Almost done with the old whumptober (all while posting for the new whumptober) don't even look at me-
This is for the prompts: Muzzle, transformation + Old injuries, "I feel like I lost a part of myself" + Hair pulling
This is an AU based on the manga '+anima' but you don't have to know anything about said manga to read this fic!
Phil arrives at the town around nightfall.
A long day of travel has left him pretty much exhausted, and all Phil wants to do is collapse into the easiest available bed. The town is big enough to have an inn, which Phil will accept as a small bit of luck coming his way. So many of the places he's crossed on the road here see no travelers and thus have no accommodations for them. Phil just knocked on doors until he met somebody kind enough to let him crash in their home for the night, doing his best to repay them with trinkets or exotic items he had picked up along the way. People in Astaria are kind. Kinder than those in Sailand ever were.
Phil wonders often whether that would change if these nice folks were aware of his true nature.
Entering the inn, eyes draw towards him. While they're close enough to the sea for tourism to not be completely out of the question, a stranger is still a stranger. He's always going to stick out like a sore thumb. Phil pushes his shoulders back, plasters a wide smile on his face, and confidently steps up to the counter of the bar.
"I'm looking for a place to stay for the night," he says.
The woman behind the counter is young, bright. Her hair is a typical strawberry blond that Phil has seen on a lot of people in this country, with dark brown eyes that are round and deep-set.
"All our rooms are available," she says pleasantly. "We don't have a lot of foot traffic around here in the off season."
Oh, Phil forgot that Astaria isn't subjected to the constant sweltering heat that Sailand is. Here, there are actual seasons - winter and fall. Phil might see snow for the first time in his life. He did notice the air seemed to get a little chilly during the night, and dew covered everything in the early morning.
"Perfect. How much are they?" he asks.
"Ten gillah per night," she says, "You get a complimentary breakfast and dinner every day too."
Phil's eyebrows almost draw up into his hairline. He's still not used to the prices in Astaria being so ridiculously cheap. Sailand is known for its lavish lifestyle and an overabundance of luxury. But he supposes slave labor makes a lot of that possible.
"I'll take a room for three nights then."
"You're passing through?" the woman inquires, waiting for Phil to retrieve his pouch and get out the coins. The question is innocent enough, though Phil also knows rumors can spread quickly in sleepy towns like this one. If travelers are rare this time of year, curiosity might be the most interesting thing these people have to occupy themselves with.
"I'm heading to the northeast to stay with family," he says.
The woman takes his money with a smile. "How lovely."
Phil doesn't feel bad about lying to her. It's a half-truth anyway. He is eager to get as far from Sailand as humanly possible, so if that means getting to the opposite border he'll gladly do that. Astaria is flanked by mountain ranges at the Sailand border, but Phil has heard there's only the sea on the utmost east side. That's where he wants to live. Somewhere close to the beach, maybe. Or just inland enough for him to build a simple farm. Away from the capital too, and where there is no tourism. Somewhere nobody knows him, and nobody will ever bother him.
"Your room is up the stairs there, first one on the right." She points towards a set of rickety stairs set into the corner, away from where all the tables are. "We have mushroom and veal stew for tonight, if you'd like."
"That sounds wonderful." He hands her the money.
The food tastes good, and Phil thanks the woman again before going up to where he'll be sleeping. The room is small, but cozy enough. It has a window that looks out onto the back of the inn, where Phil can see some farmland, sheds, and other small houses in the distance. He opens the glass pane just slightly. Fresh air means Phil will sleep better. And it makes him feel less locked up. He has noticed that he has gotten rather claustrophobic.
Phil remembers the golden bars on his cage and other slaves tittering to each other about how lucky he is.
He shakes his head, almost as if he's also trying to disperse the thoughts physically. There is no use dwelling on all that. Phil can't change the past, and he can't change what happened to him. What happened to the others. He can only move forward, and hope that he'll finally be able to make a better life for himself.
He changes into easier clothes, washing up a bit at the basin of water that the woman must have left on the desk for him, and then crawls into bed, the exhaustion of the day thoroughly catching up to him. He's ready to turn over and sleep for a hundred years.
Instead, Phil wakes up in the middle of the night to a terrible howling.
The sound is sudden enough to wake him, the drowsiness of sleep making him think it's a wolf or a wild animal at first. But something about that seems wrong. Something about the screaming sounds much too human for it to come from anywhere else than a person's mouth. The noise tapers off into a smothered whine, too low for Phil to hear now even though he has the window open. Then it's followed by a muffled thud, like something hitting wood. Again and again and again, for a solid minute or two. Phil has gotten out of bed at this point, and he's looking through the window, squinting out into the darkness. A light bops up and down, like somebody is carrying a torch. Phil sees it move in the direction of the closeby shed, the door being pulled open.
