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Keith woke up one morning and the horns were just there. He'd touched them -- carefully since they'd shredded his pillow and let loose a flurry of feathers that blanketed his bed and floor and lamp and table -- and they were hard and sharp and still a little slick. They were also very permanent, and pushing on them only made his head hurt like he had an all-over toothache and made him cut his finger. When he'd finally gotten up the courage to take a look at himself in the mirror, his eye was immediately drawn to them; small and white, like bone, and very noticeable, no matter how hard he tried to cover them up with his hair. He'd touched them again, and caused more blood to stain them pink.
"Well, damn."
* As it turned out, the horns weren't really all that bad. If he concentrated very hard, he found that hardly anybody noticed them. He'd occasionally get the odd look from Sven, but he figured it was because Sven was...special too. When the light was right, Keith found that he could see the ghost-image of wings on Sven's back, the not-there feathers shimmering in an eye-watering fashion. It was like starring at transparent mother-of-pearl, or the rainbowed slick of oil on a brilliantly clear pool. The only real trouble was that every so often he got the overwhelming urge to be contrary and mean, to be intentionally obtuse and purposefully hard-nosed. Like scheduling more Lion practice than was absolutely necessary, or reaming Lance out in front of the others, or flirting with the Princess when he had no intention of following up on his unspoken promises. The horns vibrated when he was mean and it was...pleasurable. In the secret darkness of his soul he reveled in the subtle evil he could spread, in how devastating his actions could be since he was, after all, the 'good' one, the knight. The Hero. But then he was intentionally deaf to Lance's desperate words about an attack and Haggar and Sven, and when he finally got there Sven was stuck through and try as hard as he could, he couldn't see the shimmer of wings. Not even the pleasure of the throbbing horns could overcome the nausea he felt over what he had done, what he might have stopped if he'd acted in time.
He stopped being mean after that.
* The shimmer of Sven's wings were stronger, now, which Keith thought of as odd since Sven had been to hell. If he approached them obliquely, he could actually feel them, feel the smooth glide of the feathers, the soft down that sprang up where they joined his shoulders. He liked to run his hands over the wings, smoothing the ruffled feathers. But he couldn't feel them all the time, and more often then not his hands touched the puckered scar where the sword had exited Sven's body. "I'm sorry," he whispered into the darkness of Sven's eyes, into the muffled silence of his wings. His horns ached and he had to bite his tongue to keep from saying more. "I know," Sven said. The wings came up, wrapped them together in their ghostly warmth. He touched Keith's horns and there was no blood. |