A Fallen HomeKin

PART XLVII

The Lion spoke to me. He said I should seek him here and there. I don't understand it and...I don't know if I want to go back anymore. I don't understand. I'm tired. My shoulder hurts. I want to go home. But where is home?

Fralith sighed, setting down his pencils, staring at the loops and curves of his handwriting. This...this wasn't helping. With a groan, he leaned back on the raised part of the bed, squeezing his eyes shut. PainBird muttered in protest and he bared his teeth at it.

When could he be done with this? When could he go...back? He didn't want to be here anymore, in this room, stuck in bed with nothing to do but think and draw. He didn't want to feel like this, all heavy and tired and...and...jittery.

Ever since he let the shadows come when he told BlueShirt and when they moved him from the green sheet corner to his own, deafeningly quiet and boring room, he'd just...it'd just... bleh. Everything was bleh. And he didn't like everything being bleh. It was boring. Bad. Not nice.

"Zander, are you alright?" RuthMom placed a hand on his uninjured shoulder.

Something lurched inside him, snapping at the blehness inside of him. Opening his eyes, he bared his teeth at her. "No Zan-der!"

RuthMom lifted her eyebrows, pulling back slightly. "'No Zander?'"

He patted his bare chest. "Fralith! Fral-ith! Me! No Zan-der."

"You're..." RuthMom paused, a furrow forming between her eyes. "Fralith? Your name is Fralith?"

Jerking his head up and down, he let a grumbling growl slide between his teeth. "Fralith. Me Fralith." Not Zander. Not anything else. He was himself. Fralith. He...had to be.

"Oh." She sat back in her chair, regarding him with a slowly growing warmth. "Fralith. It's a beautiful name. Thank you for telling me."

The jittery bleh eased a little inside of him. He let his shoulders drop and shifted closer towards her, nodding again. There. She knew now. He was himself here now, completely himself—all the shadows and memories and injuries and in name. Dirt he didn't know he'd been carrying slid off his skin, leaving him lighter.

RuthMom smiled and patted his knee. "Here. I brought something for you, Fralith." She reached into her bag and drew out a bundle of flowers. The aroma of nectar and fresh color wafted from the bundle, brightening the staleness of the room.

He cocked his head to the side, leaning forwards. Flowers? For him? Taking the bundle from RuthMom, he drew them close to his face and sniffed, closing his eyes for added effect. The image of sweetness and sun-soaked leaves filled the darkness of his mind, a clear day sweeping behind it. Wild mountain wind touched with coming snow washed the entire picture in movement and the sense of absolute freedom— the kind he imagined birds felt when they soared above the word on simple feathers.

It smelled like the sky, somehow, too. Like freedom and vastness and pure air carrying one above the troubles of the world. Like ever changing colors and peaceful blues. Like wonder and awe at simple things like stars. Like the little places tucked beneath shade and trees, only known to the breeze born in the clouds.

But most of all, it smelled like him. The true him that called back to the birds. The true him who scavenged the forest floor for little pebbles of the forest's heart. The true him who loved to climb and run and just be with his favorite people.

Him, the one who loved to learn and make and laugh. Him, who carried shadows under his skin. Him, who learned the knife to protect his own. Him, who was cast to another world and survived. And him, who found people who loved him back and was happy.