Feral Subtleties
By Kat Kire
Disclaimer
I do not, nor will I ever, own PotO.
Claimer
I do own the prose to this.
Summary
During his childhood, Erik often snuck to the forest. Short descriptive one shot about these times.
Author's Note
Don't know what to call this. Came utterly randomly into my head. Also, I know nothing of fox behavior, pardon any mistakes. Artistic license! Kay based, fools.
†
The agile jump to the outside tree came easy now, night air flowing past his face, the stars flying out of the corners of his eyes behind him and leaving streaks of silver light on his - finally! - unmasked cheeks. Then, the lithe flipping down between the branches, half flying half climbing down, like a fanciful kind of animal, hurtling with delicious abandon down to the earthy ground. Almost out of control, but perfectly in control.
His bare feet hit cool earth, welcoming it after so long on the dry and scratchy wooden floorboards of the house. The garden earth was pleasantly moist. The air was cold and scorching. He drank it in, thankful for a respite from the prison of routine that waited indoors.
The little boy felt his way confidently up the garden wall. His hands knew the way by now, were intimately acquainted with each bit of ivy and crag of stone that might assist him in his climb. The skeleton fingers and toes found grips with uncanny ease, and then came the really enjoyable part, that which he looked forward to all day and night.
He flew down, the descent a threatening plunge into a darkness that even his sharp eyes found impenetrable. The joy of falling forever down into what might await. Villagers with pitchforks and knives, as he dreamed about sometimes, might await, or the freedom that he somehow found each night, the dark and woodsy ease.
He knew the villagers were all abed, yet with a sick certainty he was sure that they would come someday and they would kill him. But to a child even a few weeks is forever, and to the boy it hardly mattered. He might die tomorrow, he would still have tonight. But he knew they would come, someday, and thinking of what might some night await him at the end of the fall filled him with hot fear and vomitous dread. He wondered every night, whether this night was that fateful "some night."
On the other side of this garden wall there were no villagers, merely the woods, stretching out, perhaps forever, into the whole of the world. He sometimes fancied that it went on for all of forever, and that he could live his life inside of it. But he knew it was not true. It was only a pretty fancy, something from a magic mirror. An illusion.
The woods were not beautiful, that was why he loved them. The branches were gnarled and the moss came in sickening colors. What straight branches there were formed disconcerting patterns against the black sky, etching onto it a tale or direction in a sinister language no human pen or tongue could master. The boy would lie beneath them for hours, his glowing, deep set eyes examining the sky and trees for hours on hours, until the first hint of sun started to pink the horizon, like a child's spilled paint.
They were not beautiful. Strange fungi draped over branches, making grotesque curtains of furry, unidentifiable things that no human would touch. But the little boy played in them, dashing through them at top speed so that they flapped behind him. He did not seem to care that the fungus was too disgusting for most humans to even glance at.
And in the dark and silence, no one knew that Erik loved something that was not beautiful. Not Marie, not Father Mansart. Not Madeleine. The dark was like a veil between himself and the world. Another mask.
Sometimes, when he was stargazing, the face danced in the dark between the stars and whispered that it was back now that he had taken back the mask. Erik would whisper back, "The dark is my mask. The night is my mask. I am masked." But the face was part of the night and it stayed with him, no matter how he told it that the night was his mask now, that the old one was no longer needed.
Sometimes he would lie still, not moving an eyelash, as foxes scampered about him. He watched the children grow and watched the parents grow old and die. To the last, the children brought food to the old father, who was ancient and decrepit. His fur was ragged white, a revolting yellow in places. His sharp teeth had yellowed, then dulled, then tumbled from his mouth completely, and he was left with gums to eat the food they brought him.
Erik watched familial devotion with an appraising eye. From the first, he wondered what small foxes gained from the assistance they gave to big foxes. While the fox in question might be big, he was weak, a bony old mummy with eyes that had filmed over with resignation to death. They had nothing to gain from him, and even if they had, they might have retrieved it just as well by force. The boy did not understand it. But then he thought of a dying Sasha, a dying Marie, even a dying father Mansart or Madeleine. There was a flash of understanding, a sudden moment where everything was clear and tangible and real, and then, just as quickly, it dissapated into the cold air of the forest.
As he had watched the family grow and die, lying as silently as a piece of forest, he felt two hind legs on his back. His skin rebelled against a touch and he grasped the tiny fox by the neck, intending to snap it. But then he recognized a fox that had once helped its father for undiscernable reasons, and his cold, skeletal fingers dropped it for reasons he could not explain.
In the silent woods tonight, the boy found an oak and curled his small body at its wide base, staring up into the branches and thinking of the foxes, the foxes.
They were all dead now. There had been fox pelt hunters.