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“Come on you hermit,
you never fight back.
Why don’t you play with bows and arrows?
Why don’t you dance like
you’re sick in your mind?
Why don’t you set your wings on fire?”
—Glass Animals
Ever since Eggchan dropped from the bright blue sky that fateful day, he had stuck by Wemmbu’s side like the fuzzy feathers of his wings. For better or worse, through thick and thin, Egg was that solemn voice in his ear pushing him on the path, in his words, “of peace and harmony.”
And that path Wemmbu never walked—avoided it as if it would lead him to his death. Instead he filled the reflections in his void pupils with orbital explosions blooming like the ripples of a stone tossed into an idyllic pond, with the smash of Gambit against his opponent’s skull and the fan of bitter blood that painted his ivory white skin. He scoffed at how Egg always followed despite the trail of massacre that stuck to the bottoms of his shoes.
…
Eggchan somehow found beauty in the simple, saw meaning where Wemmbu would never expect to find any. He recalled when Egg had stopped in the forest to dig a grave for a dead rabbit and lay orchids blue as his eyes on the disturbed ground. He stood unmoving for ten minutes, staring at the grave.
When Wemmbu asked why, Egg replied, “I don’t know, bro. I guess it just deserves a proper burial.”
The little bounce that accompanied his step vanished for the rest of that day.
…
As seasons changed, and the world sheened over in snow and ice, glowing as white as Egg’s birdlike wings, they hid together from the cold, from the reflective light that overwhelmed their sensitive eyes, and talked for hours about who knows what while he braided Wemmbu’s hair.
On humid nights when spring monsoons crackled with electricity, Egg shivered and clutched his ears, curled up in a ball by his bed. Thunder had always frightened him. Wemmbu patiently sat beside him, patting the sweat from his pearly hair with a cool towel. They found a way to make it through. They always did.
And in the summers, between wars and chaos, Egg made it his life’s goal to walk at the beach once a week. He made rounds by the shore, coating his caramel legs and rolled-up pants in fine, powdery sand and filling his lungs with that salty ocean air and stuffing his pockets with fragments of scalloped purple seashells that he gifted to Wemmbu.
“Bro, I accidentally stepped on a crab and killed it,” he told him once, shame clouding his expression. “It was orange…I feel like that means something.”
“It’s just a crab, and aren’t like all crabs orange?” Wemmbu retorted.
The sapphire of Egg’s contemplative eyes against the fiery sky…it shone like sunbeams dancing in the depths of a glacier, like the iridescent plays on a butterfly’s wing, like crystal embedded in waves of gold. Wemmbu could never turn away. He just couldn’t.
“Well…” Egg began, a serious tinge in his low voice, “we cause all this death. But everything dies or gets eaten eventually because that’s nature, even that orange crab, y’know?”
Wemmbu shook his head but kept listening.
“Maybe we’re just eating everyone, bro,” Egg shrugged.
“Okay, okay, Mr. Morbid!” Wemmbu was unable to restrain a little giggle at the image of Egg, who rarely mustered any appetite and forgot to eat, with the entire universe stabbed on his fork, but he fell back into a hush as Egg looked down at Wemmbu’s hands and at the maces strapped to his waist. Wemmbu chuckled, “I mean, I think I can see your point. Just a little.”
As Wemmbu offered him a gentle pat on his wing as comfort, Eggchan smiled.
He never had the heart of a killer.
…
It’s surprising how quickly an angel burns.
How little it takes for the fire to envelop his feathers and flesh.
How he goes from alive and full of joy and wonder and love to just another singed corpse littering the mountain to just another buried thing under a headstone.
“Hey Egg,” Wemmbu nods. He lowers himself, leans against the cold rock, twirling a deep blue orchid between his slender fingers.
There’s no response. He only hears the rustle of leaves, a dove taking flight.
He hums, “Things have changed a bit. They—they seem to trust me more now!” A pause. “I—I really miss you, you know?”
As he stands, Wemmbu places the fragile flower in the hand of the marble weeping angel slumped on Egg’s headstone. He doesn’t realize that tears are streaming down his face and into his long, purple hair.
“Goodbye, Egg.”
“Why don’t you stare back
into my huge eye?
Why don’t you set my wings on fire?”
-Glass Animals