I'm in...actually I'm finished. I tried to imagine the character underneath as a beast so as to give a hopefully interesting contrast to the armoured appearance. I imagined he wears armour to cover a broken body but also to hide his true nature. Anyway I hope you like it and if so, check out my comic at http://rabbitvsrobot.blogspot.com.au/ and like our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RabbitvsRobot
Cheers
BY FILTHY THE BEAR
The trees aren’t like the ones I remember from before. They rise from the earth, they sprout leaves, some have flowers, some bear fruit and, if spared the woodsman’s axe, they grow tall and strong, but, unlike the trees I once knew...they aren’t innocent. The groves march like armies under the cover of night, the forests roar with the sounds of many voices. They think, they ponder, they move and they watch. I can feel them now, their eyes upon me, staring, glaring, judging...
I don’t like them.
It was five years ago that everything changed, five years ago that the world was twisted and damaged. Life was made fluid on that day, things became other things, lives became other lives. There seemed no method, no rule of thumb. How things changed seemed no more uniform than the casting of pebbles on the shore, no more predictable than the path of a storm. People became beasts, men became women, women became men, adults became children, children became adults, tall short, short tall, fat thin. It didn’t matter who or what you were, you were changed and that was that.
I alone seem to remember. I alone know what once was and I alone carry the burden of why it happened. It was my fault...all my fault...and I pay the price for my lapse in judgment every single day.
I didn’t look like this five years ago. Before my trails at the hands of the Swine Brüder I was never bound with steel and iron as I currently am, I never spoke with the hiss of an asp or breathed with such discomfort and hardship. My fur was never singed and my eyes were an asset. I had friends, a family, a home.
All lost.
There is no home for me here now, no four walls to keep me safe, no soft bed to keep me warm. Family? Who knows where they ended up. I like to imagine that they’re happy, that they’re free from danger or troubles in this most troubling of worlds, but most of all, I hope that they’re still together, even though I’m not with them. I hope they’re still a family. I never realised what that meant before, “family”, or how important it was, but I’d do anything to see them again, to hug my mother and father.
I can’t remember the last time I did that.
It used to make me cringe to be hugged and kissed by my parents, but now…nothing would bring me more comfort or joy.
For all I know they’re trees, perhaps in this very wood, perhaps I’ve felt their eyes upon me, perhaps it is their eyes that I feel upon me at this moment, angry, restless, vengeful. Do they know what I did? Do they know it’s my fault? Do they hate me for it?
Please don’t let them be trees.
As for friends...well...it’s hard to say. There are the birds.
They follow me everywhere, my company of little black sentinels, shadowing my path at a distance. I speak to them and feel somehow comforted by their presence, but are they friends? Not really...not in the way that I once knew the word.
They are only friends in as much as I provide them with the sustenance they crave, with my sword and my dagger and my cunning, and in as much as I myself shall one day sustain them, should I fall and the light of this broken and damaged body fail.
They are not friends as I would once have known the word, but in this new world, where everything has changed, so too has the meaning of things and these birds are indeed my friends.
Who else has seen what lies beneath the cowl, the armor and the mask, who else has seen me feed, and who else has seen these things and not fled, repulsed by my countenance?
No other.
For their part they have proven of use to me, and not just for their company. Whether they have formed an attachment to me, or whether they simply see me as a better tool to gather food than become food is unknowable, but they have worked to our mutual benefit at times.
Do they know of my impediments, do they understand my failings? At times I have thought so, for they have warned me of danger when my eyes have not seen, and pointed me towards the hunt when my ears have not heard. Without them, my belly, and as a result, their bellies, would have laid empty on many a night, especially when the snows have made prey scarce and my vision blur with the all-engulfing white.
Thanks to them, my poor body has healed. I am strong again, not as I once was, but to the best I could hope for. Thanks to them I have found new purpose, a new path.
And so I stand here under a dark and angry sky, baptised by the downpour, on the verge between the woods and the city, preparing to march into the cold ruins, to walk the cracked and bloodied streets with my “friends” at my back. Their fierce eyes urge me eagerly forward, their demanding caws press me on and if not for the smell of iodine and burning flesh I might not hesitate as I do.
I know she’s down there waiting for me, hidden within the caverns of this antiquated tableau to the ignorance of men, and I know she has my end in her heart, and I would rush to face her blade if the anticipation of our coming together did not fill me with such contentment. I fear that should we meet, and one of us be gathered up by death, my happiness at the thought of her might end and plunge me into sorrow.
The girl in the scarlet cloak.
I felt her pressed against me once, as she lay at my side, burying her face in the fur of my back. She was the first person that I met after the wish, the first one to hear my story and we’ve been at each other’s throats ever since.
She does not remember before, but believes that I do, and hates me for my part in the tale, hates me, as all should.
There’s history between her and I now, things that can’t be forgotten easily...fear.
She tries to hide it, to be brave, but she’s afraid of me, and I can’t really blame her. I’ve done things.
It is yet another cruelty of the Djinn that the source of my greatest happiness in this world is also the source of my greatest woe. Perhaps given time she wouldn’t fear me anymore, perhaps one day we could have been true friends, perhaps one day we might have been more, maybe even...
No. I am fooling myself. I’m not like her. I’m not even human. She could never love me. I’m a wolf, and not just any wolf, but the biggest baddest wolf there is.
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