It was an idea I had already hashed in my head once, when I had stumbled across that weird, smarmy, sexual guy who Pa had sent to give me Chico’s egg—back when I was realizing why time scared me even though I was born from it, even though a whole quarter of me was sprung from its depths.

I was a child of spark, and spark is violent. It’s reactive and compulsive, bursting when certain conditions are met, when certain things rub against each other, abrasive and vicious and wild all over the sky and in your retinas. It’s destructive too, and it’s ferocious about it. It can eat trees and rip apart entire fields with fires it sparks from its fingertips; it can shock you, burn a hole in your skin or set your nerves into overdrive; it can pull your hair and rage in your system, a short-circuit leaving you breathless or getting the blood pumping again if you were dead enough.

Spark ruled me, in an out, and more and more I was seeing that. Maybe not consciously but my head was starting to shift with thoughts and ideas that didn’t fit the sparkish mold I had lived with. And maybe that was a good thing, but it was scary, but the world is full of even scarier shit so this one slipped under the radar for the time being. These lessons I was learning were wrapped pretty impressively for me to notice them for what they were.

What I’m saying is that spark doesn’t think, but I was doing a lot of that. Spark doesn’t stop to consider the fight and whether you should fight it, or whether it was a lost battle and stand down back in the clouds—but I had done that, haven’t I, when Flameking soundly wrecked my ass? Spark doesn’t consider its words or its questions before its spews them from its mouth, and that lesson was pounded, pounded, pounded into my skull, forever and ever and ever.

( I wanna know why you go cold at the whisper of Pa’s name--)

Nightmares and nightmares and nightmares on top of each other--

Spark isn’t patient. Spark erupts into life, brilliant and blinding and harsh—and it’s gone so quickly, lying dormant in the peaceful silver lining of a cloud until something rubs it the wrong way again. It’s a paradox for any sort of spark to be patient, cuz patience takes time, and that’s a thing that spark can never, ever have.

But I was born with it.

And I laid there with Leos in the chilly night, on the ground where cold was starting to creep upward into our limbs and it tousled our hair from the slightest breeze, my neck laid across his, holding him, my eyes closed and my muzzle breathing warmth into a coat that was getting painted with frost—and I was patient.

Or, at least, I was trying to be. It was a new thing and, again, I wasn’t conscious of it, I wasn’t making the mindful decision to lay there patiently with him, that I should stay and hold him and breath warm things into him and speak and try and smooth the bitter wrinkles in his voice—

I just knew that yanking his hair didn’t work. I just knew that making him fight a shadow he’d been fighting for years was redundant and wrong cuz I was starting to pay attention now. I had seen that shadow climbing on his back for a while, watching it nibble his withers and scratch and bite his tail when he got too comfortable—but I had just started to recognize that it was a beast that had long since defeated him. A beast that whispered things (--I'm soulless and empty—) over and over again in his sleep and his awake hours (--It is when awake that I am haunted—)—

--and there comes a point in every fight where you have to give it up. I guess win or lose.

I’m sorry I pulled your hair, I whispered in my head.

But I didn’t say it—mostly cuz I was terrified and making a wrong move, saying something that was too harsh or cold, cuz he didn’t need any more cold in his life or on his skin.

I have a heart.

My eyes opened and my gaze turned toward him—and there he was, looking up at me with tear-stained eyes, something wild but not so wild as before swimming in those blues and crystals as his voice (so tiny) slipped from his lips.

….I have a heart?

My mouth pulled, and maybe it was something like a smirk, but it was too sad and too hesitant to be anything that celebrated. “Yeah,” I breathed back at him, just as quiet, “You do.”

It was written all over his face and the contours of his body; it had been written by the way he had broken at my crazy, unhinged fear at his monsterhood; it was written smack dab in the middle of his forehead and the center of his chest, that point of his body that had charged into me, unable and unwilling to let me go, to let me lose him—

It was written so plainly that it was a wonder he couldn’t see it himself; ice reflects things and his whole body screamed heart, heart, heart and his voice was wavering with it now. You can’t have fear without heart. You can’t really have anything without heart.

…well. Anything worth having, anyway.

But I guess that’s what happens when you fight a losing battle, over and over again, and it’s time to call off the fight. Your vision gets scratched and burnt and blurred with all kinds of dark shit--and you can't see something sitting right in front of you, or maybe you're too afraid to see it cuz it'll blind eyes that were weakened by a monster's bite. Ulrik was starting to make sense.

(was it worth it?)

“…sorry,” I whispered as I settled back into holding him, my lips pressed against him—so I could be talking to his soul if you wanted to think of it like that. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” That’s what hearts do; they pump and they bleed and they glow and they flutter and they crash and they burn and they hurt, they always hurt for one reason or another, and I guess that’s life and it’s shitty but none of us designed it that way. We just have to live it and hope the heart hurts for a good reason…I guess.

“I-I’m sorry for pulling your hair,” I found myself saying—flying out of fucking nowhere before I could get a handle on it. It just felt so important to tell him, so right, so crucial to let him know before—“I’m…I’m rough,” I slipped weakly, like I was explaining something that he needed to know—like it was wrench in the toolbox built for fixing a fucked-up situation and I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing but I was—I was trying, at least. I’m rough all over and I do rough things and I’m starting to figure out that everything ain’t rough like that.




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