Abel

Cain and Abel

Roses hurts the skin. Not in his experience. Nothing hurts the skin, it just.. aches, all the time.
They cannot heal it. There is a cure for death, but there's no cure for life.

"Your rule is curious, like the ways of plague. I wonder why that is, in a land such as this."
Abel pondered upon the curious dynamic of his adoptive home frequently. There was something off in the air, a tension that curled around the neck and faces of Guriel and many other's close to him. He could see it in the way they walked, in the way they held their heads.
Like the feeling of moderate thunder, where the earth vibrates low enough for everyone to feel anxious without knowing exactly why.
Guriel held her wings with the tension, and sometimes she put her legs down carefully, every step on a field of fragile glass.
It perplexed him, especially with a being such as her, why she'd feel the need to bow down to the unnamed stirring of anticipation.

It must be common for fighting clans, he thought. They need tension to stay on edge in battle for dominance, as they need tension when the matriarch is challenged.
His home in plague used the vibrating bone feeling for victory and consequent action, but never to cower or wait in fear.
He asked Astaroth once, before he was going into a new raid of land.
"Do you use the atmosphere to fight battles with you, in your armor and for your glory?"
Astaroth stopped and watched him carefully.
"If you can feel it you're not close enough," he said. "I move within the eye of the storm, I use tension as I please."
Abel nodded.
"Then again, if you get too close you might settle down, and when the edges of the storm swoops in on you.." he made a violent scratch that sent a twig flying across the grass. "You won't know what hit you until you're on the wrong side of the havoc."

Abel watched the dry twig lying on the ground, and Astaroth moved on.
Abel could see his red-skinned battlescars from beneath the armor, and wondered if he had been too confident in his ways. Too "settled" in the eye of the storm.
Whatever that meant. Abel's question wasn't directed at battles of food anyway.
Was he supposed to get closer to whatever made the air feel so tight? Or should he go further back and stay tip-toeing like so many others?
The sound of scraping gravel made him turn his head, and he could see Michael walking with his head high a little further away.
He met Hickory on the way, and the clean disapproval of his narrowed eyes was apparent. He was coiled with intent tension, a clear stage of pre-battling. The sole of his feet and claws hitting the gravel with strength and self-assurance.
Abel's mind was made in a moment of clarity.
He'd rather walk with his head held high and his feet marking the ground behind him.
He'd been a ghost for too long, no more floating about at the edge, and no tip-toeing wariness. This is his clan and home, better take an active part in it.