He doesn't hear much after that, but the entire thing is enough to give him a horrible sense that something bad is going on.
Phil goes back to bed, and sleeps uneasy for the rest of the night. He's concerned about what the commotion could be, yet also aware that he can't act hastily. Maybe it's his own past experiences coloring his rational thinking that make him believe he knows what's in that shed. If his suspicions are correct, then Phil cannot leave this alone.
But he could be wrong.
And Phil left Sailand because he wanted to live a free, peaceful life. He wants to stay out of trouble, which means he can't stick his nose where it doesn't belong unless he has a damn good reason to. He can't get overzealous and do something without careful consideration.
Good thing Phil rented the room for three nights.
The plan was for him to be able to take some recovery time since the traveling has been wearing on his exhausted body so much. But now he has an additional goal: find out exactly what that noise had been, and if his suspicions are correct, do something about it.
He starts by subtly inquiring the next morning. The innkeeper makes it easy for him. She serves Phil fresh coffee and some delicious homemade pastries at the crack of dawn, chatting aimlessly about the chickens she keeps and that provided the eggs for her baking. Phil yawns once or twice during it - genuinely not on purpose, he's just tired from waking up in the middle of the night - and this prompts the woman to give him a small squinty glare.
"Did you not sleep well last night?" she asks, as if waiting for him to denounce the comfort of her provided lodgings and take that personally.
Phil shakes his head, holding up his hand as an apology. "I'm a very light sleeper," he explains. "Something woke me up and made it hard to get more rest."
"Something?" she asks, though her eyes shift to the side.
"A wild animal, if I were to guess," Phil says. "Awful wailing, on and on for several minutes. You have wolves in these parts, don't you?"
The woman seems a little too eager to latch on to that excuse. "Wild dogs, too. Bobcats, boars, foxes, all kinds of things that make terrible noises." She nods hurriedly, filling up his cup again. "More coffee?"
After breakfast, Phil explores the town and surrounding area. Some of the villagers talk to him. Their curiosity about a stranger seized by wanderlust outweighs their natural misgivings about a foreigner. Once again Phil is struck by the warmth of this country, and the care, and maybe also the brash attitude where people lose track of decorum. Sailand is so focused on outward appearances and status, they're very careful not to speak out of turn.
On the town square, an old man with three teeth missing due to age and a lisp so thick Phil can barely decipher the words, asks him if he's ever been to the capital, then sets off into a long rant about the research institutes wasting their money.
Phil hardly pays it any mind until he mentions anima.
"Are there a lot in the capital?" he asks. The anima in Astaria live in hiding more frequently than the ones in Sailand, though whether they're better off for it or not is probably debatable.
"How should I know, I've never been there," the man spits. Literally. A disgusting wad of chewing tobacco soaks into the grass. "That lot's obsessed with them. Royals and stuff, they think it would bring them closer to godhood or something."
Phil thinks about the cage, gilded. He thinks about being forced to kneel while his wings are stretched out on display and preened in front of everybody. The reverence with which he was called an angel.
And he was one of the lucky ones. A slave treated well should thank his masters for the luxury they allowed him to bask in. Most anima are regular slaves, worked to the bone until they die. Only very few are seen as something worthy of awe. Usually the ones that look like something humans find mythical. Bird anima that have the right coloration of wings to pass for an angel or fish anima with a glimmering tail of scales that resembles a mermaid.
"And what do you think?" he asks the man.
"I think it's all unnatural."
Phil bites his tongue hard enough that he can almost taste blood.
He does keep an eye on the shed where he heard the noises from, but cannot find an opportunity to get close during the day. The farmers that own that land are hard at work on the field, what with harvest season winding down to an end. And Phil knows the risk of being spotted would be too great. If there really is a person in big trouble inside that shed, Phil wants to make their situation better, not worse.
So he tests his patience and waits until nightfall.
He opens the window wide and brings out his wings. His feathers shift slightly in the midnight breeze, sending a shiver through Phil. He hasn't used them since they got injured during his escape. He doesn't even know if he can still fly with them. But they should be fine to carry him down to the ground harmlessly. The gentle thud of his landing on the ground doesn't make a lot of noise, but Phil still hurries to blend into the shadows. If somebody sees him through a window, he'll be screwed.
Carefully, Phil makes his way to the shed. The silence feels smothering. For a moment he becomes worried that whoever might have been kept here could be moved by the villagers. That would explain the eerie quiet.
But then he finds a crack in one of the walls and peers inside. Phil's heart almost stops.
The noise he heard last night was indeed made by a person. A child, a boy of maybe about seven or eight years old. And the reason he's silent now is because somebody put a muzzle on him, tight leather straps visibly digging into the skin.
