chibi redux

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there's crying nearby

She's not sure of anything else right now - but someone is crying. laud and painful. gasping angry sobs that are too loud when everything in her screams to be quiet and hide

She can't help but follow it.

 

there;s a boy in the street. no one else is out - in fact it looks like something terrible has happened . The buildings are crumbling around her, smoking and decrepit. but there is a boy, standing in the alley, chest heaving as his sobs.

 

but he's still standing - cradling something close to his chest, and ugly crying. he stops almost immediately though, head whipping up to look at her with a crazed hurt face. his sobs stop,even if his breathing is still ragged. tears still steam down his face and she can see the absolute agony and frustration on his face

whatever he sees in her, she doubts she will ever know because - voice cracking - he pours his heart out to her. it takers her an embrasinglying long to catch on to his meaning. part is the sobbing and cracked and wet voice. the other is the ease in which he flips and switches up his worlds. grammar and vocab learnly nonsensical as she realizes she he's jumping between different languages and dialects. Most are from east blue - a capsule of the calmest of the seas (languages) but with a scattering of south blue too.

it's througn almost into gibberish, but she eventually gets the basic.

He was with someone else - a little boy - and that boy was taken by THEM. and this dirty dusty boy with green hair couldn't stop it and thinks it's all his fault.

it's then that she realises what he clings to so tightly, as the bundle of fur - she thought it may be a stuffed toy given how little he was - started to shuft and whine. "shh shh /pōkiʻi/" he hurmers, rocking the crying buildy tightly. it's a baby of some kind - a very furry baby... but a crying baby all the same. it settles in his arms, quieting.

the boy before him - tears still dripping down his face. " I had to run away. I left /kaina/ to those monsters." she gathered from his rambles and her heart breaks

a baby that couldn't defend itself over a child that could maybe escape later on his own. a terrible choice to make, but one she can understand.

"then we have to go" she tells him, in the common tongue "because they're coming back, and they'll find you if you don't keep running. They'll find that baby."

His lip twibbles but then he nods. "where do we go /Akeni?/" he asks her, his words still a grapbag of the east but his grammer reforming to common.

she's not sure anyone has ever looked to her for guidance. seh can't remember anything at all right now - but she knows in her heart that no one stays. He'll leave her too. but they can't stay here, out in the open.

She guides them back into the ruble. she's older than him, longer limbed and can picker her way through with ease. but even with his birden he keeps pace easy. he whispered to the baby every now and then, but is otherwise quit.

until he listened, freezing in place, eyes wild. He looks off to the left in panic, and she turns to see. Men. picking their own way though the rubbles. Searching. THe boy growls  - feral - body curling around the baby.

THese are the men that hunt him. the ones that took away /kaina/ probably the ones to ransact the town. the ones that left her feeling confused and lost right now.

her new shadow is tense, torn between fighting or running. the men see them. one points. "Run," she tells the boy.

they try to. but they're little and tired and the men catch tem. the boy scraped, screaming words that she can't catch when one grabs him, they're trying to take the baby, trying restaign the boy. He stops screaming and bites the man instead. a vicious thing that has the man screaming. there's so much blood as the boy won't let go.

There's more coming. they're not going to be able to escape. not... not without...

a second man is twisting the boys arm for the baby... its crying now and the boy is tearing and biting at them. but they just kids.

well. maybe not just kids. HE still has let go of the baby, but it woun;d be long now. and she doesn't know if they want the baby dead or alive. she won't let them show her one way or the other. she takes a breath, letting her hands bloom from the ground. She doesn't know why she knows she can do it. and it is both assured and scared that they grow so strong and smooth.

She snaps the men in half with ease and without hesitation. The boy is smeared with blood, his face covered in it,and it drips down his face. his arms are bruised and he looks around in terror, baby crying out as he holds too tight.

he finally turns to her - here it is. he's call her a monster. a demon. he'll spit and rage at her... "Aneki?"

He is scared. but not of her. He's scared in that way someone is when they don't know what's happening. "Aneki?" he asks again, "was that ... you?"

She feels ashamed, and a little angry, and she snarls, "SO what if it was - I'm not a monster, i save - "

HE staggers over to her, his face twisting to awe. she doesn't' know how to react to that. no one.. well. maybe not no one. what can't she remember?

"Can.. Can you? you have extra hands." he finally settles on. SHe nods.

they look at each other, feeling things out, before he moves to hand his the baby. "hold /pōkiʻi/ please, with your extra hands. Then I can help."

there is no hint of distrust on his face. no glimmer of fear. just. trust.

she wasn't to say she doesn't think it works that way - she's not sure she has the ability to carry things for so long with her extras... but she can carry the baby with her real arms, and can fight with her extras.

it's not a human baby.

Pōkiʻi is soft and fuzzy, with hooves and a tail in the smallest overalls she's ever seen. but it's not any animal shes ever seen. it's like a deer and a real baby all mixed into one.

as she marvels at the tiny thing, the boy has pulled a stick from the rubble - testing the strength before discarding it for another.

Once he has one that meets his approval, she meets his gaze. The blood is starting to dry and he's been rubbing his cheek on a shoulder to try and wipe it off but it only made it more fearsome looking.

yet she's no more afraid of him than he was of her. "Help me?" he asks, hopeful, "go save Kaina?"