Chapter Text
The sun has always been a cruel thing. Bearing down on the soil with an unforgiving heat, those trapped underneath its scrutiny being forced to adapt or die slowly to dehydration, only to be torn apart by the vultures that swirled just out of reach. The heat wasn't all there was. In a jungle as dense as this one the air thickens to form a heavy blanket over everything that moves, humidity sticking to every surface; a slow boil.
Wemmbu knew he'd be next. Next in line to the afterlife, next in line of being a vultures snack. It was sad honestly. A life so unfulfilled as to be accepting of imminent death. How could he argue? He had only just begun to live so what more was there to fight for?
In his 7 years Wemmbu couldn't remember a moment of genuine warmth. He'd been hunted, chased scrutinised, all over the purple hue of his skin, the short winding tail sprouting from his lower back and the slight obsidians poking from his hairline; horns. Right, that's why. They'd hunted him because of what he was, what he was worth as an object - an end species of some kind, evident by the unyeilding purple hair clinging to his forehead and the back of his neck and by the barely there horns that seemed to reflect that same purple glow.
End hybrids were valuable. Visually. Their feautres mounted on walls, decorating the homes of the rich and depraved who saw rarities, even in living beings, as a commodity. He'd seen it briefly. When Wemmbu had been lured into the arms of a stranger with promises of safety and security, to finally eat a full meal and get a good nights rest - he'd seen it. The way they had only looked at his horns, at his eyes with their dark scleras and irises of a shifting gold. He'd seen how the same obsidian of his horns had been woven into their jewellery.
And Wemmbu knew he'd be next. Despite his age and how he was never in one place long enough to learn how to speak, Wemmbu was observant. And quick. He'd fled that warm house as quickly as he'd arrived, unwilling to surrender himself to the same fate that others before him had suffered, he wasn't an object, or an item to be passed, hand to hand.
And so he walked. His feet were raw, torn, though he didn't flinch as twigs snapped underfoot and as splinters lodges their way into his soles. He couldn't afford to focus on the pain so he did what he'd learned through the years and he tucked it away, into a neat little corner in the back of his mind. Eventually if he didn't address the pain for long enough he would either adapt to it or it would go away.
One thing, however, that Wemmbu couldn't stand, was the heat. He was never quite sure exactly what he was or where he was from but he knew that he was an end hybrid of some kind, creatures that ran cold naturally with their home being the desolate end dimension, so for him to be displaced into a humid jungle-scape was nothing short of torture on the young boy. Heat clung to him unnaturally and he could feel the way it seemed to almost burn at his bones, making each step feel like he was walking on glass, a careful tiptoe between life and this all consuming heat that felt like death to him.
He was hungry too, and as the sun seemed to lower inch by inch Wemmbu felt a relief and hope soak into him. Maybe once the sun sets, mobs will take him for easy pickings and will approach, the vultures might swing down from their height above him and they might finally come in reach, close enough for Wemmbu to reach out and grab them before they can get to him. He knew he could, despite him being slightly weaker from the lack of food up until this point he knew he had a latent strength and instincts to match, and should the vultures fly down to him he'd be quick to break their necks and feast on them first. It's only fair, he justified, they were trying to eat him first. He wasn't a monster. He couldn't understand the warmth that some of the people he'd seen were showing each other, how they could smile and hold each other with such genuine happiness. Sure he couldn't understand it, and he'd never himself experienced it and the thought of being shown that happy expression unsettled him somewhere in his core; but that didn't make him a monster.
He was just… Different. He was only 7 years old from what he could gather about himself but he fought for life like a cornered animal. He couldn't afford to want for things to be different, for himself to be different, when he had no idea for how long he'd still be alive.
As the sun dips under the horizon the jungle doesn't seem to quiet, instead animals seem to be all Wemmbu hears. Theres the sound of crickets and distantly he thinks he can hear the croaking of a frog. Frogs were too fast for him to catch. Especially now with his vision being entirely reliant on the last dregs of light leaving the sky. He thinks that maybe the distant chittering might belong to coyotes and he decides against that as well - coyotes are pack animals and while they hunt in loose pairs he decides that a starving child won't do much against two coyotes at once, even with his natural strength.
