When he tried to lift the tray, it resisted him. He wedged it to his chest with his wings clamped on either side, but no matter how hard he squeezed, he could not hold the weight without losing his grip. But it was not the weight that unnerved him.
He waited for the exhaustion and the pain. As Yu fumbled with the tray, again and again rearranging his stance and hold, he waited for it; for the throbbing of his burns where the skin was raw, for the sting in his sides and the tug in his back, for he tremor in his legs. None came. His body still felt very far away from the surface. No part of him wanted to recover and relive the exhaustion of the day and the pain from bis wounds, but just like with his lack of hunger, it worried him. Because he should feel it. It should be there. It had been, during the whole day. It was not gone. It had only sunk deeper, drawn down into that other pulse, the one that wanted, and would not still.
The other pain.
The other aching.
The other HUNGER.
Get a hold of yourself.
Yu tried to. He really did. But he could not even get a hold of the fucking tray. His frustration rose in waves. His wings shifted, adjusted, slipped again. No grip seemed right. There was never enough room to secure his hold. The tray was too broad and flat; the rim too narrow to catch. He tried locking it between his upper wing and the blunt stump of his lower one, bent awkwardly round his elbows, but he could not properly lock it in. It was basically a flat board on a flat table that he tried to pick up with his elbow tips.
Eventually, Yu eased one side of the tray over the edge of the table. That felt like progress — for all of three seconds. One end raised meant nothing if the other still clung to the wood. So he pushed further, shoving the tray toward the corner of the table, until both short sides hung out into the air. It was, in principle, a plan, just not a viable one. He could not free much of the rim, less than a third on each side, else the whole thing would tip.
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