Anger fuels him and without thinking, Phil walks around to the entrance of the shed. He rattles the door, but finds it locked with a heavy chain and padlock.
"Fuck…"
Looking around does not instantly offer a solution. Phil contemplates picking up a rock and trying to go at it that way, but that might not get him far. He pulls on the door a few more times out of pure frustration, then turns when a torch is lit behind the window of a nearby farmhouse. He walks around to the other side again, crouching in the darkness. He can look through the crack, frowning at the sight of the child. From what Phil can tell, he's in a bad state. Too thin, a rope looping around his throat and attached to a wooden beam. His face is half-obscured by long, messy hair. He's looking around fretfully, probably having heard Phil but unable to pinpoint what the noise was.
Phil feels guilty for having scared the child, and then even more so when the noise he made draws a farmer to the shed.
The farmer fishes a key from their pocket and opens the padlock. Briefly, impulse almost takes over and Phil considers overpowering the lone man so he can free the boy they're holding captive. But that thought is relentlessly pushed down. He still has his supplies in his room at the inn, and if there is at all a way to get out of this without hurting anybody else, Phil would prefer to take that one, even if it means waiting a night longer.
He cannot have escaped slavery to have pursuers on his trail immediately.
"We told you to stop making your damned ruckus." The farmer grabs the boy by the hair and yanks on it. Behind the muzzle, the boy cries out in pain. He's thrown onto the ground, and the sound turns into a choked gasping as the rope around his neck snaps him from being able to fall flat completely. The man rears back and kicks the boy's stomach, making him curl up pathetically. "We never should have taken you in, you wretch." They grab his hair again, using it to half-pull him up. "Now stay quiet."
Phil winces, longing to close his eyes from the scene that is both horrifying to witness and brings back some terrible memories. But since it's his fault, he forces himself to stay and watch. Thankfully the farmer doesn't do much more, giving the child another warning to stay quiet and then slipping back towards his home, though not before securing the padlock again. Phil returns to his room in the inn and works until dawn on straightening out a flat piece of metal.
He learned this from some other slaves. Ones brought to the mansion when they were already adults, who had more tricks up their sleeves than an anima bought as a child. Phil used it to escape, and he will use it again to now give himself and the captured boy their freedom.
The wait until nightfall drags out even longer this time. Phil stays in his room, and only gives some vague response to the lady who keeps the inn that he's not feeling well when she comes knocking. He cannot look at these people the same way after knowing what this town harbors. Some part of him feels bitter, and resentful. For even a moment, he thought the people of Astaria were better than those in Sailand. But they're just another sort of bad, he supposes.
In Sailand, everybody knows anima exist since they're a normal part of daily life. They're just also considered sub-human, kept as slaves, with no rights of their own. Some rebel against that, though more don't question it. The suffering of an anima is worth less than a human's.
In Astaria, the existence of anima is a fairy tale to the majority of people, and even those who do believe anima exist might never run into one because they all stay in hiding. The unknown causes fear. Anima that have their existence revealed, could get locked up or killed for the crime of existing.
All Phil wants is to live in peace.
He sneaks out to the shed with the moonlight illuminating his path. Crickets chirp in the tall grass, but beyond that everything is peaceful. Phil's bags are packed. All he has to do is convince the boy to leave with him.
With a bit of wiggling, he forces the improvised lockpick into the hole and the chains fall away.
Phil catches them, lowering them to the earth gently to keep quiet. He cannot waste time now. He opens the door just a crack and closes it behind him as he enters. The boy is sitting against the wall, kind of curled up to keep warm. Now that Phil can see him better, he realizes the child isn't even wearing more than tattered, grayed pants and a shirt with short sleeves. He must be freezing.
His dull, blue eyes settle on him when he enters.
"Hey…" Phil says softly, automatically raising both hands in an attempt to look as non-threatening as possible. "I'm not here to hurt you, okay?" He doesn't have much experience with children, if you don't count the spoiled brats that ran around the palace.
The boy watches him with suspicion, squinting through the darkness. Phil sees it safe to approach and kneel in front of him.
"Let me get this off first." He pulls his knife from his belt.
The boy flinches away, pressing his back into the wooden pillar while frantic breathing slips out past the muzzle. Phil backs up a bit, holding the knife far away.
"It's okay, I'm trying to help. Let me get rid of the muzzle for you."
But whenever he so much as moves an inch, the boy seems to twitch and panic. His eyes are wide, rimmed red from crying and exhaustion. Phil feels terrible, and he doesn't know what he can do to help.
Well, he has one idea, but he might be completely wrong.
