I hadn’t given it any thought before, but my eyes were really starting to bug me then, more than ever. Maybe it was something about the burning or the FIYAH or whatever but my vision was all sorts of constantly fucked up. I didn’t used to have to blink several times for an image to clearly hit my retinas; there was a fuzzy halo over everything that smudged it into everything else, making it blend into a void of colors that made no sense until I fluttered my lids.

The point was that this white bastard was a person I had had trouble seeing before, mistaking him as my Ma at one point, seeing him in the shadows and still letting his image elude my grasp. And now that we were standing in a word of literal whiteness it made everything hella harder, almost ridiculously so. I kept walking towards him, knowing that that wasn’t simply just some outcropping of ice and snow that was piled awkwardly in the clearing to resemble life (there’s irony somewhere around here and I ain’t equipped to catch it).

But then it was screaming at me tortured things, icy things, and I didn’t even catch it coming, and I stopped so hard my feet sorta slid in the ice a little bit, but goddamn it what was that? My heart leapt into my throat and some newfound instinct jumped to action, demanding a fight. In fact, the only reason I wasn’t jumping in to beat whole-sale ass was because he stopped short, seeing me I guess, amending himself. Whatever man, I still looked at him with a raised brow, a wide eye, and a hammering heart. I leaned away a little from him, standing in the snow and the whipping wind, wondering what the hell I had walked into.

Then he called me Loudmouth.

“The hell I am!” I sorta screeched in a cracked, weak voice, floundering a little to try and make sense of the situation. Could you blame me? I wasn't the one screaming at people sneaking up on me, shouting things that don't make any kind of sense (in this situation at least). The name was familiar—no, scratch that, it was more than just a memory. In my mind, an image of a moon-soaked night flashed before my eyes, where there was a bunch of shitty sand piled all over the place and something huge dark and scary that lingered somewhere in there ( I wasn’t about to think about the Abominable Shitman that still stalked my nightmares sometimes with his funky-ass spit dripping everywhere). And there was even more darkness, something even worse than that guy we’re not talking about, a darkness I had fled from so many stupid, shameful times and that I had let my poor Jiji be devoured by.

I remembered the fear I had felt—how so very afraid I was, how it had eaten me from the inside, munched all over and left all kinds of painful sores in its wake. And I remembered this guy--this guy--and how he followed me even though he didn’t need to; how he offered some sort of bumbling comfort that went miles and miles further than he probably suspected it did.

“Teeny,” I said, softer now that my heart was starting to calm down and it appeared he wasn’t going to actually try to rip off all of my face. I lifted my head a little, blinked my eyes some so that I could see his face see those really really blue eyes I remembered he had. They were bright; it was pretty easy to see them, bright as they were, too bright but I didn’t actually catch that part at the time. Honestly I was feeling a hot prickle of embarrassment and shame, because I didn’t know the bastard’s name, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was considered polite at this point to ask for it now.

“…what are you doing?” I suddenly asked, stronger this time, because now that my discoveries were catching up to real time I remembered this guy had just been standing here doing nothing in the freezing cold. From what I had seen of him, he was a sensible sort, or at least he faked the funk pretty well—so what caused this complete 180? “Who—who died?” He has said something about the king being fucking dea—or something. And if his screaming were any sort of indication, then he was hurting over it—or panicked, or angry, or something super emotional that I didn’t know how to handle. So I…I dunno.

I looked at him funny, I guess.

“What’s going on, Teeny?” Softer.






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