The Boy and the Animal

Part I | Ten

A few days after I named Jesiter, I woke feeling strangely. It was a familiar sickening suspicion in the pit of my stomach that I'd come to trust over the years.

At first, I thought it might have been the boy getting out again, but when my eyes snapped open to him that morning he was merely sitting and peeking at the cows from the other side of their locked corals. A sigh of relief left my lips. Still, that sickness in my stomach refused to subside. Something just wasn't right about this morning.

That was when, at that thought, the door behind me pounded, casting my heart from my chest.

I sprang up from my seat at the top of the stairs and jerked the door open to see who was disturbing the morning, only to find Dark standing on the other side with his arms crossed and his brows down. I swallowed. More and more everyday, my brother's glare was becoming angrier. Less patient. Each day I wondered if it would be the one that finally had is evicted.

"Can you move the thing? The cows need milking," Dark grumbled.

"He has a name, you know," I grumbled back.

My brother took the words with a hard sip and shook his head, gesturing toward Jesiter without so much as looking at either of us. I took the hint and turned away from him. All it took from me was the snap of my finger, the 'come here' motion with my hand, and the boy perked up from growling at Dark. He crawled over to me in the opposite corner from the cows.

Without a word, Dark made precarious steps down to the corals, glaring at the Jesiter on his way. It put a smirk on my face, seeing the two of them lock eyes like kindergarten enemies, but when he opened the coral and began his work on the cows that smirk fell.

I had seen him do this quite a bit. More than that, I had seen him single handedly maintain a popular city inn. Even so, I was suddenly caught by his self-sufficiency. My little brother, the same little boy that I used to protect from monsters in our closet, knew how to milk his own cow with experienced hands. And that wasn't it. He knew how to cook, clean, and manage money.

At only 17 years old, he was already a mature young man, and he had been for years now- no fault of his own. It was mine.

Jesiter's rough hand on the sleeve of my tunic woke me from the flashes of memories overcoming me. I looked over at him. He looked up at me and mewed, gesturing toward the basement door. I cocked my head, but before I could wonder what he was saying he took my hand and knocked on my palm. Ah, I thought.

"Stay," I instructed the boy before standing and heading for the door. My brother glanced over at me and rolled his eyes. "What?" I asked.

"Nothing..." He hissed. I made to climb the stairs, when he added, under his breath, "just gonna let you keep mooching off me." My brow twitched. I stopped in my tracks and glared back at him.

"What was that?" I snapped. He shook his head. "Stop whining. You owe me."

At this, my brother shot up from the coral and glared at me. I stepped toward him, standing over his smaller frame. He flinched, but somehow, somewhere, my brother found the balls not to back down. I didn't let this deter me, however, my anger with his insubordinate attitude only growing until my clenched fists shook and my brows twitched. Maybe it was the boy's influence, but I bared my teeth at him.

A century of silence dragged its decrepit figure between us as our eyes locked in blistering combat. Time cut its nails into Intensity's chalkboard, echoing in a loud screech that consumed the deafening quiet, and watching it all was Jesiter- who lowered himself beside me, as if readying himself to pounce. But it was my brother who was the one to break that silence.

"Just what the hell are you even planning, Cyrus?" He finally asked, bitterness and remorse hanging on his throat. He was giving me that same hopeless, grief-stricken face he always did. "That... Thing can't be alone; you think you're just going to spend the rest of your life with it?"

"Yes, actually!" I snapped. "I'm going to fix Jesiter, and she's going to live a full, happy life!" I was nearly choking on the aching throat that vomited an angry claw of a voice. Tears pooled in Dark's eyes; why was he crying? Why was I so upset? What... Was even going on? What was happening to me?

"'She?'" He questioned me. I swallowed. Welling with painful misery, my brother balled his fists. "You and I both know this isn't about him! Jesiter? Really? You're just using him to feel better about yourself!"

I froze. In an instant, I felt as if my body had been dunked into searing lava, molten rock devouring my heart, and suddenly a primeval rage shot through my body in a wildfire. I felt as if something that I'd been keeping submerged deep within me by my will personified as chains had burst from me and eaten my soul alive. I was livid, face smoldering, and I-

No. No, no. It wasn't me. This thing that took me over- I had no bearing over what it made my body do. All I could do was claw for the surface of an ever rising ocean, drowning, and watch as my body shoved my little brother. He smashed against the wall, but the aggression that came from the action wasn't the end of it; it triggered Jesiter to act.

Before I could even realize what I had done, Jesiter ripped passed me and tackled Dark to the ground, snarling and growling. This chased the rage from my body, and I yanked the boy from my little brother by his hair, holding him in a headlock. I tried to calm him, to tell him it was okay, but the docile light that had grown in his eyes over the passed months was gone.

Instead of settling down, Jesiter whipped his head back to bash it into my nose. I yelped and staggered- to which he took advantage to escape from my grasp and claw at Dark once again. This time, Dark kicked him in his stomach and darted for the basement door. The boy screamed, charging after him, but I grabbed him and pinned him on the ground with my body over him.

"Is this what helping him looks like?!" Dark screamed at me from the top of the steps. He was crying now, and his face was bleeding. "He's unsalvageable, and you're hurting him more than helping! He needs to go to a refuge or be put down!"

With that, Dark slammed his fist against the door and sunk into himself on the floor.

The slam hardly reached my ears, however. With the boy's growling and yelling, I couldn't hear hardly anything but the piercing sound. It was blaring, cutting through my ears and slicing down into my heart. It hurt too much to bear, but with his thrashing and biting I couldn't move away without him attacking me or my brother. I was trapped there, staring down in horror at the ferocity of the boy I'd grown so close to.

So, I cried.

I couldn't stop myself. The tears just fell from my eyes in heavy heaps onto Jesiter's face below me, and a high pitched wheeze tore through my throat as it retracted in agony. My body trembled as all the sorrow in my body fled through my squeezed eyes. My chest felt like it was being smashed repeatedly with a hammer, the pieces stabbing my heart. It hurt. Gods, it hurt so much.

That was when the body below me softened. When I opened my eyes, through the blurry mess of my tears I could see him looking up at me with those quiet eyes again. I released him, but the tears refused to stop.

"He's right, Jesiter," I cried as I rubbed my eyes like a sobbing child. "I'm no good for you. Everything I've done... It's just been forcing you to be something that won't make you happy. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

My brother was right. What I was doing was selfish. Someone like Jesiter needed to be free to live as himself, away from a society that he could never be a part of. With that on my mind, I stood and staggered to the stairs. I made up my mind by then, holding onto the rail, that I would set him free somewhere safe and be done with this.

It was for the best.

Behind me, my ears tried to deceive me with the sound of the boy standing in a panic. It sounded like he was mewing for me, calling out to me. I thought I heard him stumble for a rock, even feeling the dull aches of the pelts against my back; I thought he ran up the steps and yanked my arm back, but I ignored it. I thought I could hear him crying.

As much as I couldn't allow myself to think that he wanted me to stay with him, there was one sound I couldn't pretend not to hear.

"Cyrus!"