Phil can't blame the child for not trusting anybody - least of all a stranger - after what he has been through. But maybe if he showed the boy they're not too different, Phil could convince him. Assuming he's right about the boy being an anima like him. He slowly stands again, and shrugs out of the heavy overcoat he's wearing. The boy is still staring at him, utterly confused by what Phil is doing now. Phil pulls up his sleeves, allowing him to see his marks. They curl around Phil's shoulders and down his back. But at getting a glimpse of them, something close to understanding and surprise passes over the boy's face.
Bursting through the slits in the back of his shirt, Phil's wings curl around himself. His feathers are pitch black, with the vaguest iridescent sheen to them that the king of Sailand often likened to a tapestry of stars. 'My Midnight Angel', he would say. Phil feels sick thinking back on it.
"I'm like you," he says.
Trembling, the boy nods.
Phil kneels before him again, and while keeping his motions very slow so he doesn't startle the child, he brings out his knife again and cuts the muzzle from his face. The boy brings up one shaking hand to rub at his jaw.
"What's your name?" Phil asks.
The boy looks at him after a few seconds, eyes cautious but not as frightened as before. "Techno," he says, voice rough from the screaming or from not using it a lot.
"Techno," Phil repeats with a smile. "My name is Phil. How long have you been an anima?"
"An anima?" Techno repeats, dully. "I'm… You mean a monster?"
Phil frowns. With the general ignorance the Astarians have towards the existence of anima and how they come to be, it shouldn't puzzle him why people who do become anima have no idea what's happening to them. And yet, that realization wrenches his heart harshly.
Becoming an anima is painful, traumatic. It is a human soul on the cusp of death screaming out with a will to live and then merging with a nearby animal soul to become one in the human's body. Nobody is born an anima, you can only become one through a near-death experience. And evidence shows it happens mostly to kids before the age of twelve, to see anybody older turning is extremely rare.
"You're not a monster, Techno. Something scary happened to you, right?" Phil asks, reaching out to gently cup Techno's cheek. His thumb rubs the indent left behind by the muzzle.
Techno looks away, almost as if he's unable to meet Phil's gaze any longer. But his next words come out whispered. "I fell down a slope in the woods. A few weeks ago."
Phil nods. The fall would have injured Techno pretty badly, and the elements would have taken care of the rest. But he became an anima instead of dying. "Can you show me?" He uses the knife to carefully cut away the rope around Techno's throat and helps him to his feet.
"I… I don't-" Techno breath hitches, and he takes a step away from Phil. "I came back home and they were all scared of me. My own parents hate me."
"They don't hate you," Phil says, even if the words feel like bitter lies on his tongue. "They just don't understand. What happened to you can be hard to explain unless people have been through it themselves." He turns around and shows Techno his back. The scars there are faded, hailing from a time when Phil himself was small and scared and worried about his parents despising him for what he had become. They stopped seeing him as a person and started seeing him as a slave overnight.
While not fully the same, he gets it.
"When it happened, I felt like I lost a part of myself. But the opposite is true. You gained something indescribable." He turns around again. "Show me, please?"
Techno nods. He takes a deep breath and before Phil's eyes, he shifts. Two small tusks peek from the corners of his mouth, and his ears elongate to be floppy. His legs change shape, covered in a thin layer of dark brown fur, and his bare feet have turned into hooves. Phil sees a small tail sway behind him, the little bristle of hair at the end standing upright.
The woman from the inn did say they have boars in these parts.
"Where is your mark?" Phil asks.
Techno pulls down his collar a bit. Phil can see the anima mark that runs down from his collarbone and splits when it meets his sternum, tendrils of it running over his sides.
"Good, those will be easy to hide," Phil says. He picks up his coat and shrugs it back on, before looking in his bag for something else he can use for Techno. He doesn't want the child to freeze before they get to the sea.
"Where are we going?" Techno asks.
"Away. Somewhere we can both be safe."
When Phil offers his hand, Techno takes it. "What about my family?"
Thinking about his own parents, his siblings, Phil doesn't know if he can even remember their faces anymore. If he dreams about them at all, their features are blotted out until only their sneers of disgust take their places in Phil's memories.
But it wouldn't do to tell that to Techno.
"When you're older, it might be safe for you to come back. You can come visit them and explain. Once you understand yourself, maybe you can make them understand too."
It is the closest he can say that won't destroy Techno's spirits but also isn't an outright lie.
Techno smiles, fragile and shaky. "Okay," he says.
While leaving the town far behind them, Phil thinks the cruelty of Sailand and Astaria might be two sides of the same coin. Having witnessed both, he can't say if one is softer than the other, or easier to stomach.
But he does know that if he can harbor Techno from the worst of it unlike he was as a child, he'll have found the peace he never had.