The pale giant was no longer pale, no longer tall, and he was bewildered.
He was alive.
Being alive was not something to complain over, but he should be dead.
His son was alive, another good thing, but he should be dead.
He held onto his son as the flames surrounded the lake, and waited all night, all day, until they left the next night, once the rain came and extinguished it all.
There was a giant brown splotch on his son's chest, and this was odd, because after he inspected his own body, every part of his own body was brown, save for a little patch on his inner leg.
It was dark at night, no moon, yet he could see, he could smell, a fire burned in his stomach, and his son looked up at him and said, "I'm hungry, father"
"I'm hungry too, Asher."
Father picked up Asher and he carried him through the burnt forest looking for food, but there was nothing to eat. He continued to walk and walk, never tiring, and he found this odd as well, that he became more enthusiastic the more his hunger increased.
Their first victim was a goat.
He was domesticated, because he was friendly, and walked right up to them, believing he could help. Father smiled at the goat, and so did Asher, that something so funny looking, with his half-burnt ragged brown fur, could survive, and it grunted, circling them, hoping they could lead him to water.
Asher and Father looked the goat in his eyes.
Father grasped it by its neck, and pulled, not hard, already aware of his strength, thinking of the different ways to cook the little goat. He opened his mouth to suggest how to cook him, but involuntarily, his arm went up, his hand clutching the goat's head, and he drank, the warm blood dripping down.
This was not a normal meal.
It was the best meal Father and Asher had.
They didn't eat a lot of his meat, but they squeezed him dry, and they were already gone, Asher and Father no more, only one even though there were two. Father and Asher did not remember that first year, but there were not a lot of remarkable things to remember, other than the many good meals they had shared.
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"Father, it is time I take a wife," Asher announced.
The sun had set, they sat inside the house of a carpenter they tore to shreds, his blood tasty compared to most of the other's they had consumed that week. Father picked up the carpenter's strong and worn hand, tore it off, and licked it, trying not to hurt his son's feelings.
"Asher. I love you."
"Father, you cannot bear me a son."
"Do not jest so, that is unbecoming of oneself," Father shouted.
He threw the hand on the ground and sighed.
"Asher, you are a lytling, no woman would take you."
Asher did not care. His body had stayed frozen in time, but not his mind. He was eighteen, his body still eight, the decade not kind to him. He was not lonely with his father around, but he wanted more, and he feared that if he looked the same forever, if they never aged nor died, that he would never find love nor take a wife.
"I want a wife," Asher repeated.
"You will get one, but how will you give her a child? Must she sit all day for you, looking pretty, wasting away for naught?"
Asher didn't care.
"I will find one myself. She will understand because she will be a good woman."
"No woman would take up with a lytling , because he could not take care of her in her old age," Father shouted.
Asher left out the door, which wasn't really a door, but just an open hole carved out of stone. The carpenter's house was carved out, far from the village, and he had inadvertently made himself a target, as there was safety in numbers. Father ran after Asher, quickly catching up with him, and they entered the forest.
"Will you find a wife as one finds a nut fallen from a tree," Father asked.
"Quiet."
"Your wife should be a tree, so she can bear fruit since you cannot," Father snickered.
"Silence!"
Father made many jokes about nuts, fruits, oysters, and the like, suggesting it would help Asher with his fertility issues.
"If you do not find a wife 'tis no matter," Father continued. "You can always use a visage!"
"Why do you always jest, Father," Asher asked. "Is life such a thing to you?"
"You are quite right. It is."
Asher and Father heard something in the distance, and they stood still, listening intently to the source of the noise. It was a loud shriek, followed by heavy laughter, and then more shrieking, and then silence.
They followed the noises and warm bright light, the crackling embers covering the sounds of their footsteps on the mossy forest floor. There were four soldiers, a horse, and a young woman near a small fire.
The young woman was fierce and angry, and she laid on the ground, covering her pregnant stomach, as the soldiers mocked her and threw sticks at her. One of them watched from afar, drinking alcohol from his satchel, and flaunted mock concern. His shiny bald head reflected the flames while he leaned onto a tree, his loose robes slipping off his drunken body.
"Men, please, we must return her in one piece, or else the mountain men will be angry, their princess dead!"
"She's still alive, isn't she," one of them asked.
"Check to make sure," the bald man replied.
One of them kicked in the face, and they roared with laughter as she cried. Asher, being the opportunist that he was, found himself a damsel in distress. She would make the perfect wife, and she was already pregnant, so his second problem was already solved!
