Book One – Chapter 19

He swallowed, throat tight. He swallowed all the thoughts that pressed into his beak, the ones he did not want to keep there long enough to recognise their taste. And even though that did nothing to rouse his appetite, he finally tipped his beak into the bowl. The stew burned his tongue. He forced it down. One mouthful. Then another.

It should warm him, ease him.

It should do good.

It should feel good.

Yu understood all that, but felt none of it. Not with the third mouthful. Not with the fourth. The logic was there, but the feeling refused to follow. Still he went on, beak to bowl, until he had to lift and tilt it with his wings against his face to scarpe the rest. Like that, he finished the whole portion. It was too much, and at the same time, it gave him nothing. The stew sat heavy inside him; a stone of fat and broth dragging at his gut, stretching it to sickness. And yet, the hollowness remained. The food did not fill it. It only pressed against it. It only unsettled. And as Yu sat on the stool and wallowed in his stomach ache, staring from the bowl into the dead fire, warm and cold, full and empty, sick and wanting more, he felt the mask slipping. Underneath, one part was fighting harder than the other to take over.

Yu pressed his wings against his face.

This new, wanting part of him was dangerous. It was strange. It was alien. It was in him, yes, just like the other, but at the same time, it was not … of him. It was not … in his body. The screaming part was all fear and pain. It was distorted, displaced, and exaggerated to the hysterical, but still, despite all that, Yu could understand where the terror came from. He had felt all those things before, in one form or another. But this new thing, this wanting, shared none of what the screaming part or the mask expressed. It did not register the aching in his back or the tremors in his legs. It did not acknowledge the burns along his wings, or the twisting of his gut. It was detached and displaced, unbound from nerve and pulse, and yet it was overwhelming. It felt just so strong. Yu felt it push. He felt it ripple behind the mask like murmurs in a flooded ear. It pressed upward through him, swelling with every breath.