Do You See What Eye See [exover, end day one]

Said the night wind to the little lamb
Do you see what I see

Dreams kissed him like snow from low-hanging branches. Not the kind of soft, flowering white that danced breezily down his cheek, but the snow that fell in dense piles heavy as sand, smearing his face with a hundred wet smiles he didn’t try to deny. Arms stretched to the cold above, wrapping ungloved fingers around the blanketed bark, letting the tingle of numbness spread from the tips of his hands through his palms to his forearms. His mouth stretched too, wide to his ears, a grin growing more unnatural the longer he held. But nothing was as welcome as winter; nothing warmed him like the ice that built Exover tall and strong and sturdy.

Without the quiet, panting sobs of a mother down the hall or the neon floods of the capitol pooling in his sockets, he slept like a baby. There were no colors beyond the purity of snow and the faded gray wood that leaned over him, curled him into its hollows and breathed solace through his bones. And he loved it. He loved the whisper of the winds, the crunch of dead leaves, the frozen, easy life afforded only when he let go.

But he couldn’t let go for long. Winds blew harder and rougher and faster, tossing the leaves like his foot and pulling him deeper into the trunk. The sky darkened and the branches shook, scattering the snow, leaving bare bark to scratch across his face and thrust his head into the heart of the tree. He felt it beat, felt its life rush through him with the harsh, rasping words of the storm. His hands remained closed around a branch, doing his best to wrestle its slumbering wrath away from his face, but a mere boy was no match for the strength of the woods, and his eyes were stolen from right above his nose, mother nature claiming his safety as her own, slinging them aside with a fluid flick of the bough.

In the seconds before his chest heaved skyward and the fresh mountainside air swam through his lungs, he heard the screeching warning of the gale-spun birds: “You will see once more from the top of the roar.”

He gasped for a breath he held from himself. Silence filled his ears with the loudest buzz, but there was nothing honey-sweet to be found in his head. As the buzzing died, he remembered he was supposed to be ‘keeping watch’, supposed to be protecting these three people who would almost certainly outlast him yet treated him like he was there to stay. There had been obvious hesitation in allowing him a turn, but he put his remaining foot down.

Way up in the sky little lamb
Do you see what I see

They were right, he thought, to question his abilities. But they caved for him, maybe out of lack of concern for just two hours sleeping in a blind spot, maybe out of a genuine desire to show the people back home they weren’t discriminatory to the handicapped. Not for trusting him. He’d done nothing to warrant their trust besides allowing them to pilfer his few belongings, and not throwing hands at them in the bloodbath. Otherwise, he’d screamed and pouted, and he couldn’t fathom how anyone would want to lug him around for the rest of the games.

And when it hit him, it hit hard. He was their shield. He was the hastily nailed together hand-made safeguard, the one with the noisy helmet and whatever weapon no one else wanted. He found the breath he’d withheld, and stood up so fast he toppled face first before he made it all the way. A wind, cold with the night, blew through their campsite, and again the fresh air filled his lungs, and he wouldn’t let himself stay down, stay defeated, and there was energy surging inside him unlike any he’d felt before, like the volcanic eruption of Saturn Rhodon not even 24 hours earlier, like he was alive and whole and powerful.

He remembered the words of the birds, taking flight amongst the hurricane of his dreams as his eyes were plucked and tossed away, and he knew what they meant. The breath of power the mountains gave him did nothing to dull that razor-edged thought, and he began pulling himself up. Cowardice was forgone, forced out by the breeze that ushered in his current plan of action. Exover had time before the sheriff’s shift, and he would see the warning through. Dreams meant something to him, reflections and mirrors that offered a glimpse into the sights he’d lost, and he didn’t take them lightly. It was why he gave himself to the boy from one, and it was why he pulled himself higher up the mountain, higher and higher till he reached the top, and sweat drenched his clothes, sticking them to his skin. He unbuttoned, only the top two buttons, before slinging his shirt off his back and over the side of the mountain.

Briefly, he felt the wind blow hard enough to throw him off like wet clothes, but he knew it beckoned for something else.

Smiling, he pushed everything out of him in one great, shouting breath, the force of the gusts in him spilling out of his lungs and loosening his grip on the branches deep inside. He screamed, one last time, big and loud and heavy, and as his lungs gave out the birds got what they wanted. Two hands scooped across his face, fingers curling around glass, holding on to the lies they convinced him and the false security they yielded. “You will see once more from the top of the roar,” he repeated, and Exover launched the unnatural out into the world, and the energy spilled from him and he collapsed flat onto his back, happy and weightless.

A star, a star
Dancing in the night
With a tail as big as a kite
With a tail as big as a kite

ooc: ex is affected by the good for the soul re here
ex throws away his glass eyes, and also his shirt
ex also is a bad ally at keeping watch, but like. how he gonna keep watch by night he not a shephard
title and lyrics credit to Do You Hear What I Hear, most recently recorded by Carrie Underwood