DarkStar

2

He made sure he was out of his mother's sight before he sat down in the grass and closed his eyes. The sun felt good. He was well enough away from the other kids to not be bothered unless they went to some trouble. There were too many people here. He was listening anyway. He wanted to hear them. Their voices were soothing and quieted his mind. They were a comfort. He could barely hear their whispers from the treeline just before he was unceremoniously hit with something, hard. He blinked and turned in the direction he thought it must have come from to find a stocky ruddy cheeked child sneering back at him.

"Throw it back, freak."

Elia sighed heavily and looked to where the ball had rolled, just beyond him. This is what constituted for playing with his friends, fetching a ball and throwing it back like a good little dog. He didn't want to do this today. He wanted to sit in the grass and be left alone. He wanted to walk through the woods. He wanted to listen to all the whispered voices of the trees until they gave way to the voices of those who lay beyond them, until the whispers became one singular male voice that he recognized and found to be of greater comfort than even his mother's arms. His body went through the motions as his expression went blank. He grabbed the ball and gently tossed it back to the boy who waited with a look of disapproval.

"Heh, not a bad toss for a girl." The boy threw it back and was surprised when Elia caught it easily. "Come on, let's play."

He wandered after, knowing that this would end badly. It always did. Whether it was because he was better than the others his age or that they discovered he was not the girl they thought he was, it always ended up going wrong. He didn't understand why there always seemed to be different kids and none of them remembered. It would be easier if they just left him alone.

* * *

The lights passed overhead in a dull rhythm just slightly off from the music that played in the car. He would have nightmares. He knew that by the time this was all sorted out he would spend months trying to banish the image of that boy from his mind. Even now those eyes haunted him. He knew that child was in the ambulance before him, safely buckled into place on a stretcher. As if he would try to move. He was catatonic and even now there was no certainty he would ever come back from whatever abyss he had mentally plummeted over. The space around him had been taped, catalogued, and collected. It wasn't easy. He was going to have to pour over pictures of that horror if he had any hope of muddling through. What if the child never recovered? He had so many questions. What had those great blue eyes seen? Would he even remember? What was mercy in a case like this?

* * *

Elia gingerly held his face as he walked away. He wanted to go to the woods. He didn't want to be here anymore. He pulled his hand away to reveal blood as he slunk in low beneath one of the steel plated platforms and took a heavy breath. He had been good. He had played along. Why did it always end this way? Why couldn't he just go to where the pack was? Surely they would be more kind. His nose ached. They had pushed him down and pulled his hair before slamming his face into the ground hard enough to make his eyes water. Was it because he was faster than they were? Was it because he could throw a little further? Why couldn't he go to a place where he would be accepted for what he was? Why was the first response always to cause harm when they did not understand why he was different?

He just had to stay out of sight long enough to heal. He could already feel his nose mending. The blood had stopped. He would only be dirty. So long as he didn't look like he had been bleeding. He wiped his hands on the bark chips and sniffed. He could say that he fell. How could she not see that he was only clumsy when he was at the playground with the kids that she wished were his friends? He curled up in a little ball and closed his eyes. He wished that the voices would come. He wished he could be out in the sun instead of hiding beneath the steel structure of the playscape, hoping not to be found. He wished he could change into his wolfen form and run away but he was too young. He was too young to hear the voices but he did anyway. Both were wrong. Both were bad. Elia whimpered in the darkness. Why was he bad even when he tried so hard to be good?