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Durin sat on the damp forest floor next to the deer. It was just leftovers now; flies buzzed around the corpse, beetles fed on the bones. The spine was still tangled up with bits of meat and matted fur. The skull gaped open through the missing lower jaw while the insects chewed at the throat and the gums.
He watched a small, black beetle dig itself into a hole in the eye socket. Durin imagined crawling inside the curves of the rib cage—empty now with nothing left inside to keep safe, the bony ends chewed sharp by some hungry thing that got here earlier. He imagined letting the arches of bone close over him. It was a comforting thought, but he didn’t know whose it was.
The smell of death got caught in his nose every so often, but he'd found the corpse late so it was subdued. Most of the pieces were already gone. Durin's eyes unfocused, staring hard at the deer.
It had been warm and animated only a little while ago. It changed fast…
That’s how it works in the forest—in warmer places—things get recycled, not frozen.
When he blurred his vision, he could almost trick himself into thinking the deer was just sleeping—just a shape, lying quiet in the shallow creek bed. Maybe it had drunk this very water just before it was ripped apart by predators.
It’s small for a buck. It must’ve been young…
He imagined wrapping both arms around its body in an embrace meant to communicate something like empathy, even if he couldn't trust he wouldn’t just scare it. Instead, he petted the only fur left, right on the top of its skull between the small antlers.
He wondered if anyone had loved it when it was alive.
—
He was a broken, ungrateful creature. That was the simplest truth. If he couldn't call himself a monster for fear of worrying his friends then he could, at least, identify as something inhuman and separate based on logic. It was the only way to make sense of the tangled mess inside him. It was the truth; Albedo couldn't make a real human.
…
Durin walked between rainforest trees, making a path parallel to the established tail. His “treasures” clinked in his pocket quietly. It smelled like wetness and mud and decaying things and living things, too many things always happening, existing simultaneously, escaping him.
It was getting darker. Something kept him from straying too far from the way back. Cowardice, maybe, but that was paradoxical. He was a coward for running too.
Was that a paradox, or was he just a coward twice?
The evening shadows were just starting to appear. Bushes and trees turning a thick, impenetrable wall of dark. Every crunch of leaves and sounds of creatures doing their own forest things would get more powerful as it got dark, he lost some senses, and his stubborn resolve waned into a different kind of fear.
He tuned out the hum of birds and leaves and insects, afraid he might hear Nilou's worried voice calling his name.
…
Durin broke into a run, clumsy, kicking up damp earth. Branches and vines grabbed at his skin, his horns, his useless wings, they snagged his clothes, but he pushed forward through the forest.
A hot, stinging frustration, fueled by all the bad, unpleasant things he was fleeing, bubbled right under his skin. The sharp plants and stinging things seemed to both stoke and dull it.
—
Mosquito on the vein of a leaf.
Idiot.
—
He trampled leaves of low shrubbery underfoot—that was fine. It didn’t matter because the plants would grow back, probably, or be replaced by other ones. The forest was fine.
He glimpsed a little cluster of red mushrooms a moment before they smushed under his boot.
Durin stilled. The soft fungal bodies stomped into a new form, a worse form, messed up. And Durin felt guilty.
He didn’t mean to do that. He didn’t, did he? They were creatures too. It was an accident. But it reminded him of a familiar question. Was it better to be destructive like a stupid incompetent thing or was he better if it was deliberate and malicious? Is he hopeless or cruel like they say?
It was a stupid consideration he hated because it didn’t matter. It wasn’t up to him. It didn’t change anything. And there was something wrong with him no matter what he convinced himself the problem was.
Mushrooms ate decay. He didn’t apologize to them.
—
The black silhouettes of tree branches were cut out sharply against the pale blue sky. The clouds looked like broken ice sheets on a frozen lake.
The sky stays light for much longer than the ground… Hat Guy could probably find me. But Hat Guy’s busy…
The clouds are darker on one side. That must be east. We’re going south. This is the right direction.
South…?
South was farther from Sumeru City—farther from where Albedo was visiting.
—
Durin walked quietly through the creek. He tried to be quiet, but he was clumsy, like a newborn fawn or a machine with rusty joints. His stupid legs wouldn’t work how he wanted. He kept stumbling. The rocks clicked or clattered and his boots got soaked when he misstepped. The darkening forest shadows made it harder to tell water from stone or which rocks would shift under his feet.
And he should have brought another jacket. More layers, more layers, armor like an armadillo or a spinocrocodile or a turtle. Armor like scales or shells or fake worlds only he can enter.
He felt exposed, vulnerable. The forest was a beast far hungrier than Dragonspine.
That was true and it wasn’t.
