Blackfeather Woods And I don't know where I'm gonna go

the other boy responds, much to scarab's surprise. for some indiscernible reason, he expected to be largely ignored. perhaps, he thinks cynically, he's been spending too much time in the company of the imagined and the dead. a cobra quick glimpse was shot in the space of air where the spectre lingers before snapping back to the other boy just as quick. you must be new. for some reason, those words grate at him. the spectre hisses another rasping laugh, reading his emotions as if scarab were an open book. of course he does. we are connected, he and i. the omen was just as much apart of him as any one limb, or more intimately, as his heart.

for a moment, the split moment between heartbeats, scarab considers lying. he'd been in blackfeather for a while now ...over a month, he thinks ( though he's a bit fuzzy on the concept of time and mochi is too lazy to look ) ...but not about that. he considers lying about his name. khepri ...the god of creation. of life ...and death. why not take on a moniker while he was here, fulfilling the debt of life he owed maegi? scarab was erzulie's golden prince ...but did that boy exist anymore? prince of the dead. king of the damned. khepri. scarab tells the boy — rowan — as if he's never went by anything else.

it feels like a shift. like an acceptance of what he's become. closing the door on a useless fight and embracing the dark abyss of his future.

i wouldn't say i'm new new, the prince of the dead corrects imperiously. maegi took me in a month ago or so. and for that he is her ever devotee. a life cannot be repaid with a simple favor. it was worth so much more. how quickly maegi has become the lalin of his life. the moon of his life. despite his best efforts, scarab — no khepri's — gaze flits lazily down to the jawbone that the other boy guards with a possessive paw. that was troublesome. that's a nice jawbone. khepri remarks offhandedly, as if his interest isn't almost solely in it.

nanowrimo: 375