I, Human

Fate of The Fallen | The Proposal

Of the two discomforting things Charles was expected to do today, he never would've guessed this would be the comforting one. But he found the scratch of his pencil on the paper of his small book to be a pleasant sound. Uplifted by the low—occasionally peaking—buzz that hung around cities wherever they sprang up.

A few greased palms, subtle lies, and a disappointingly short-lived hand job had bought Charles access into the private chamber where the beast was being held. Chamber was a stretch by any means. Stick a bed in an alley, some metal sheets on the top, and a door at the end of it and you'd have a very ugly, albeit functional, chamber. Bar a section of a sewer with only a pile of desiccated sludge as furniture and what you have is something a rat would turn its nose up at.

And indeed, Charles had yet to see a single one of the rodents skitter about even this deep into London's bowls. Whether that was because of the cage or its sole inhabitant will forever remain a mystery. Charles had one job and he intended to see it through. He gazed from page to beast as he recorded its likeness. Oliver would call his sketches messy; too many lines with no end, no purpose. But Charles saw not a smidgen of wasted charcoal on the paper. Everything he did at this moment was for the sole purpose of recording this creature.

The gaslight was bright enough that it illuminated just the cage and nothing beyond it. And for that, he was grateful. It already stank like a vulture's outhouse—vile birds those were, what shite came of carrion was something he had no interest in knowing—and he didn't want to imagine what was causing it.

Sighing, he put the pencil to the page and drew the last line—a wisp of matted curly fur that stuck out of the creature's mane. Charles wondered what it would be like to touch it. He briefly entertained thoughts of doing so but instead settled for lacquering his sketch. He would have to return later to render a full picture.

Hopefully, the guard on duty then will last longer than a few strokes, he thought as he stood and took a tentative step toward the cage. The events that followed were the closest Charles had come to shitting his pants since he was a babe.

It took a while to register thanks to the numbing cold but the bite of steel against flesh was unmistakable. The same could be said for the tang of blood. And, the look of pleading in a creature's eyes; be it man, dog, or immortal monster.

Charles would've cried out, the breath to do so sat impatiently in his lungs, but the beast had a long finger to its lips—brown and dirty on one side, a paler yet dirtier brown on the other. The other one was tangled in the wool of Charles's sweater, keeping him pinned against the bars. Painfully so.

Fear was a thing Charles was familiar with. Being in cahoots with the likes of Oliver and Nikita made it so that he was constantly looking over his shoulder, not entirely unconvinced that he won't be punched senseless by a mob when he rounded a corner. And even before that, he had known fear. At the hands of a drunken father and an ashamed mother. They had taught him pain and fear but right now, he felt only the former.

A wave of curiosity kept his heart pounding at a steady staccato rather than the frenzied tapdancing it had been trying before. The creature released him and his instinct to run was washed away by the same feeling that made his hands twitch for his pencil. To record the beast as it was now, standing, unbound, free as it could be inside a sewer. It didn't look different; the same broadsword of a nose, same pouting black lips, same tangled mane, same intelligent black eyes, same tattered smock. Yet, it was different and in no way was that made more apparent than when it spoke.

"Help. Me."

**********************************************************************************************