The Hungry Boy - We Wretched Creatures (a lore story PT.1)

So long ago, it has been forgotten by time...

According to the boy, there were only 9 people in the world. Himself, his six siblings, his father and his mother.

They lived on a hilltop, overlooking vast swathes of green grass. He and his siblings spent most of their free time playing in those fields. It seemed like each day they invented something new to try.

It was easier to grow bored as they aged. Days were filled up each year with more work to keep the farm going. His hatred for doing what he deemed ‘menial’ work was like a bottomless well. He felt his hands were made for more than the dirt.

One day, the boy – near adulthood – saw another person for the first time. He had joyously gone to them, excitement running through his veins at seeing another face that wasn’t those same nine faces he had etched in his mind.

But they were too far away from him, when they saw him running towards them they fled. He made to follow but a shout from his brother stopped him.

The boy’s brother looked nervously back at the farm, hoping their father hadn’t seen what the boy was about to do.

The boy trudged back to his brother, his head hanging low and a burning in his eyes.

The boy’s brother gripped his shoulders and said in a language that no longer exists, “what were you thinking?”

The boy had an urge to throw his brother’s arms off. This surge of violence was not new, he has had flashes of it all his life. It does surprise him though, the intensity of the feeling and how long it takes him each time to stop feeling it.

“There are other people out there, Soris,” the boy told his brother. “I think it was a man I saw.”

Soris stared gravely at his brother, his fingers dug into the boy’s warm shoulders — burnt by the sun. “Forget it, Brother.”

The boy shook his head. “It is not just these walls we will know, Brother. There are other things out there beyond the grass. People—”

Soris put a finger to his lips and stole a glance towards the house. He threw his arm around his brother and started leading him away from the house. In whispers, he said, “I have seen them too. Our other siblings have as well. We have agreed to let it be forgotten.”

The boy looked at his brother, “why? We could speak to them—”

Soris shushed his brother. “No, Father would not like that.”

His brother suppressed a growl. “Until when must we do as Father commands?”

Soris sighed. “Father gave us this life, he has fed us and clothed us. If he believes we should remain here, then so it must be.”

The boy threw off his brother’s arm and deigned to get angry with him. “Can you not see will we die in this place without having ever lived? There is a world unlike the four walls of the farm out there.”

The boy gently cupped his brother’s cheeks, “at our fingertips, Soris. I am brave and you are smart, we could survive out there.”

Soris looked down at the grass in between his toes. “And our siblings?”

The boy’s smile slightly dropped. “They are younger than us, they would not survive without Mother and Father.”

Soris gently lowered his brother’s hands from his face, “I cannot so easily abandon our family. We are like a body, all parts must work in tandem to live.”

The boy curled his lip and walked away from Soris. He abruptly turned around and said furiously, “a body will die if you do not cut the rot.”

Soris called the boy to come back, but he was enraged. He walked without direction, along those fields of grass he knew like the back of his hand. He thought of going, as unreasonable as that choice would be with only the clothes on his back.

He laid down, laying his head on his crossed arms. He looked up at the blue cerulean sky and tried to make things out of the clouds. But they all looked like things he had never seen before. Perhaps they did not exist.

Mayhaps they existed out in the world, somewhere.

He would not give up, he would convince Soris. His brother loved him, he would follow him so as to protect him from the unknown dangers.

But he was mistaken before. He would need to bring his siblings as well. They did not deserve to be slaves to the Earth. Not with their gifts.

He would wait. His younger brother Cuwoltus could only hide his fingers at first. As the years went by and he practiced he could make most of his body disappear for minutes on end.

His sister could invade the world of sleep, make anyone see what she wanted them to. Initially it was out of her control; once she left the family donkey in dreams for a year.

The rest of his siblings had strange talents as well. No talent was the same nor did they progress the same. Soris was the most advanced of them all. His talent suited him.

The boy grew bitter as he watched his siblings play with their gifts. This was a game he could not partake within the grass. They would openly mock him with their eyes, only once did they dare throw their superiority in his face. He made them pay dearly for it.

Father would punish his siblings cruelly if he caught them exercising their talents. He said, those things are not of God. They are of sin.

In spite of being the only one without any odd talent, his father did not love him for he could see the hunger in his son’s eyes. The yearning for other than what life had given him. His father believed this trait could be beaten out.

But no matter. He would satiate the desire within him. All desire within, gobble it up like bones and crunch it between his carnivorous teeth.