Rumbling cuts through his thoughts. The sky seems to split as a bolt of lightning strikes across the darkening sky, a large boom rattling through the air. Ah, of course it has to rain.
Well they do say that when it rains it pours. Before the trickling starts Wemmbu quickly rushes to a nearby tree, the inside seemingly hollow. It's cramped but it would work, he settles himself inside, his dark tail deftly wrapping around his right leg as he tugs his knees up to his chest. Wemmbu is small, just as any malnourished 7 year old would be, but the space is small too, barely wide enough for his knees to pull under cover from the beginning of a downpour. His feet dont fit under, even as he tries to manoeuvre to try and tuck himself in tighter, to cover all of him, his toes seem to poke out of the edges already catching the icy shards of water splashing them.
Honestly, the cold water offers almost instant relief to his aching feet. Wemmbu turns them slightly, observing the wounds that flash across the bottom of them, they're dirty and untreated and Wemmbu thinks he remembers a villager saying something about keeping wounds clean to avoid infection and so he slowly edges his torn feet out into the now pelting rain storm, letting the freezing water wash the grime from the cuts, hissing slightly as the water hits the wounds before tucking that pain, too, away into his neat little box.
If Wemmbu couldn't have control over anything else in his life he'd have control over his pain and when he chose to feel it.
Another crack whistles across the sky, the sudden flash painting him in light, he sees his pale violet skin flash. He isn't wearing much, clothes he'd managed to snatch from washing lines in the villages he'd been chased from soon after. He wears a beige vest, tatty and stained, and brown shorts that leave his legs uncovered and slightly shivering in the cold. End creatures were… particular when it comes to temperature. They couldn't be in such heat as nether hybrids and they also couldn't stand in the cold of a void as voidlings could.
Wemmbu thinks for a moment if thats why theres so few of them - they couldn't survive outside a goldilocks zone of their own temperature without extreme fevers or death and those that did survive were hunted for their beauty and aesthetic value. Maybe that was why even through his years of running place to place that he'd never ran into anyone like him.
In that moment Wemmbu feels truly alone. He wonders again what that genuine warmth is like, what it feels like to be held by someone just like you, someone who could understand you in a way that no one else could. He wonders if he ever had someone like that, a mother or a father, a person who was a half of him, who could understand his turmoil and struggles, or if, just like his memories, he just.. began existing. Began existing with nobody there waiting for him, no one to celebrate his arrival.
The sun wasn't the only cruel thing, Wemmbu decided. Life was also cruel, equally as unforgiving, and he wonders why he began to live in the first place.
Somewhere lost in thought, Wemmbu didn't catch the sound of a not-so-distant branch breaking, nor does he catch the voice of a stranger muttering out a curse to the weather. As the boys eyes unfocus onto the cold shiver of his exposed feet he doesn't notice as another pair appear in front of him. In fact he doesn't notice anything at all. Distantly he recognises that he's tucked himself away in that neat little box of pain, because he himself felt like nothing but pain.
So even as the stranger kneels down and starts to speak to him from underneath what looks like a lion pelt, the words do nothing but swim in his periphery. Wemmbu doesn't acknowledge the danger that a stranger poses, not any more. He can't force himself to look up and assess whether these will be his last moments because maybe if they are he won't have to keep walking to no particular destination when the sun rises, maybe then he'll be free from the scrutiny, the lens of pain focused on him by unseeing god or deity.
Somewhere further away from himself he feels himself being lifted into the arms of the stranger, and expecting to feel the cold shards of rain batting down on him relentlessly he might've felt surprised, if he were more presently himself, as that lion pelt is draped over him, shielding him from the wrath of the sky. He's tucked firmly against the strangers chest, which smells faintly of wood and a sweet flower of some kind, and the warmth from the hold doesn't feel cruel this time.
Somewhere inside of himself, a tight knot loosens, if only slightly. And with it, his grasp on consciousness loosens too, eyes slipping closed, Wemmbu drifts into a dreamless sleep.