Kahi 2013/05/18 (Sat) 21:17 No. 49960 ▼ File 136891184911.jpg - (64.60KB, 420x490 , Casual Friday.jpg)
.... You don't think he had a diary.
More to the point, you're not really certain you could read it well if he did. Listening is one thing, literacy and comprehension, though.....
It doesn't come easy, no matter how much effort goes in. Your minds just aren't wired the same way, just like your bodies are similar, but in so many ways, that of a human is...
Strange. Subtly wrong. Proportions just... off, and not quite right. And in so many cases, just too thin, so thin, so gaunt, skin stretched over their skeletal frame like they're constantly starving, starving to death...
It can startle the unexpected, if they've never seen a real human before. But you get used to it quickly, or at least you did, and the young ones are much closer to normal. They just make you want to....
Pluck off every one of their pudgy little fingers, one by one~
.... You don't deal well with young children, as it happens. For much the same reason that some are very good baby-sitters. Too similar. And while in some, that triggers maternal instincts.... it just makes you hungry. Which is far from the desired first impulse for that sort of a job.
He explained it once. Pain and fear start internal reactions, chemically altering compositions to increase sugar levels, and since you gain more nutrition from sugary substances than anything else, it's only logical for a biological imperative to arise, making it more likely for you to cause those reactions before eating....
And hence, the sadism. Supposedly. He'd always liked to have a thought out, reasonable, logical and scientific answer for things. Even when 'things' included dark and whispering shadows moving beneath distant tree-lines, or hunting parties that left to track boar with ten men and returned with only nine, and didn't notice at all until attention was drawn to this fact, and then seemed to forget almost as fast as another topic of conversation came up.
There was always definitely a scientific explanation for phenomenae, even if the required equipment and technological practices to determine it had not yet been devised.... he had said.
Usually, though, after such instances, he had made a point out of cleaning the old rifle hanging on the wall, and assuring himself it still functioned by shooting down a convenient bird or two.
Still...
Your memory isn't that great. You remember highlights, more than anything else.
It was a long time ago, that you remember first coming here, kept in a small wooden box and with the weight of the stigma of property already hanging heavy about your neck, as it does to this very day. Before that, you can remember nothing, but from what you have heard you are almost grateful for that fact.
Spirited, and full of temper, it had taken some time before you were set loose, to play your role. Not to tend the crops, no... you wouldn't have the slightest notion where to begin, and trying to teach you that right off wouldn't have been a cost-effective use of you.
You were the guard dog. Both a visual and terrifying deterrent, even against those who would venture into a garden which she tended, and the savage end of those too foolish or desperate to turn away and scavenge elsewhere.
To be frank, it wasn't a job that you had hated.
But even so, you left the farm twice in your life, both towards the start of it.
The first was a simple matter of disgruntled petulance. Nothing had dared venture into the crops for some time, but you were not permitted to hunt beyond boundaries marked by the fence, and otherwise were to eat what was offered you.
It was not poor sustenance, but it did not satisfy, in the visceral way that falling upon and tearing apart a screaming trespasser filled you with pleasant warmth entirely unrelated to your belly being filled. You were a predator. You needed to feed upon prey.
And so you slipped out, of a night, and spread your hunt wider afield.
Naturally, you almost immediately became horribly and bewilderingly lost in the countryside. Days passed, as you found that those both cannier and less desperate than those who ventured into the crops were also cunning enough to ignore their hunger and not reveal themselves for anything, when the chiming of crystals foretold of you. you became hungry, lost, and alone, and found yourself eating grass and tree bark as whispering shadows followed in your wake, laughing in the dark, just beyond your eyes, always just flickering away before they could be seen, and coming bit by bit closer with every night to pass.
And then had come the bear, which had been a complete accident on your part, though in hindsight you might have considered that a convenient cave to keep off a soft rainfall might already have been occupied.
