Update Note: I am no longer working on this story, or the concept it encompasses, and will be considering it as archived. The story is staying here on the site, for others to read, but for those who have left critiques, while I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and suggestions, I will only be taking them into consideration for my active works, as well as future stories.
Hello readers. This short story is my entry for the Writers Anonymous One-Word Prompt Challenge, and it is a crossover of Kid Icarus and Dumbo, roughly retelling the iconic "Baby Mine" scene. The word I was given as a prompt was "hold".
I would've liked to have called this story "Baby Mine", but because the Challenge requires the use of the prompt word as, or in the title, I had to use part of a line from the song as a title: "What they'd give just for the right to hold you."
Have a good read, and a good day, people!
Pit gazed dully at the ground as he sat outside one of the tents while his companion, an undersized Savannah cat named Timothy, bathed him with a small brush and a bar of soap, using the boy's tears to work up the lather. The boy let his enormous wings droop down to the ground, dimly aware of the dirt that clung to them as they rested on the ground at his sides.
His wings looked brown, but they weren't; it was a build up of grime and debris that covered them. Considering how huge they were, they were prone to picking up dust and filth, and he'd gone for so long without having them groomed that they had become a ragged mess, their feathers all amiss and damaged from getting caught on things and from being pulled on, resembling the wings of some decrepit vulture.
Timothy climbed up onto the angel's shoulders and started scrubbing his head, as Pit sniffed and wiped away his tears, his chest heavy with emotion. All he'd known for the few years he'd been around was isolation and cruelty. As much as he was internally grateful for the small feline's company, it was barely a light in the dark to him, easily crushed by the misery of his job and the feeling of being unwanted when the other angels no longer considered him one of them. It was only because he had oversized wings that things were like this, and he hated it.
Timothy picked up on the boy's depressed mood as he worked on the young angel's hair, and made some effort at trying to lift his spirits, but it had little effect. He even tried presenting the boy with a fish (a common snack and reward among circus angels), but Pit ignored it, and started fumbling with a bunch of grass, pulling individual blades out, and letting them float down to the ground.
That was when it occurred on him.
"Oh, I forgot to tell ya!"
He slid down Pit's arm and stood in front of him, propped up on the angel's lap.
"We're gonna go see your mother! I made an appointment for ya. Didn't I tell ya? Just like the other angels forgot. C'mon, get your hat."
Lightened by the thought of his mother, he grabbed his laurel crown and swiftly put it on as he got up and headed for an open area where the circus had been set up, draping his wings over his shoulders in an effort to keep them from dragging on the ground.
"Right over there..." Timothy remarked.
A wagon encircled by a rope fence stood there, with signs all around it that said "Danger" and "Keep Out". The boy simply ducked under the rope, and went up to the door, under the window in it. Timothy climbed up onto a board that held the door shut, and called in, where a young female angel sat in the corner, chained up.
"Mrs. Amber...?"
She looked at the voice calling her name.
"Someone to see ya..."
To her surprise, she saw a little hand reach up to the frame of the window in the door. She got to her feet and started heading for the window, but she could not get close enough to really look down through it, for the chain attached to her neck kept her from doing so. But she simply reached her arm through the bars, and down to her son.
Pit watched as she extended her arm down to him, trying to find him when her hand brushed against his forehead, and she started petting him, the boy hugging her as she stroked his cheek. She made some effort at putting her arm around him as he nuzzled her, wiping away the tears that started trickling down his face.
After a moment, she put her other arm through, and picked him up, pulling him up to the window, where she made the best attempt at hugging him. He did the same, leaning through the bars and resting his head on her shoulder as he started crying, his tears landing on her arm.
In spite of how badly life had gone for him, it all was just put behind him in that moment of being with his mother whom he thought he would never see again after he was separated from her. It pulled at his heart to realize she was still close by. Amber felt the same way, after years spent locked up in that wagon, mistaken for having gone mad in the process of defending her son. She wanted to hold him in her arms and cradle him, but she couldn't. Not that she really cared, or Pit. Both were content with this moment of bliss, setting free their emotions and hardships as they embraced one another, after being apart for so long.
Eventually, Pit had to say good-bye to her, when Timothy tugged on the angel's tunic, and after quickly nuzzling her face, he leaned back out the window, as Amber picked him up and set him down on the ground. He nuzzled her arm as she stroked his wings, plucking out a mangled feather, before he started to walk away, reaching out and holding her hand before he let go, looking back and waving good-bye as he headed away from her.
She continued to wave to him out the window in the door for a second, before she pulled her arm back in and went to the window in the side of the wagon, until he disappeared into the distance.