𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔬𝔫𝔬𝔨𝔢 #themeweekend

    

    

      

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                                      𝐈. 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔠𝔢

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             words                               506

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#studioghibliweekend

obviously katsuki

just fits a little TOO well

in princess mononoke

as san because . . .

they’re wild but also

soft inside for sure

art credit . . . HITSUJI_land03 on X

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♱

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           The wolves did not raise him. Not truly.

They merely left him unconsumed.

           He ed the red of fire before he knew the red of blood. The shriek of molten iron gouging through the sky like a verdict. The men of the forge who belched smoke and grew callouses on their souls. The machines that raged, and the trees that bent like supplicants before their ing. He ed a mother, brief as a comet, who screamed not at the enemy, but at the sky. It was Katsuki who did not scream. Not even once.

           They said the forest took him, but the truth is more grotesque. He took the forest. Tore into it like a wound tears into flesh. Made his home in a den of thorns and beasts. Learned to bleed without complaint. Learned to kill without remorse. His face was a smear of ochre and charcoal, streaked with rage like the war-paint of gods who had been forgotten.

           He hated them. The humans.

           He hated them. The gods.

           Most of all, he hated the thing that curled inside him like plague that would never clear. A boy. A boy with hands that exploded and a heart that begged to stop fighting. A boy who was born of ash. A prince of conflagration.

           He knelt at the riverbank, his fingers stained with the blood of something divine. The moon hung swollen like an eye about to burst. His reflection in the water was not his own… it was his enemy’s, his father’s, his shadow’s. He slammed a fist into it, not out of anger but necessity. The ripples would blur the face before it could ask him, “What have you become?”

           The wolves flanked him. Silent and knowing always to his tribulations.

           “They fear you, little god,” said the largest of them, her eyes pale as death’s own mirror. “Not because you are wild. But because you are more human than they are.”

           Katsuki did not reply. Speech was a luxury for those not hunted by their own hearts.

           He wore a mask carved from bone and grief. It was not to hide. It was to remind. To remind himself that monsters are born, not made and he made himself the most scariest monster of all against them.

           Yet in the stillness, there came another figure. A boy whose eyes were foolish with hope, whose body bore the stigmata of war but whose voice sang of peace. The boy offered no sword. Just silence. The kind that asks permission, not forgiveness.

           “You really think peace is something you can give?” Katsuki rasped. His voice was dry, cracked with embers.

           The boy said nothing. Oh finally, Katsuki the boy of wolves could scream. A scream that split the trees, startled the pack, and collapsed the stars. Not because he was angry, but because he wanted to believe the boy. The belief, that flickering possibility, hurt worse than any wound.

           He wanted to believe peace could exist, especially in himself, but he had no language for it. Only fire.