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It's been about a month since Wemmbu's been living with the two blindfolded brothers.
They'd found him unconscious in the snow near their treehouse, half-frozen and barely breathing. The original plan had been simple: nurse him back to health, then send him on his way.
That just....hadn't happened.
As it turned out, Wemmbu was useful. He fetched supplies without being asked, kept the place clean enough, and wasn't afraid of hard work. He learned quickly, too. Every now and then, Mane would show him a few things—mostly practical survival skills or how to handle himself in a fight. If Mane was busy, Flame took over instead, though his lessons were usually less structured and far more entertaining.
It wasn't as though the brothers had officially decided to keep him around.
He just... never left.
The treehouse was quiet when Wemmbu finally woke that morning. He stretched, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and wandered into the main room.
"...Hey!"
A Christmas tree stood in the middle of the room, half-decorated.
Flame was balanced on a stool, carefully untangling a string of lights while Manepear sorted through a box of ornaments with the kind of expression that suggested he'd rather be doing almost anything else.
"You started without me?"
Neither of them looked particularly guilty.
"You were asleep," Mane said simply.
"I would've gotten up!"
"You didn't."
Wemmbu huffed before hurrying over anyway, immediately grabbing a handful of ornaments.
"I can help."
"You already are," Flame replied, tossing him another strand of tinsel.
For the next several minutes, the three worked in relative peace.
Well... relative.
"Can I put the star on?" Wemmbu asked for what had to be the fourth time.
"No," Flame answered.
"Why not?"
"'Cause I'm doing it."
"But you always do it!"
"And?"
"I've never gotten to!"
Flame grinned.
"Sounds like a you problem."
Wemmbu groaned dramatically, throwing his hands into the air.
"Mane!"
Mane didn't even look up.
"No."
"What? You didn't even hear my argument!"
"I've heard it three times."
"It's a good argument!"
"It's the same argument."
Wemmbu puffed out his cheeks.
"This is unfair."
Mane mimicked him perfectly, crossing his arms and repeating in an exaggerated whine, "'ThIs Is unfairrr!'"
Flame snorted, nearly dropping the star as he laughed.
"You both suck," Wemmbu muttered.
"And yet you're still here," Mane replied.
Despite the words, there wasn't any bite behind them. Just dry amusement.
Wemmbu rolled his eyes, though he couldn't stop himself from smiling.
He'd never had anything like this before.
He'd heard stories about brothers—how they teased each other relentlessly, argued over pointless things, refused to let the other win even once.
Watching Mane mock him while Flame laughed from atop the stool...
...it felt a little like that.
Maybe not exactly.
But close enough that, for just a moment, Wemmbu let himself imagine he belonged here.
Even if Mane only saw him as the kid who'd proven useful enough to keep around.
Even if Flame mostly found him amusing.
To Wemmbu...
It almost felt like having brothers.
_______
Wemmbu wanted to cry.
He and Mane had argued over something stupid again. It always seemed to end like this lately—Mane's voice sharp with frustration, insisting that Wemmbu never listened, that nothing ever got through to him.
He wasn't a lost cause.
He really, really was trying.
Why couldn't anyone see that?
His chest ached as he curled tighter into himself on the bed, staring blankly at the wall. Every mistake he made felt bigger than it should. Every argument left him feeling smaller.
He hated this.
A horrible thought crept into the back of his mind.
I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere and disappear.
His throat tightened.
He wanted his brothers. He wanted one of them to knock on his door, sit beside him without asking questions, and tell him everything would be okay.
Instead, muffled voices drifted up from downstairs.
Mane.
Flame.
They were peeling fruit together in the kitchen, talking like nothing had happened. Every now and then, Wemmbu caught his own name through the floorboards. He couldn't make out every word, but he didn't need to. His imagination filled in the blanks well enough.
Mane was probably complaining about him again.
A shaky breath escaped him.
Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes before spilling over, warm tracks running down his cheeks. He scrubbed at them with the sleeve of his hoodie, but more kept coming.
He hated this.
He hated feeling like he could never get anything right.
___________
After arguments, Mane would act like nothing had happened. Wemmbu hated that most of all. He wanted to talk about it. He wanted to tell Mane how deeply his words had cut. He wanted to yell, to scream, to cry right there in front of him until Mane finally understood. But he never did.
Instead, he followed Mane's lead,
pretending everything was fine. Like nothing had happened. Like sweeping broken glass beneath a rug—out of sight, but never gone. Every unspoken hurt stayed there, pressing through the floor beneath his feet, impossible to forget.
Sometimes, he wanted to disappear. To become as invisible as all the things they refused to say.
________
When Wemmbu turned sixteen, he finally understood.
He understood the difference between him and Flamerfrags in Manepear’s eyes. He wasn’t a brother. Not really. Not in the way that mattered. He was something else—something quieter, easier to replace. A useful kid. A tool with a heartbeat.
The realization didn’t arrive like thunder. It came like winter creeping under a door: slow, certain, and impossible to stop once it had found its way in.
Wemmbu left that day.
He didn’t argue. Didn’t ask for answers he already knew wouldn’t come. He just stepped away from everything that had once felt like home and didn’t turn back, even as something inside him begged him to. Even as it ached so badly he thought it might split him open from the inside out.
