A. N. : A viper-lizard's tales is turning one today ! To celebrate, not only do you get a new chapter, but also another text, vaguely related to Viper-lizard, called Of honey and flesh. So how about you check it out after reading this chapter ?
The boy has seen death.
Shi saw the same haunted eyes on so many people before, he has no doubt about that. These are the eyes of someone who has seen death without being able to do anything about it – he would know, he sees them in the mirror on bad days even now.
Maybe this is why he invited the boy to come closer, despite his looking like he's about to break all of Shi's bones. He felt a sort of kinship. Even though the boy is much, much angrier than Shi ever was – there were some like that too, but most of them died while fighting, and not always while following orders. They just couldn't stop.
Shi could wonder why the boy has soldier eyes, but his face screams colonies like few others do, and Shi has been in enough burned down villages to know children never forget.
The way the boy eyes the fire says it all. Not that Shi blames him. Some of the guys who came back even stopped eating meat because the smell reminded them too much of the battlefield. The War is hard on everyone and no one reacts to it the same.
It's terrible.
The boy sits on the edge of the stool, tense, jaw and fists clenched, like he's ready to run away at any time – or lash out, Shi isn't sure. It's not even distrust at this point. Just outright hostility.
So Shi does what he knows. He starts making glass again.
Take another bead and melt it, adjust the temperature – too hot and you lose the glass, too cold and you won't be able to work with it – a bit higher, just a bit, the fire doesn't need to be big, it just has to be right. Take the glass out – it looks like the sun, like life, like fire, like it's supposed to be – and breathe, breathe the life you were gifted with into it – the colors are shifting, changing into something less raw, something precious.
Shi works like one would pray. With reverence and love and an eternal gratefulness for the chance he's been given. He lives today and so he shares his life through glass.
This flower goes below the other, to form a second row of petals. This will make for a nice comb. He smiles.
One more bead, one more miniature sun at the end of the pole. Shi looks at the boy – he seems to have calmed down, if only a little. Still on edge, but fixated on the glass more than looking ready to break something. His hands are fidgeting on the stool.
Shi takes a moment to think. He still makes the tube rotate to prevent the glass from dropping on one side, still keeps the glass at the right temperature – but he thinks of something else.
When he came back home years ago, he was lost. He had spent so long surrounded be death, life didn't come easy anymore. He didn't talk about it – couldn't talk about it, his mind wouldn't form the words, wouldn't know what to talk about, and even if it did, talking would bring trouble. What happens on the field doesn't match what people are told and Shi has seen enough of what happens when you cross the higher ups.
He was lost, but he tried, tried his best to come back fully, tried not to worry his sister, she already had so much on her plate after all, but it was hard. Peace was hard, being a burden was harder – poor family, being forced to take care of a useless member of society who failed to even die with honor –
It was hard.
And Shi decided that he didn't bleed for his Nation to be treated this way. Even if it wasn't really a conscious decision. He mostly just wanted to do what he knew. So he made glass, and when his leg started hurting he tried sitting down and found he could still work.
Glass doesn't care who you are.
If Shi had come back to nothing – no shop, no glass – like is the case for the professionals, things would no doubt have been different. He would have stayed lost, not knowing his place among the living.
Shi looks at the boy. Glass doesn't care, but he does, and he offers the boy to try – try breathing life into something, try finding his place.
The boy looks at the tube, looks almost offended, and says he can't. The words seem hard to say, like he is straining not to say something else.
Shi wants to insist, because the way the boy refused sounded wrong – can't, not doesn't want to or something else. And the boy snaps – stop playing nice you murderer –
He stops. He looks like a child who was caught doing something wrong – and rightfully so, calling Shi a murderer is equivalent to criticizing the War, and this is a very dangerous thing to do. Shi looks around to make sure no one else heard that. Thankfully, nobody is here.
He tells the boy to be more careful, and the boy looks at Shi like he just grew a second head. Shocked and horrified.
Shi sighs. The glass grew too cold to work with it while he was distracted, and heating it again right now probably wouldn't be that good. He won't be able to focus.
The boy still looks at him, though now his eyes dart from side to side as well, like he is trying to understand and impossible situation.
Now what to do.