screaming.
He was starving, fumbling through the towering metal-and mud pillars, chasing the small things of pale cream. He never heard their screams of a language once known, but forgotten in haze, constant feeling of starvation and the flesh between teeth driving him forward.
He tore them apart, every last one he could smell, hear and find, splats of gory red that patterned the duller grey and brown walls.
Their wails never stop unless he gripped the neck between his jaws and crunched, or dragged it out to watch them splutter that red liquid from their lips as teeth gorged themselves on the organs.
He was starving…. And then…. After the hunt and screams and blood…. He was no longer hungry… and William blinked.
The first thing William felt was exhaustion. And then he felt pain. It was bearable now, thankfully, nothing but that same protesting ache. He winced, and then his eyes fluttered again, and he looked down.
And wished he hadn’t.
Williams' eyes widened as he scrambled back, away from the arm. It was a gorey mess, with literal bite marks in it, the limb torn clean off the body it belonged to. Blood oozed from it, the ligaments torn from sharp teeth and the body… which was only three steps away from the arm. William covered his mouth in panic, staring right as the limp body of a Lunic- one from his village, a Being HE KNEW, dead and unmoving, eyes glassily staring at him. Blood pooled around them, chest torn apart to show bloody ribs and the intestines that were shredded and half pulled out.
Williams' breathing was rapid, and he wetted his lips with his tongue, an anxious tick. And then he registered the taste of iron in his mouth. William froze, pulling his hand from his mouth and looked at it, a breathless terrified whimper sounding at the blood that cover not just that hand, but his over hand to-
What had happened?????
What- what had he done????
His heart was beating rapidly, he could practically hear it in his ears, and he shimmed away from the horrid sight, only for something on his back to shift, and a long purple and grey thing landed beside him. He didn’t get a good look at it before he shrieked, panicked by it, and fumbled and scrambled up and away from it.
Looking down at himself showed the blood, thick, gunky and red, the colour of crimson and William gagged on the taste and smell, so many different, new, scary things coming and computing in his dazed, muddled mind. He buckled before he could start running, wanting to get out and away from this because, because-
Meat between teeth, the spurts of blood and the shrieks of pain that came with. The blankness of his mind- his eyes, plural for not two but four, glaring for the next thing he could hunt.
He had killed them.
All of them.
Running was odd, his body unbalanced, like there was a weight tether to the middle of his back dragging behind him. Something was so, so different, and it scared him. He scrambled on shaken legs, grappling for balance and failing horribly, dashing out of pillars of metal towers of the houses reaching for the skies. His feet tripped up randomly, sending him fumbling for balance, scrambling out into the fields and then into the woodlands.
It only felt like he took a couple steps before his legs were kicked out from under him, and William trotted forward before his chin slammed into the earth. And it didn't stop there- he was set rolling down a scope, bumping along with enough spin to make him sick to the stomach. His elbow bashed here, his head hitting something hard, something scratching his back and his legs, the weird pull of the new-scary-things on his back, before he rolled to a slow stop, hiccupping and wheezing small gasps of pain.
Everything ached.
He closed his eyes with a whined, curling his body up, feeling the sore-ow-new-maybe-scary-things-?- move and shift, tucking against him in an odd… hug? William cracked an eye open, the word dazed and blurred with his tears, quietly staring down at the odd limb like thing curled around him. It.. was purple with grey-black hints on the sides, covered in hairs and… blood.. William thickly swallowed, softly brushing the limb and jerked when he felt it.
Oh…. That was a part of him wasn't it? William didn’t know if he would cry or start laughing hysterically, sniffling as he tried to see if he could move it, shakily making it sway around, moving the smaller tip with the two little claws back and forth in jerky movements. Okay… it looked like the spider limbs that would belong to an Arachne- from what he remembered of his Species study…
He never knew his father. An unspoken curse of a sort, no one in the village talked about him- although William's purple hair brought the suspicious whispers that William wasn’t pure blooded- but a hybrid. His father, that only now William knew, after the bloodshed he caused, after the bloodshed that could have been stopped, if they had known, if they had followed the rules set for one gene presenting hybrids- he wasn’t a Lunic.
William's father was an Arachne- a half humanoid, half spider Being.
William quietly lifted his head, finally calming enough to hear the trickle of water, and he had rolled to the base of a mellow stream. Good… he had to wash off the blood. He didn't want any Night Terrors on him. His mind was weirdly calm, and William realised he had gone into shock.
Moving was a pain.
His back ached as much as his newly bruising joints did, and call him pathetic, but William crawled to the stream, dragging himself over the sun baked autumn fallen leaves. He was really starting to hate autumn. The water was nice and cool, and William exhaled in soft relief, shimmering around to enjoy the cool temperature and the freedom of the wet honey like crimson chains of blood that trapped him. A small twidge in his mind scowled him for getting his clothes and shoes wet- but William ignored it completely. The quiet trinkle filled his mind, and William rested his head on his arms scrubbing off the gore, trying not to look at it for too long.
His jumper- in tatters and split down the middle on the back, fluttered in the slow weak drag of current, his new limbs oddly shifting to fold up and snuggle against William's sides and William began to truly come to terms with his situation.
He had wiped his village off the map….
Not only that but he didn’t know if these new urges could be controlled- was he safe for other Beings to be around????
He had no home now…
So…
What would he do now??
And- Where would he go?
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