Flight School: Prey

Clever Fool

His mother's laugh rang in his ears like the bells of a foreign tower looking down upon the world in its dying disease—living its final hour.

She rose from her chair, extending the movement with an elaborate slow.

"And what is a sparrow going to do with a pretty bow and harmless sticks for arrows?" She addressed Vaughn with a brief glance of amusement. "Tickle our feet?"

His purpose reporting his findings had not been to disarm Io of his rightful weapon. It wasn't the act of leveling the playing field that unsettled the creature in his cage but more often so, the sparrow's lack of understanding. Understanding of the notion; the notion of giving up.

How awfully disgusting it was for Vaughn, to witness what he could not have done himself and face the weakness that was inherent within—

"Vaughn? You look pale," The headmistress noted with a frown, peering at him with her head inclined, forcing him to look her in the eye. "Tea?"

He would prefer not to return to the horrors of his mind, alone.

"Yes mother."

"Good on you to catch that sneaky thing," She put together saucer and teacup, filling the latter with the same black, abyssal liquid that she so adored. "It is well that he's so insistent too, don't you think? This will make them learn. Ah, that there's no such thing as breaking the order in this world."

The mother offered it to her child with a wry smile. "Reading again? At this late hour."

"...yes, I was," Vaughn lied through the bars of pride. After all, nightmares were for children. "By the window, when I saw him."

"Oh good, good." She nodded, pleased. "Silly little thing, really. Only fools can be so brave and thoughtless."

He laughed when she did. Vaughn had to admit that the very thought was on his mind; conflating with the confusion and resentment that he harbored against the sparrow who, so easily, broke out on his own.

But alas, Vaughn corrected himself that the sparrow was not alone. He had something he called a friend—oh! That was foolish in itself, too. Everything about Iolani Tori was nice and sweet and foolishly disgusting.

"Let us have dinner tomorrow," V said decisively with a sudden snap of her fingers. "It has been quite some time since I've cooked, and, oh! Chicken soup sounds absolutely fitting to prepare you for the games, no? Chicken soup it is." She nodded to herself, then turned to Vaughn with an unusual frown, as if having not noticed he was there.

"You don't like spicy food, do you?"

______________________________

It was the day for things to come to an end, and Io understood just why it was. Thinking was one; being was another—for the world to saturate around a single point of concentration, clouding his mind with all but one: it had to be the idea of an end.

Before the wall had been the path that he had chosen to take; to reach such an end. Worth or not, Io began to realize the depth of his hell as his days amounted to this one. How had he failed to see this?