Asher walked right into their small encampment and all the men were disgusted at the filthy and naked child. He was caked in head to toe in the blood and feces, bile, and tears of his victims. His hair had grown long, to the ground, and it dragged across the ground, twigs, and bugs crawling inside it.
"A street child this far in the forest," said a soldier. "Disgusting."
"I am not a child. I am a man," Asher replied.
The soldier roared with laughter, drunk and enjoying the serious tone in his voice. All they saw was someone new to torture. One of the soldiers, the shortest one, wearing nothing but a helmet and his britches asked him where his mother was.
"She is dead."
The soldier offered a quick apology, and the filthy child had ruined their fun.
Asher glanced at the angry woman, her arched eyebrows, seeming to question his very being, and he announced that she was coming with him.
"She will be my wife, and she is coming with me," Asher said. "You cannot have her."
The soldiers looked at each other.
They looked at Asher.
They burst into laughter.
Father himself burst into laughter, and it seemed the entire forest was as well, mocking Asher and his declaration. Father walked into the encampment, and now the soldiers were worried, as the filthy boy was now accompanied by a filthy and naked man as well.
"You here to take her as a wife as well," the bald soldier asked.
"No, I am here for my son."
"This vermin is your son," a soldier declared. "I've seen stables cleaner than him!"
Father walked up to the soldier, shorter than him, and grinned, his fangs glinting against the fire, and he smiled, all while tearing his arms off, his blood giving long hot streaks against the forest floor.
With every heartbeat, the blood-streaked out over Father, and he shivered, loving the wet feeling sliding down his body.
The man was dead before he hit the ground.
The other soldiers ran as Father and Asher ate, and the entire time, Asher stared intently into the angry woman's eyes, as she was unafraid, refusing to show weakness, staring right back into his empty soul.
"She will be my wife," Asher repeated.
"Asher, this woman already has a husband, she is with child," Father replied.
"She can have another."
The woman's arched eyebrows raised at this new declaration, and she smiled at the ridiculousness of it all, saved by a filthy child and his father.
"My husband is dead," the woman said.
"See, it is fine, she is in need," Asher shouted.
"Will you listen to reason," Father moaned. "Even if she agrees, we are not like her. Even before this curse, we could not be with someone like her."
"How can I become like you," she asked.
Father looked at her in horror, and Asher, delight.
"Why would you want to be cursed to never see day, and eat the flesh of man," Father asked.
"Man killed my husband, threatened me, and forced himself on me while I was with child. Why should I not want to eat the flesh of creatures no better than the lowest of beasts?"
"I told you I could find a good wife, one that would understand," Asher said.
"This is not the life you want, woman. Nothing changes. Would you want to be with child your entire life, " Father asked.
"Yes. It has been the most wonderful state of being, to forever be one with my children, and I never want to be apart," she replied.
Father understood because he missed all his children, and he was now one with Asher, and no finer state of being could he ask for.
Father looked at Asher, and they spoke without words, their minds as one.
Asher picked up a very crudely made sword one of the soldiers left, and he and Father exchanged words silently, discussing how to make it work. They reasoned it had something to do with blood, and if it did not take, they would return to the Lake of Blood, near the ruins of their home, the graves of their family.
"Open your mouth, and drink of my blood, and you will live eternal," Father said.
Asher and Father cut their hands on the ugly sword and squeezed their hands over her mouth, their sparkling blood slipping into her mouth, and it was the best thing she had ever tasted.
Her pupils dilated, and she dry heaved, thinking that maybe she had made a mistake. She mumbled, and laid on the ground again, and went quiet.
"Father, you killed my wife."
"You don't seem too upset about it."
"They are very easy to break, I was prepared for this to happen," Asher huffed.
Father rolled his eyes and told Asher that they should dig a grave for the woman.
"'Tis a shame we never got her name," Father said.
My name is Nymphadora.
They heard her voice, booming loud in their heads, and she smiled, and Father smiled, Asher as well, because it was so much more fun being three instead of two.
"You shall make a fine wife, Nymphadora," Asher said.
"I am not your wife," she replied. "You are a babe."
Father started laughing and coughed up some of his meal, blood dribbling down his chin as he helped Nymphadora stand up, and they walked off into the forest, off to find another meal, this one a very curated taste.
It was not a long trek, because the soldiers did not get very far.
It was not a quick death, because Nymphadora did not want it so.
It was the second-best meal she ever had.