Re: The Woods: Pesha/Tandy
The cool hand of the winter’s night breezes served to dissipate some of the campfire smell that lingered, and it began to fade as Billy had stopped using his magic with the completion of the ID. He was still running warm, that never really went away — in fact it had only become more noticeable as he grew stronger and learned more from his grandmother’s written pages. So it was his normal, really.
“Since I was still in school, in New York. I had no idea what I was, until one day… it just, like, exploded out of me,” he explained, brow knitting slightly as he thought back to the day and closed one hand into a fist, then flicked his fingers out in a spreading motion meant to imitate a firework. “My grandmother, she showed up and told me the truth. So, yeah, since then. Three years or so. But I wasn’t really any good at controlling it at all, up until a few months ago.”
And he certainly was yet far from perfect. But he’d found a confidence that hadn’t been there, within the words of her book. (Or rather, the book had found him, that night in the Capital.)
Billy didn’t flinch when Tandy turned his attention to the ugly-shiny burn on his forearm. He hadn’t tried to hide it, had sort of forgotten it was still so stark and obvious to other people while Billy had worked very hard to learn to ignore it. He didn’t reach up and pull down his sleeve in a belated attempt; he didn’t even lift his arm so that he could look down at it in contemplation. But he felt it, the way that his skin there always felt pulled tight with tissue granulation, a dark purplish-red. “No, that came much later,” he shook his head a little where it was still anchored to his knee, eyes dark and solemn on Tandy’s face. His expression wasn’t pained, nor was it shuttered closed. After a moment, the faintest hint of that dry, dimpled smile flickered at the corner of his mouth again.
“That’s part of a much uglier story. One that you and I don’t really know each other well enough to tell.”