Dragonspine took lives either clean or messily: bodies preserved all neat and selfish, or with bright red snow and a feast for other animals. The falling snowflakes would kiss your skin, tender and kind when you were lonely. The cold sucked warmth from every living thing but that didn’t mean it was without mercy. The snow padded your falls and at least it didn't suck your blood like annoying, awful, horrible, evil mosquitoes. The cold just scared blood back towards the heart, where it was supposed to be.
Every step through the creek felt heavier than the last, like he was walking through thick mud or deep snow. It was like something was pulling him back, making him slower, a horrible, draggy feeling.
There was no real reason for it. Except that the darkness in front of him was not compelling.
—
You’re scared. Mini Durin’s voice in his head was sympathetic in the irritating, naive way he didn’t exist. But you don’t have to be. Let’s head back. Our friends will be worried.
No. Farther.
Durin halted mid-step, balanced on an unstable rock as he warred with himself. Never a real war—no real blood shed, no casualties because Mini Durin and Durin of Dragonspine were already dead. Now, they were just voices in his head that he made up so his thoughts might make sense.
Aren’t we far enough? You can’t make us avoid Albedo forever. I won’t let you. He’s our brother.
He is NOT our brother!
You’re just angry and scared because Albedo defeated you! Mini Durin accused, frustration coloring Durin’s mind, aimed inward like the snake that eats its tail and eats and eats uselessly forever. It doesn’t get anywhere. Why can’t you accept this is better? He helped you.
He tried to get rid of me.
You’re still here. We both wanted to live and make friends. He gave us that, but YOU keep messing things up! First Nahida, Albedo... Hat Guy doesn't hang out anymore and now Nilou's hurt too.
Durin dug his sharp nails into the back of his other hand. It was a stupid, small thing to do, but it grounded him. Made his mind shut up for a second. Just a second.
He was fragile now.
Just soft, tearable flesh. No scales; he wouldn’t even notice when he bled. That’s what he’d tell people later. Maybe the nerves in this new body weren't as good at feeling pain, or maybe his mind had just been floating elsewhere while he ran and he hadn’t noticed the forest was hurting him. He’d just tripped by accident or something.
The truth was slippery like that. Carelessness was easier to justify and more palatable to the people who cared for him. It was embarrassing but that’s what human children were—careless or carefree. In this new miracle body—for which he truly was so grateful—he didn’t want his friends to see how destructive he could be as a ‘human’.
Durin watched the scratches on his hand slowly well with blood, darkened by the darkness around him. There wasn’t much. Barely any at all. He got his throat torn out once. That was a mess. His fault, too.
Imagine it—if we went back. Dragonspine Durin reasoned. Nilou is worried sick because you yelled at her and ran away—YOU did that. She’s too stupid to be mad at you so she’s crying and apologizing, and you feel awful because it’s obviously your fault. Humans are fragile, and you hurt her. And Albedo stands behind her, his fake warmth, fake smile, fake sympathy, as if he cares for anything but showing the humans how perfect he is. He doesn’t feel anything real. Even if he does, it’s for his invasive alchemy experiments. That’s what we are.
That’s not fair. That’s not even true—
Don't you get it? People like you because you’re fake and stupid. Reality is cruel and complicated. Humans like to pretend they know things. They like things that aren’t real, until they’re messy and broken.
—
Durin's stomach growled from hunger for no reason. So stupid, why would it do that? He hated it so much that now he wouldn’t eat. He hoped he got eaten so his stomach learned how stupid it was when his body betrayed him with embarrassing sounds to the things here that were hungry with sharper teeth.
What if Albedo did that on purpose? He mixed the most compromising ingredients into the fake human formula so Durin would freeze up when scared and make sounds when hungry. What if Albedo made him flawed on purpose? So he could dispose of him easier if he decided to. All it would take is something sharp ‘cause even fake human bodies were fragile.
That’s what happened to the other one. The one who looked like Albedo on Dragonspine first. The scared and useless one who tried to get rid of Albedo but only got killed like prey. The dead dragon wasn’t angry Albedo killed the ‘imposter’, but he hated Albedo for getting his story wrong. A cruel joke. To the dead dragon, it felt like salt in the gaping hole in his throat.
Humans only liked convenient truths and dead things couldn’t tell their own.
—
Durin spotted something, a moving blob, a large insect maybe. It stood out for a second against the evening sky that was still too light. That felt unfair; the sun already set but the sky was so blue, much brighter than the darker forest where he was stuck with the mess and shadows and bugs and noises—it wasn’t fair.
There were so many bugs. He wished they would all die. There felt like spider webs in his face, on his horns, around his wings, itching his skin everywhere. No escape from everywhere.