Behind him, the road felt like it was swallowing footprints whole—erasing proof he had ever belonged there at all. It was as if the world itself agreed to forget him the moment he chose to be forgotten.
That night, he cried in an abandoned cottage where the wind moved through broken walls like it was searching for something it had lost long ago. The roof sagged overhead like a tired memory, unable to hold itself together anymore.
And Wemmbu finally let himself fall apart.
He disappeared the way he used to wish for at twelve—not as an escape this time, but as a consequence. Like ink washed out of fabric, like a name fading off a stone worn smooth by too many seasons of rain. Like something once spoken aloud, now reduced to silence between heartbeats.
Outside, the world kept moving, indifferent. Inside, he felt like a lantern left burning in an empty house—still lit, still alive, but no longer meaning anything to anyone who passed by.
__________
Wemmbu was happy. He had met an angel. Quite literally, both in appearance and soul, Eggchan was an angel who appeared when The dragon needed him the most. His savior. His brother, not in blood, but in heart and soul. The person he ached for all these years ago. Eggchan understood him like no other. No matter how little Wemmbu communicated his feelings, no matter how much he'd yell and cause chaos everywhere around him, no matter how many people he hurt, Eggchan stayed and helped him through everything. What Wemmbu had with Manepear and Flamerfrags had never felt like this. That had been something fragile, conditional—like walking on glass you were expected not to notice cutting your feet. But this… this was different. This was warmth without expectation. Presence without conditions.
He felt it everywhere.
No matter how many people tried to tell him Eggchan didn’t care, didn’t love him, wouldn’t stay forever—Wemmbu never believed them. He couldn’t. Because he didn’t just hear love in Eggchan’s words; he felt it in the spaces between them.
He felt it in the way their fingers would instinctively find each other as they ran through forests chased by bandits, like even fear wasn’t enough to separate them.
He felt it in the way Eggchan held him when grief made his knees give out, as if silence itself could be used to stitch a broken heart back together.
He felt it in the smallest things too—the way Eggchan spoke his name like it was something worth keeping safe, the gentle depth of his voice, the soft, stupid giggles that broke through even the darkest moments like sunlight slipping through cracks in stone.
It was all full of love. Everywhere he looked, it was there—unspoken but undeniable, like the steady pulse of something alive beneath skin.
And Wemmbu never felt more loved.
___________
It felt weird without Wemmbu around.
At first, it was subtle enough that neither Manepear nor Flamerfrags could name it. Nothing dramatic had happened—no final argument, no slammed doors that explained the silence that followed. Just a gradual thinning of presence, like a song slowly fading until you realize you’ve been listening to nothing for a while.
The two of them didn’t know why he left. Not really. There had been no explanation that made sense, no clear ending they could point to and say that was the moment. Just Wemmbu, doing less and less over time—less housework, fewer words, fewer moments where he lingered in the same space long enough to feel real.
At first, they told themselves it was nothing. Everyone had off days. Everyone needed space. But Wemmbu’s “off days” started to stack on top of each other until they became something heavier, something harder to ignore. His footsteps no longer echoed through the halls the same way. His voice stopped filling the gaps between rooms. Even when he was physically there, it was as if part of him had already stepped outside the house and never quite came back in.
He stopped asking questions.
Stopped offering help without being asked.
Stopped interrupting silence with the kind of chaotic energy that used to make the entire place feel alive.
And without him, the house began to change in ways that were hard to explain but impossible not to feel.
The air felt slower, like it had to think before moving from room to room. The corners of the house seemed to collect quiet a little too easily, as if they were waiting for something that never arrived. Even the smallest sounds—cups being set down, doors creaking, fabric brushing against wood—felt louder than they should have, like the house itself was compensating for something missing.
Manepear noticed it first in the mornings. The absence of random noise. No sudden footsteps, no unexpected questions, no presence drifting into the room like a storm pretending to be a person. Just stillness where there used to be unpredictability.
Flamerfrags noticed it later, in the tasks that didn’t get done. A dish left unwashed that Wemmbu would’ve cleaned without being asked. A mess that stayed a mess. Little signs that he was no longer orbiting the same daily rhythm as them.
But neither of them spoke about it properly. Not at first.
Because saying it out loud made it real.
Instead, they worked around it. Adjusted without meaning to. Replaced small habits with new ones. Filled the silence with other noises—conversation that didn’t quite land the same way, routines that felt slightly misaligned, as if the house itself was remembering a version of itself that no longer existed.
Still, the emptiness grew.
It wasn’t just that Wemmbu wasn’t there.
It was that the space where he used to be still expected him.
Sometimes Manepear would catch himself looking toward a doorway for no reason, only to realize he was waiting for footsteps that weren’t coming. Flamerfrags would pause mid-sentence, expecting a voice to interrupt, to argue, to laugh, to make everything feel less structured and more alive—but nothing would follow.
The house didn’t feel broken.
It felt unfinished.
Like a story missing a chapter that everyone was pretending they didn’t need.
And in that quiet, both of them began to understand something they didn’t have words for yet:
Wemmbu hadn’t just left the house.
He had taken something with him that the walls couldn’t replace.