Zèklè

He had begun to spend more and more time outside his home, wandering aimlessly with no particular purpose - or so the boy told himself, though in truth his gaze was seldom far from the horizon, where it strained to pick up any familiar speck of black and blue. It had been seasons, yet Zero hadn't given up on the idea that Ampere would come home- couldn't give up, because without that hope, without her, what did the lightning boy even have? He had built himself around his Ma, and without her he was a sinkhole, a bridge with no supporting beams; because the only thing he'd ever known for certain - that his Ma would always be there - was wrong. Ma wasn't there, and even now, seasons later, Zero was at a loss for how things had possibly become this way.

So he and Squishy had wandered as far as they could get, venturing north. The boy was armed with nothing but relentless tenacity and a stubborn refusal to accept the truth and move on, and so far that had proven particularly inadequate supplies. He wasn't any good at foraging, or finding his footing in the ice, and his coat was dismally thin, a lackluster protection against the springtime chill. Sometimes he would find cool rocks, and half-heartedly order Squishy to collect them for his stash. More often he would just walk. Zero had never particularly liked the cold; but as far as he was concerned, anything was better than the lonely island where everything was just a reminder of what he couldn't understand.

Or so he told himself through gritted teeth and tightly clenched eyes. He was standing, exposed, rigid in the wake of a particularly forceful breeze, and though he tried to keep from shaking, the shivers which racked his body were obvious to anyone who might have looked. He'd been up here for three days, and he had yet to see a soul. Never a big fan of solitude, the isolation had taken a toll on poor Zero; he was skinny, almost gaunt, and a strange bitterness marred the usual joviality of his youthful face. As the wind died down the boy pulled his wing across his back, grunting, but even this offered scant protection against the elements. Indeed, it only really served to exacerbate the wildness of his appearance: between the thick, dark hair which lay in knots around his face and hocks, and the creeping metal which had now nearly encapsulated his left side, and was making an obvious move against his right, Zero might have been some strange demon rattling around the frozen north.

Only his eyes still held a hint of his familiar, infallible cheerfulness- and at the moment they were closed.

"Speech Speech Speech."