-1Selendrile scanned the assortment of little heads that bobbed back and forth, racing and dodging each other around him, and he was not surprised to find that one of them was missing. This was a frequent occurrence around supper time, with the sun just barely gone from the sky and Alys ushering their children to their seats and putting out the food. Busy with her cooking and tending to their every little demanding need - "Kalvin, please, you can play with it later," "For the love of God, Eva, you can't eat covered in mud" -, she was slower on the uptake than he was. It wasn't until they were all in their seats and began to eat that she saw that one seat was empty, to which she heaved an exasperated sigh.
"I'll find him," Selendrile said. "Eat. He can't be far."
Selendrile treaded silently through the wooded area surrounding their home, walking along trails that had been beaten down by mostly his and his family's feet. He knew it well, and in many forms - he had flown through the branches and crawled along the rich dirt ground - but he never got tired of the smell of the falling leaves. The cool evening air tickled his senses and he breathed deeply as he began his search for his wayward and easily distracted boy, Petyr.
Of course, the boy knew when supper was, and it was not that he ignored the evening rituals. More likely, he got so involved with whatever had captured his rabid fascination at the moment - the movements of the worms in the dirt, or the way pebbles dropped into a stream, for example, were investigations that Selendrile had found his youngest child enrapt in - that he had not noticed the setting of the sun or the hooting of the owls that echoed through the woods.
Petyr's curiosity and desire for knowledge was insatiable. As an infant, he was frighteningly quiet, but his eyes were always darting back and forth and his hands grabbing at whatever he could reach, trying to absorb as much information as possible. Now, at the age of five, he had already taught himself how to read and was tearing through Selendrile's collection of literature at a startling pace. But for all his inquisitiveness, he was not a difficult child. He did not pester his parents with questions constantly, he was happy to look for answers on his own. The strange observant quietness was still there - it was as chilling as it was peaceful.
And so, Selendrile was yet again searching the branches for a little boy perched in the depths of a tree, listening for the rustle of his clothes against the leaves, in the hovering blue of a young night. He did not mind it so much, really.
He was in the thick of the woods, a little while away from a trail frequented by hunters and travelers and halfway from the point where he often found Petyr, when he caught the scent of blood. He stiffened and paused, stilling his breathing to a minimal so that he could listen more closely. He was not the only one who had picked it up - he could hear the huffing breath of wolves circling and pacing a ways in the distance. Circling, but not drawing any closer, and moaning in frustration. Selendrile turned and quickly headed towards the direction of the trail.
The scent was powerful, he realized as he got closer. A considerable amount of blood had been spilled, and it was attracting carnivores from all over the woods, who seemed to be fighting their instinctual urges to get just a bit closer, a little at a time. The forest was alive with anxiety, and it was seeping into the young dragon, whose body was conflicted between the lust for blood and cold hard fear that weighed heavily in his stomach.
As he walked as quickly as possible through the woods, animals that had gathered in curiosity darted out of his path as he drew near. The sounds of scuttling paws and soft coos and howls dissipated more and more until he reached the dirt road, where there was nothing but growls of the brave wolves not too far away. And there, about twenty feet down the road was his boy, kneeling, blood streaking across his pearl-white cheeks and through his clothes, hints of it shown in the moonlight in his dark brown hair. Before him was a man that Selendrile did not recognized, opened from his collar to his navel. His flesh had pulled back, like the spread wings of a bird, and his organs were spread out around him messily. His ribcage, Selendrile saw as he drew closer, was cracked crudely and pried open.
"Hello, Papa," said Petyr, as he looked up at his father, matching sets of purple eyes meeting one another. His little hands were still occupied with the man's insides.
Selendrile now stood staring down at his son and the dead man.
Petyr looked up at the night sky that he could see through the trees. "Oh," he said softly. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was so late."
"Petyr," said Selendrile, in his mind he saw his son's little fingers against the man's white bones, "what are you doing?"
The was a long pause as the boy looked down at his handiwork and then back up at his father. "I wanted to see how he worked."
Selendrile could only stare for a moment. "What?"
"He was a theif," Petyr explained. "I saw him coming down the trial. He robbed a man a while back. Then he saw me."
"You killed him?" Selendrile asked. The steadiness in his own voice surprised him.
"He would have killed me," Petyr said evenly. He looked down at the gaping red cavity that was once a man, dropping whatever piece of him was still in his hands without any sense of self-consciousness. "He was not so good with his knife as he thought he was." A wolf howled not too far away.
"We need to go now, Petyr," said Selendrile.
Petyr seemed distressed at a moment, not wanting to leave his specimen behind to be eaten by the wolves, but when he looked up at his father again his expression changed. "Papa, are you angry with me?"
Selendrile took a deep breath. "No, Petyr," he said, "I'm not angry with you. Come." He held out his hand. After a moment, the little boy gave him his blood stained hand, and in one swift movement, Selendrile swung Petyr onto his hip and carried him as they raced back through the woods together. The sound of the wolves moving in on the abandoned theif clear in their ears.
It didn't take Petyr long to realize they were not heading back home.
"Where are we going?"
"To get you cleaned up. You can't go into the house like that," said his father. "I don't know if there's much we can do about your clothes, but we'll do our best."
