Chapter Text
Before all the heroic battles, before all the glories, all the fame, before bare fits torn apart the sky and shook the ocean, before the Marine Hero was the Marine Hero, Garp was just a little orphan boy on Dawn, just a little wild thing that clearly didn’t belong to the calm and quiet life of Foosha village.
Garp was a weird baby even in D. standard, which really meant something. His tiny hands tried to grab everything in sight, and dear God, did the boy have a really strong grip. 6 broken cribs and a total annihilation of the nursery later, his parents did what any D. parents would do: let the child do as he pleased.
So, by the time he was three, Garp already roamed a good part of the forest. At first, the animals looked at him with curious eyes, then by the third month, they just simply accepted him as a part of the ecosystem.
When Garp was five, a plague hit the peaceful land and he became an orphan. Party, Garp’s older cousin, tried her best, but there was little she could do to keep an eye on the boy. And so Garp tumbled deeper into the forest.
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“GARP!!!!”
Party shouted into the forest loud enough to shake the ground. Layers and layers of trees echoed her voice. A few villagers around flinched hard as the sound pierced their ears, while the birds in the forest were all too used to the commotion; they didn’t even twitch a feather at the sudden loud yelling.
And as nonchalant as the birds, the 10-year-old, mud-covered boy simply didn’t care about the loud shout for him at all. He knew he was causing trouble for his cousin, but he couldn’t care less about it. He was a wild child, free as the wind, impossible to tame, and because he was a D, he listened to no one but his own whim.
And after five years of trying to take care of Garp, Party realised that, too. So, each day, exactly at five in the afternoon, Party would shout for Garp three times into the forest, then if the boy didn’t come tumbling out of whatever he was doing in the wild, she would assume that the boy would have a dinner date with the wolves.
Used to this, Party wasn’t worried much. Garp was a weirdly strong kid, and he would always, always, come home to sleep, or if he were going to have a sleepover with the animals in the forest, he would tell her beforehand. That was their unspoken rule.
After two more calls, Party released a defeated sigh and returned to her bar. She made Garp’s favourite food today, curry, but it seemed like it would have to be left as breakfast for tomorrow.
While Party returned to the bar, her reckless, crazy little cousin was racing with the wolves through the forest.
Garp didn’t remember how exactly the wolves had found him, or how he had found the wolves. All he knew was that he fell asleep while climbing the rocky platform at the top of the mountain and then woke up to a big grey wolf trying to mouth-feed him as she usually did for her injured pups.
And while Garp wasn’t able to get along with the village’s children, the wolf pups made excellent playmates for him, as well as the teenage wolves, who were a little bit cocky to Garp’s liking but were wonderful as sparring partners. He had dared them into so many dumb challenges that even the mama wolf was concerned for them, let alone Party. Garp still remembered clearly his cousin’s pale face as a very bloody Garp was dropped off by the neck at the door of the bar by a big grey wolf after he challenged her idiot children to jump from one side to the other side of the ravine for the nth time.
The point is, Garp belonged to the pack now, and he absolutely loved it here. And with less enthusiasm, Party also learned to trust Garp in the wolves’ care. They taught him how to move, how to hunt, and how to cuddle in a big pile in the middle of the cave. They taught him their way, their life, and their language. They taught him the meaning of belonging that no human could. Though currently, Garp was ditching the wolves to hang out with a murder of crows,
Unlike his encounter with the wolves, Garp remembered clearly how the crows showed up one day and how much more dramatic they were.
The forest was quiet that afternoon, as if everything were holding its breath, preparing for something to come.
Garp was hanging upside down on a branch, 40 metres off the ground, just to test how long he could do it. The boy had been holding that position for 30 minutes and might have been more if not for a giant black shadow that flashed through the sky. Startled, he lost his grip and dropped to the ground by all four like a cat.
Then a crow silently landed on the branch he was just hanging on, looking at him judgmentally. Garp scowled. That shadow he saw earlier was much bigger than a crow like this.
And he was right.
Another crow landed beside the first one.
Then another one.
And another.
They kept descending from the sky like vengeful spirits. There were dozens, hundreds of them, and they kept coming, covering the whole tree in pitch-black feathers.
“Oi,” Garp said, brushing dirt off his face. “If this is about the eggs, I only took a few.”
A deafening chorus of caws exploded all at once.
Garp grinned.
“So it is about the eggs.”
The crows attacked.
They attacked the boy all at once like a single identity. But Garp wasn’t fazed at all. Instead, he just grinned wider in a typical D style while dodging the black wave coming for him.
He rolled on the ground to avoid the assault and picked up a big branch on the way up. He leapt onto a rock, kicked off a tree, twisted midair and swung his makeshift weapon down hard.
Blood pumped in his ears, and the whole forest started to blur as the boy got lost in the battle. Adrenaline coursed through his body like electricity, demanding him to keep moving.
At one point, the wolves showed up, but they didn’t interfere, just silently watched from the side, ready to intervene if the boy’s life was truly in danger.
By the end of it, Garp was bleeding from a dozen small cuts, panting, covered in mud and feathers, and grinning so wide it hurt. Around him, tattered black feathers covered the ground.
“That was so fun!” Garp laughed cheerfully. ”You guys are so cool.”
With an annoyed caw came from above, the biggest crow landed on his head. It mercilessly pecked him hard right at his forehead.
“OW- HEY!” Garp brought his hands up to shoo it away, but the big crow just swatted his hands away with its wings. A deep, crawling sound resonated from its throat.
“What was that for?” He asked, but the crow just answered with silence. And that was how he became friends with a murder of crows.
The crows taught him how to observe the silence, how to taste the change in the air and how to blend in with the shadow. They taught him their move, their voice and their tricks. They taught him how to connect with other beings no human nor wolves could teach.
Back to the present, Garp was trying to climb the rock formation at the top of the mountain again. The crows flew around him, cawing in warning.
This was the biggest challenge he had ever faced in his short 10 years of life. The top of the mountain was devoid of life, with only jagged, rocky structures. The slope was so steep that maybe only the goats and a crazy, wild child with no self-preservation, like Garp, could climb.
And even though it was supposed to be devoid of life, the boy could feel that there was something there at the top. He was sure of it. He could feel the electricity in the air the higher he climbed. He could feel the tremor beneath the rock. He could feel the mountain breathing in sync with something up there. And more importantly, he could feel the crows’ panic. That was how he knew he was right.
And of course, he was right.