Crystalline

Vigil

She'd felt solid and real in his arms, warm and soft and slippery with blood. This is something he can't seem to get over.

He watched through the glass, a room that this one was safely contained in, as they threw themselves against the window, over and over and over. Until their movements became feeble and slow and their breaths fogged the glass that they collapsed against. 

"Exhausted yourself, Trent?" his father asked. His voice was as cold as usual, his gaze calculating. He gave each of the subjects names. He'd said, when asked, that it humanised them. He shuddered, thinking that the blood and pain and tears were enough to make them human. 

The boy behind the glass panted, his breath ballooning, trapped against the glass, and didn't reply. Apparently satisfied with this non-answer, the man nodded and leant closer to the microphone. "Show me," he said, somehow imbuing the two words with a command. 

Defeated, his thin shoulders slumped, the boy backed into the centre of the room. He raised his tear-stained face and glared at the man, the only defiance he was able to show, the only control he had his own expression. He couldn't have been more than eleven, thin and as normal-looking as any other eleven year old. Until his eyes blazed from brown to gold, and he started to change. 

The thick glass distorted him as his body twisted and heaved, his chest rising and falling rapidly as the bones in his shoulders clicked, loud through the speakers. Bones grated against each other as he shifted, twisted, screamed so loudly that his ears rang with the sound. 

"Turn the volume down, Kale," his father said. As if the sound were a mobile phone or stereo or TV, instead of a child screaming in pain. 

He reached over and turned the speakers down a few notches, his eyes never leaving the boy, as if he could offer him some sort of comfort. He felt as if he were sitting vigil, offering strength through the inch of glass, someone who cared where his father watched with sharp eyes and no acknowledgement of this boy being a human. His clothes fell from his body, torn to shreds as he grew, fur rippling over his skin like water. It could not be as quick as it looked; the pain changed seconds to hours, centuries. The screams made it eternity.

He forced himself to look even when all he wanted was to look away. And, finally, it was over. Nails clicked on the concrete floor as a wolf backed out of the shredded remnants of the boy's clothing.

And then he watched everything go back the way it came; fur receding into skin, nails drawing back into fingers, til the boy huddled, small and naked, on the ground. Feeling the same way he had with the girl, the same unexplainable responsibility, he went to the boy before the others could and wrapped the child in a blanket. He couldn't walk; blood stained his fingers, and his nails were bloody, his skin raw. He flinched when Kale picked him up.

He carried the boy to his room and watched his fitful movements til he fell asleep. Then he left, silently, sounds and images whirring through his mind so fast he could hardly remember what he was thinking before it was gone.