The Smaller Things (Sky: Children of the Light)

Chapter 10: Giant Old Monsters Afraid of the Sharks

"You!"  Vionn cried, stomping towards the dark, spiky monster. Their yell managed to catch the terrible beast's attention, turning its segmented body to the direction of which Vionn was approaching. But, as if casting aside all bio-evolutionary traits inherited by natural selection, its searchlight did not even gleam the slightest hint of crimson. It resembled the Rose's calm and collected grow.

"Why are you so..." Vionn struggled, trying to find the correctly condescending adjectives, "...Deviant??"  they accused at last, not satisfied with their own words. Vionn glared daggers at the dragon, loathing how its silence was the only reaction.

It couldn't have responded in a comprehensible way, could it? Little had been studied about their behaviors, but  even so, nothing signaled that it could understand inter-species communication. The monster and the child stood on opposing terrain, with the former having the high ground. Why is it acting so high and mighty? Does it think it's better than me?  Vionn considered angrily, their face like a scrunched napkin. How often had they made that face, that visible wrinkles had already begun to form at an immortal age?

Maybe this krill wasn't acting so high-and-mighty. Maybe it simply just... couldn't understand. It had happened before, with Vionn's mind boarded together with obsidian that almost no wall could crash. But when something did break it, the rubble was... incomprehensible, with value being unable to be determined because of how obscure any objects were. Maybe it was their mind's own fault, for hiding itself away in self-pity.

How long had they been wallowing in their own guilt? Enough to yell at a giant reptile that only had basic survival intelligence, with zero chance of it knowing any languages across species, at least.

It wasn't the monster's fault, was it? Maybe it was just an odd one out. The beast didn't know that Vionn's friend was going to where others went to die. It didn't know it could have stopped that. It wasn't at fault for anything. It didn't choose to be born a monster, it didn't choose to have feelings of mercy. It never had been at fault.

Vionn felt thin streams of tears run like a raging river down their cheeks, slithering down their clenched jaw and dropping to the sand below, staining it darker. Both the monster and Vionn could not have done anything. It was that friend's choice to go the way he did. Nobody knew any better. Vionn didn't know any better, nor the beast, nor the friend. The child quickly brushed their tears away, with a few loose strands of their hair being pulled along. How long had they been growing it out?

The dark monster had moved through the air to who knows where after Vionn had finished their reflection. Teth's prediction hadn't been about danger, or anything of the sort... perhaps it was for Vionn to realize the logic behind their self-loathing endeavor. They clenched their fist over one of their cape's fins tightly.

Just like that, they were by themself again. The monster had flown away, the rose gleamed in the distance, and a child was alone with their thoughts. Again. Was it their fate, Vionn pondered, to continue to dwell on their own suffering because of something they were never at fault of?

It didn't matter. Vionn wasn't exactly a firm believer on the idea of fate and inevitability.