Maybe spiders were better than mosquitos, but they probably hated him more. Mosquitos would drink his blood and they might die from the poison or create a Withering Zone even though Tighnari said that’s impossible, but Durin always ran face first into spider webs on accident, destroying their intricate homes with his carelessness even when he tried to be careful!
Friendly spiders, angry spiders, hungry spiders, when all the mosquitos and humans died from his blood Albedo said wasn’t poison anymore. They were wrapping Durin in a cocoon of white silk he couldn’t break, saving a meal for later. He didn’t blame them. A monster destroyed their homes, and this body didn’t even know how to fly anymore.
—
Something heavy moved in the vine thicket close by.
Durin went stiff with fear. He didn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. If moving was molasses before, it was solid rime now. His limbs felt frozen not by cold but the million worms that squirmed around, stealing motion and flesh from the corpse they feasted on.
Slowly, very slowly, he turned his head.
Branches. Leaves. Shadows. Creek water sounds. Monsters of branches, leaves and shadows, fleeting ones, but no real ones.
Mini Durin’s stupid pacifying thoughts; It’s just an animal. We don’t need to be scared—
Being eaten alive by a leopard or a bear or devoured by a thousand squirrels that leap out of the trees isn’t as scary as the nothing-shadows and the existing here where everything moves and makes noise! If all the bugs died it'd be quiet! If everything died it'd be better! The water should freeze, the plants and creatures should wither and die. There's too many messy variables, it's too fast! I hate mosquitos! Drain all the life from plants and animals and humans, moving things, make the forest— just bleached dead logs and carrion that nothing eats, then it’ll die too. No leaves, no fruit, no rot or bugs. Just skeleton and bones on the ground but I hate it here! I want Dragonspine back! Our blood is poison, stains and bones and pages, everything white, messed up stains, stupid shriveled tubes of cinnabar paint, and you're not- the lying. Stars, boars, paper, cider, ink, your stupid metaphors humans never listen, they’re fragile, mosquitos, they don’t care, and no one listens! You don’t understand! You’re useless! You can’t even fly anymore! You're fake words, bad ink, I hate it! I hate you! I’ll die here and you’ll rot with me! Your skin, your guts will rot, your heart will rot and fester, bones you stole, but you don't get it! Scavengers won't even feast on your corpse, if they do it’s your fault! Why can't you understand? I hate you! It's not fair! Leave me alone! I want Dragonspine back! I want him gone! Why can't you all go away?! I can’t— He can’t— he just takes-! He won't leave me alone! I can't even do anything! He says things and humans always believe him! It's not fair! I hate him!
—
Maybe the forest wasn't evil but it was hungry and these glowing bugs would not protect him, they'd make his death into a light show.
Sumeru says the forest protects its children. Mondstadters say the wind guides its own.
But I'm not a child of the forest and I already hurt Mondstadt.
Durin buried his face back in his arms, wrapping his wings around himself, trying to make himself smaller. He never managed to disappear entirely.
He imagined being an insect. Something small and insignificant. Something unloved that didn’t matter but it was so small and simple that it didn’t know or care, it just existed and munched leaves until a bird ate it and it died like things are supposed to.
But Nahida accepts us. She said the forest watches out for us…
He missed Nahida.
Mini Durin used to see her almost every day. They’d explore the forest together, browse the colorful fabrics and the myriad of candies in the bazaar. They’d watch Nilou perform from a swing of vines, picnic with the Aranara, read storybooks and add their own creative touches. They even went flying with Hat Guy before—Nahida clinging on his back, her and Mini Durin’s laughter carrying on the wind.
We used to be so close…
Durin's eyes felt prickly with tears.
He hadn't seen her in weeks. She was ‘giving him space’. He hurt her. He knew she was already sensitive about being seen as an archon, not a person or a friend. Mini Durin had been her friend but now, Durin couldn't see past the fear that the God of Wisdom might read his mind, see his dreams, and realize he was a monster, a threat to her forest, something safer gone.
She’s our friend. She cares about us. She would understand.
Understand? Like the Aranara who abandoned you?
He couldn't see the Aranara anymore. Not since he changed. He felt watched. They were watching him. They knew. Disdain and disgust and fear from the thousand invisible eyes that used to care for him. He wished they were gone.
It's not their fault. I'm different now, they just don't…recognize me anymore. I’m not Mini Durin anymore. That's what happens when people grow up.
They hate us. They don't protect your dreams anymore. Mini Durin abandoned them and they’ll never accept me. They'd feed us to the forest and everything would die from the poison.
Durin’s eyes stung. His throat hurt with a familiar ache, maybe like being torn out with the teeth of a dragon or just feelings he hated. He traitorously fostered the bubbling tide of emotion until he was sobbing. He tried to stifle the sounds in his sleeves, but he wouldn't stop milking every last drop of misery from his fatigue-hazed mind.