Hunger (Old)

Hunger | Chapter Six | A Cold Winters Day

The waves crashed below us in white caps and the breeze swept through the high plain grass.

For once, in all of my existence, it was calm. I didn't feel much withdrawal, it was just the feeling of immense tiredness.

Pine stayed away from me, he had picked me up using his newly developed horns and dragged me to this calm place. He had grown, not just physically, but mentally when I last saw him. An hour or two ago I told him of the red vision, how everything was blurry, how I didn't know what I was doing.

He picked up what I was saying instantly. He had seen his father being captured by the humans, and the one question that I was leading up to, the one question I didn't want to answer, had finally come up.

"Did you see him?" He asked me once, and I didn't answer, I just stared at the rolling waves that crashed on the rocks of the cliff with explosions of sea foam. "Did you see him, Reed?" He asked me once more, and yet again I didn't answer. His voice was getting deeper, angrier.

"Did you kill him, Reed..?" I had never heard him sound like this before, I hadn't known he could be so serious. Yet, he had grown.

I put my head down, my smile from the calmness gone. "Yes." I told him then. I remembered the blood, the laughter of my own voice. The hunger and the red.

He knocked me over, scraping my side with his horns. I winced in pain as I stood up from being rolled over. His eyes shone with pain and anger. He charged at me and I dodged out of the way without trying. I didn't want to fight anymore.

"Come on you murder, fight me, kill me like you killed my father!" He screamed to me and ran straight toward me again. Yet again I dodged. His horns were sharp and he was focused on killing me. I knew deep down he didn't want to so I didn't let him. If he wanted to I would've let him gladly, it was what I deserved.

"You're just like Hemlock." He told me, and I looked up at him finally, I showed him the pain, the pain of killing his father, the pain of being compared to our worst enemy, the massive featherless Rex that murdered his mother, the Rex that murdered my friends. And it was all for fun.

He relaxed, a look of understanding, a look of apology. I turned away, now not in danger of his horns. I walked a good while before I sat down again. I looked at the waves and this time they weren't calm. They were heavily white-capped now, twenty and thirty feet tall.

And I sat like that for an hour before he finally came over. Now he sat next to me, his scales entrapped in my feathers, like how he used to be, only he was half my size now. I looked right, onto the jagged cliff side. Pine looked left, away from me.

Thunder roared across the sky. The blistering cold wind whined past us suddenly, a storm was on its way.

Although we were in a serious argument, I stood up and went to his other side. I wrapped him in my feathers to keep him warm, I didn't want him to freeze to death right next to me. He curled his head in and I kept mine on the outside, taking the brunt of the cold.

"I'm sorry." Pine finally spoke. "For being so angry. I just couldn't comprehend that my friend that I've been searching for, what, a month now? Happened to kill someone very, influential to me." His voice was less sad now, it was rather timid.

"I didn't mean to, little brother," I closed my eyes. "I never meant to hurt anyone in that place." He looked to me, "I forgive you, brother."

I started to drift off, the last words I heard were Pines, "You just have to forgive yourself." Then everything faded into a red color, I had passed out, yet I didn't know I was asleep. It all felt so real.