01-09-2020, 12:35 PM
[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]Ahab was never born.
Correction: he does not remember a childhood. He was born in a clean white room, swaddled in bandages, thrashing until needles met his neck and he went so, so calm. He was born twice. Three times. As many times as they needed to start over and make something good of his remains. If he was once small, he cannot imagine it. He was born of wires and metal and intravenous tubes threaded into his neck. He was born of pain and disfigurement. And now, he lives.
The bear sees something small and feels - pain? Pity. It can't live alone, like him. It doesn't know any better and could slip and fall off a cliffside, drown in the ocean waters, scale a tree and never find its way back down without a body full of broken bones. He wants to pick up the small, defenseless thing and carry it to safety, back to its den. It never has to die. It never has to be born again with broken pieces missing and doctors sewing it back together.
Ahab wants to hold the child and weep. The world is not kind enough for something so innocent.
But the child is a living thing (he, not it, Ahab corrects himself) that has the benefit of a mother, unlike the many faces of the past that he cannot remember, himself. If the grizzly had a mother, has one, she's long gone - unimportant, blank-faced, nothing but a distant dream. If she is alive, that does not matter. She wouldn't recognize him, anyway. Yet Roxanne carries a presence that speaks of warmth and motherly joy, graciously protective of her son, and as she welcomes him into the open Ahab feels a pang of... Loss. Grief for something he cannot recall, or perhaps only grief at the loss of memory. He banishes the thought with a shake of his pelt. He's too old to be hurting like this.
Ahab regards Roxanne with a slow tilt of his head, gently nodding his chin towards the smaller feline squirming after a beetle. As she stops to groom a cowlick on Roan's head, he can't help a phantom of a smile - just a quirk of his lip, but enough to ease the rugged features that led many to avoid his direct gaze. "...Your son?" It's barely a question. Clearly she's a doting mother, but it would be rude to acknowledge the child before greeting his parents.
Correction: he does not remember a childhood. He was born in a clean white room, swaddled in bandages, thrashing until needles met his neck and he went so, so calm. He was born twice. Three times. As many times as they needed to start over and make something good of his remains. If he was once small, he cannot imagine it. He was born of wires and metal and intravenous tubes threaded into his neck. He was born of pain and disfigurement. And now, he lives.
The bear sees something small and feels - pain? Pity. It can't live alone, like him. It doesn't know any better and could slip and fall off a cliffside, drown in the ocean waters, scale a tree and never find its way back down without a body full of broken bones. He wants to pick up the small, defenseless thing and carry it to safety, back to its den. It never has to die. It never has to be born again with broken pieces missing and doctors sewing it back together.
Ahab wants to hold the child and weep. The world is not kind enough for something so innocent.
But the child is a living thing (he, not it, Ahab corrects himself) that has the benefit of a mother, unlike the many faces of the past that he cannot remember, himself. If the grizzly had a mother, has one, she's long gone - unimportant, blank-faced, nothing but a distant dream. If she is alive, that does not matter. She wouldn't recognize him, anyway. Yet Roxanne carries a presence that speaks of warmth and motherly joy, graciously protective of her son, and as she welcomes him into the open Ahab feels a pang of... Loss. Grief for something he cannot recall, or perhaps only grief at the loss of memory. He banishes the thought with a shake of his pelt. He's too old to be hurting like this.
Ahab regards Roxanne with a slow tilt of his head, gently nodding his chin towards the smaller feline squirming after a beetle. As she stops to groom a cowlick on Roan's head, he can't help a phantom of a smile - just a quirk of his lip, but enough to ease the rugged features that led many to avoid his direct gaze. "...Your son?" It's barely a question. Clearly she's a doting mother, but it would be rude to acknowledge the child before greeting his parents.
[align=center][div style="text-align:right;width:59%;font-family:verdana;"][font=verdana][size=11pt][color=transparent][url=https://beastsofbeyond.com/index.php?topic=13462.0][color=black][b][i]LET HIM WHO THINKS HE KNOWS NO FEAR
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE