Sisterhood of the travelling boob meets Darius

She disappeared in a cloud of ash and dust – sprinkling down from head to toe. With a deep breath, in a solemn moment, she was gone. He had never considered himself a tormentor, a masochist; simply put, he had always been a hedonist. He stumbled over words, and his feet, mumbling through the bleak desert reminiscing on Jordan’s shallow red hair, and how at the drop of a hat a candle can extinguish. One simple huff and a deck of cards would collapse. Darius knew that she had watched every moment, reaching out to catch his weakened body, shrieking as he swung through trouble – she wasn’t there, she wasn’t there, she isn’t here. He reminds himself constantly, Jordan was not there with him, she was back home safe and sound, tending to the sheep.

Axe in hand, he wonders though, wonders if though hundreds of miles away, back in the cages of Ten, if she hadn’t simply disappeared herself in a blast of ash, sinking away at the sight of his swinging tomahawk. There are a hundred and thirty-four stars in his head, he twists around them, walking in circles, above and below circles, and he dances around their melancholy songs of torment. He feels the splatter of paint across his bodice, the sweet sticky syrup sweating down his face in a desperate attempt to return to its body – and yet, it was a mark of the monster he’d become, a transfer from gentle shepherd to the wolf who hunts them. Where once there was a tender defender, in his place stood fangs and fur.

In his mind he heard the circus bells chime, a large tent pitched as he wandered along – simply parched from such a long journey. ’Come one, come all!’ they shout, ’Come see the amazing Wolf Boy’ Darius kept his feet directly attached to the ground, there would be no more floating any more, those were for the days past. His skin itched, broke into hives, he felt the sun harsher than he ever had before, and yet every few moments felt the small chill of a snowy winter. It was just a slow suicide, as he anchored each toe with every step. Heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe. It was a simple pattern, dragging him along in circles towards the inevitable presentation of his new colours. He felt patches of hair exploding from each little drop of blood that the girl had splattered onto him. Each patch was harrowing, thick, and recognizable from a distance, he imagined – it would be soon enough that he was simply scary enough to look at. It would freeze his enemies into petrification, a wolf in sheep’s armor, a child with no medication to soothe his worried soul, it would take his very tomahawk to thaw them from their frozen state, and he would simply obey they call of the hunt.

With each step, he suppressed a roar, was careful not to let the horseshoes that he carried on a chain to jangle too much, but wasn’t too concerned with the sound that further let him embrace his jail time for his crimes, like shackles they dragged him along, a constant reminder of the girl – the potentially Jordan, who he had slain.

He allowed the cacti to touch his sorrow filled frame as he passed them, winced as each new patch of hair would grow from the small wounds – soon enough he would be encompassed by the fur, soon he would drop to all fours and attack prey with his axe teeth – he could become monstrous. Outcry, break down each human he saw down to the very bone, degenerate into a primal state. He could ignore his stomach’s need to fly, to absolve all duties and fly high above the world like a gentle star – he could become inhuman, if he wanted to, if he wanted to, but he didn’t. Darius could only see in straight lines, looking to the left or right made him particularly dizzy, though he was sure he hadn’t been walking in straight lines much at all. The world was all sorts of crazy, he was crazy, the arena was crazy, death was crazy, and simply put – he was absolutely nutty. He giggled to himself at the thought of being an absolute nutter, it seemed unlikely at some point in time but with his cleanse, the lack of ability to detach himself from his body, it was an inevitable discovery. Darius Radler was certifiably insane. Still he pestered onwards, eventually, he would find the two girls that attached themselves to him and they could keep walking, probably. Or they could just become their very own pack and run away together somewhere very far where the booming cannons could not touch them. Or perhaps –

His thoughts were interrupted by a huge upheaval coming from every direction, a large puking sound, a couple howls, a large clink, and then the sign of parachutes swimming in the sky, small umbrellas dripping down the endless rain. He wandered towards them, desperate to grab onto anything that is medically draining – he was weak, no treatment could save him that was for sure. Where once he was disembodied, now he was left with a small hole, endless, unfilled – he had a reprieve, but how could he fill it with something if there was nothing there? He distastefully crashed through the cacti; allowed them to prick him, absorb what little bits of him there still were anyways. Followed the sounds of slight cheering, slight torment, and slight dread to find a group of sheep, a bunch of children waiting. He gripped the chain at his left tensely, after all who wouldn’t be a wolf in sheep’s clothing here?

“Horseshoes, anyone?”

[Darius gathers firewood bundle]