"Alright," agreed Petyr.
Selendrile took Petyr to the neighboring lake, which they all used to bathe or swim, but he was not too worried of being stumbled upon at this hour. He stripped Petyr of his clothes and pushed him into the cold water, but the boy did not shiver, merely obediently scrubbed at his hair and skin while Selendrile washed his own hands and surveyed the ruined clothes.
"How do I look?" Petyr asked after several minutes of bathing. Selendrile gestured for him to come closer, and Petyr obeyed. Selendrile ran his fingers through his son's hair, looking for stickiness, and surveyed his small body, his eyes rather obviously avoidant of meeting his.
"Did I do something wrong, Papa?"
Petyr's father was silent for a long moment, his face unreadable, but undoubtedly concentrated. He opened his mouth for a moment, but nothing came out.
"He was going to kill me, Papa. Once he was dead, I didn't think..." Selendrile finally looked at him. "You believe me, don't you?"
"Of course I do," Selendrile said, barely a whisper.
The stared at eachother for a long while. "Then what's wrong?"
Selendrile paused for a moment, and then said, "Peter, tell me. Cutting a man open like that, to see him on the inside... That didn't bother you at all?"
"Why should it?" When his father didn't respond he said, "No. It didn't bother me."
Selendrile nodded to himself, and then picked up the boy's clothes and tossed them in the lake. "We'll say you were swimming. Wring those out and put them on. We'll get rid of them afterwards."
"Won't Mama be angry?"
"That's already a given, my love," Selendrile said, offering Petyr that smallest of smiles, and Petyr smiled in much the same way in return and began to get dressed.
"Listen," said Selendrile as they began to walk back, the water from Petyr's pants dripping into his shoes and making soft squelching noises every other step. "Don't tell your brothers and sisters about this. I will deal with your mother."
"You're going to tell her then?"
Selendrile tried not to let his fatigue show in is voice. "I don't really know," but when he thought about it he could not imagine lying to Alys about this.
"It'll frighten her," said Petyr.
"Yes."
Petyr sighed, much like Alys often did. "Then I'm sorry I did it. I won't do something like that again."
"Good," said Selendrile. "I can't always be cleaning up after your experiments."
"Where the hell have you been?!" was their greeting as they entered, faced with a very irritated looking Alys with her hands on her hips. She looked down at Petyr, the water soaked through his clothes serving as an effective camouflage for the blood stains. "Oh, fo-" she stopped herself from cursing again. She looked up at Selendrile and they stared at each other for a moment before she said, "Go change, Petyr. There's some dinner left over for you. You can have it after."
Once Petyr was gone, Alys stepped forward inquisitively, but Selendrile merely said quietly, "Later." He glanced around the room - their four other children were huddled on the floor playing, but he caught Amelia's eye as she glanced up from the game, and then immediately tucked her blonde head down conspiratorially. "Once they're all in bed."
If this annoyed her, Alys didn't show it. "Fine," she said, with her arms crossed. She turned away to get Petyr his supper, and Selendrile, finally able to relax, sat down and watched his children play.
It was a strange moment, as he watched the firelight glint off of Alys dark hair as it fell across her face, which had gone stern with concentration. The expression was disturbingly familiar. Her eyes were shadowed from him, and inwardly he was thankful. After a long moment, she sighed as she lifted her head, and it was a long shaky sound. She turned away and he stood.
"No," she said, holding up her hands, making it clear that he was to keep his distance. Selendrile held himself back, feeling deeply uncomfortable and awkward in doing so, and she walked out into the cool night alone.
The sudden quiet caused horrible thoughts to return to his mind. He had to remind himself that it was not because she blamed him for this that she shrunk away from his comfort. She simply did not like to be touched when she was upset, even if she did blame him. Why shouldn't she? No true human child would do this, would they?
And then the shaky thoughts that bothered him on the way back through the woods, Petyr at his side. Could he reprimand his son for this? It was true, at least in Selendrile's mind, that he had done nothing wrong. A human was no different from any other animal, even his relationship with Alys had not changed his opinion on the matter, and no one would think twice of dissecting an animal. But no way he could spin it in his head could shake how disturbing this evening had been, could take away the image of Alys listening to him in silent horror as he described what he had seen, her eyes widening and her skin growing white.
Something horrible tightened in his chest as he heard the faint sound of Alys beginning to cry. There was a war within him. He wanted to go outside and hold her, drive away her despair and hatred that she held for him and their son, but he could not do it. He was too afraid.
So distracted was he that he did not notice the soft sounds of little feet coming down the stairs, until he turned from the fire to see Petyr, barefooted and in a long night shirt that dwarfed his small frail body.
"Mama's crying," he said. Five years old and he could hear is mother crying down the stairs and outside. No, not human at all.
Selendrile only nodded.
Without another word, Petyr followed the sound outside before Selendrile could stop him. The dragon paused for a moment at the door before he followed his son outside, and in the cool light of the moon he saw them together, holding each other tightly, the little boy wiping his mother's tears away.
Selendrile turned and went back inside, and he could not help but smile to himself at his own error. No, Petyr was no ordinary boy, not just as the child of a human woman, but in any respect, for he already could do so much that his father could not.