You had escaped from that mess only by leaving behind a limb, and spent the night shuddering in a tree-top, oozing from the rents, and desperately, horribly aware that you were born to be a chained dog had not the slightest idea how to survive as a wild one.
The last you can remember, before finally losing the last of your strength and falling out of the tree, was the slow approach of a deep motor.
You had woken back at the farm, surprised and relieved to still be alive, and with food being steadily given to you, your wounds healed and your arm steadily grew back.
The second time you left, it had been from a different biological imperative entirely.
You had wanted... no. You had needed, with some instinctual desperation, to procreate, or at least go through the motions in order to silence the subconscious urges pressing at you and insisting that it had been far too long already, you knew full well that the effective and expected lifespan of a yukkuri was hardly a full season in the wild, and you were well and away beyond that, you could die at any moment and you don't have any little ones to continue on....
He would happily deal with her maternal instincts. As he would put it, you always needed more farm-hands.
But you only needed the one guard dog.
And so he went the Scientific, and therefore superior, route of artificial procreation with pre-prepared and pre-packaged insemination substance, resulting in lots of infants for her, quieting that hind-brain urging on her part, and leaving you out in the cold, as it were.
.... You're pretty sure, when it came down to it, that even just going through the motions, even with maternal fulfillment ultimately impossible, would have been more than enough.
But he was unbelievably and absurdly dense, not rebuffing but just completely missing your steadily less and less subtle propositions, right up to and including just stripping down completely and flopping down on top of his sheets, invitation blatant.
He hadn't clicked, and had instead curiously asked if you had gotten lost on the way to your own room, then helpfully carried you out and left you in your own bed.
'A man of human triumph over nature, my wife is this plot of earth, and our children are the fruits which are born from my toil.' was something he'd liked to say. You sometimes wonder if, while it was mostly metaphor, he was being at least a little bit literal with those declarations as well. You had later discovered that you were not alone in just plain not getting your intentions through, as he had through the years had more than just several options display themselves, only to eventually give up and turn toward more receptive partners. That, at least, later proved a salve to bruised pride.
In any case, the very next morning, you had taken a trespasser's stolen hat and clothes, slowly and painstakingly worked through the unnatural pain of folding your wings along the joints until they could be hidden away, more or less, and quietly left the farm for a time, leaving her with an explanation for him, and assurance that you would return after not too long.
It didn't even take a fortnight for infants to grow to adulthood, you could surely spare that long to silence this pressure of instinct.
And your gambit had worked fairly well. A Marisa, after all, was taken in far more readily to a slowly wandering troupe than the response a Flandre would receive.
And convenience of convenience, a suitable mate had been located. If you had to lock down one set of instincts for a bit, in order to similarly quiet another, then so be it. And you can admit, you grew... fond, through the brief phase of courtship.
You hadn't quite thought out, of course, what was obviously going to happen when the children were actually born.
It hadn't ended well for anyone involved, and at the end of it you had returned to the farm, sulking and needing desperately to clean yourself off with a fresh and damp scented towel.
About the only good thing that could be said for the series of events was that it did end in hushing those biological impulses, and though they didn't fade away from being a strong, if unconscious, concern for quite some time after that, they were no longer an immediate matter. You'd nodded to the demands of life, to procreate, even if it had ended.... messily.
Even so, those two instances aside, you haven't left the farm.
He never did much, either... even when shipments went out to the distant urban landscape, hungry people demanding food that couldn't readily be supplied from within a jungle of concrete and rebar, it was more often than not a matter of a truck coming here, to be loaded up with filled crates as empty ones were left behind, than it was of him actually leaving the farm to go anywhere.
.... You'd never really thought about it, in the end. It wasn't, after all, much of a question of what you wanted or did not want to do. The mark of property weighs heavy about your neck, and while that offers some protection, in many ways, it does not leave you with the luxury of choosing things.
You were purchased for a purpose, and so you couldn't really just leave.
... And now the passing of years and of age have taken their toll, and reminiscing on the past does little to make decisions now.
You slowly drain your cup.
---
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