Puppet Boy

Retelling certain parts of Blood Ties from Tide's fragmented perspective.
Get up puppet boy/ You've got a job to do/ Even so you're free to go/ Where your master tells you to - DEVO
== Spring Tide ==
She has to be ok… she has to be… I don’t care what anyone else says… She went on patrol with Stenocara and never came back, she must be trapped somewhere… not dead, she can’t be dead.
I swim to the shore. Mom and dad have already given up on her, they’re already mourning. It’s not right. Not right at all.
I claw onto the wet sand. I’m in enemy territory now, the MudWings and their allies could be anywhere. This border is dangerous, and it’s right where my family lives… right where we do our patrols… I should have known, I should have known…
I can’t be too fearful yet. I breathe in a lungful of air, my body getting used to getting oxygen from air, instead of water. I haven’t been above water for a long time. I have been away, guarding prisoners. Away from home, from my usual patrol route, which Starfish took… and now she’s… well, who knows?
My body feels heavier, slower. It feels odd, but I get used to it quickly. It had been a long time, but not forever. I trod through the strange marshy forests bordering our lands, smelling the familiar scent of rotting plant matter which pervades this area of the mud kingdom.
I walk until I come to a clearing, and my nightmares are realized. The unmistakable shining blue scales of my sister lie in a heap like a bag of bones, set down against a rock. I rush to her side, to confirm what I already know. Starfish is dead. Her eyes are fogged over and glassy, her body begins to bloat. She has been dead for at least several weeks considering the state of decay.
A bit farther away, I see the awkward, still body of Stenocara, her throat slit. She lies in a pool of her own dried blood.
I avert my gaze. Instead, I lift my sister’s limp form off from her resting place, and with difficult dragging motions begin the process of returning her to the ocean.
Our life cycles begin in the ocean, and end there. That’s the way it’s been for centuries, for as long as anyone can remember. It would be a nightmare for a SeaWing to die without ever touching the ocean again.
If returned to the ocean, we are a part of it. A part of the life cycle which feeds the fish, who then feed us. It is sacred, powerful. Somehow I sensed, before all of this, that Starfish was dead, but I still knew I had to find her. I had to bring her home.
I drag, and drag, across the sand, and lay her in the gently lapping ocean waves. I begin to sob over her body, but the sound of the ocean lulls me, until the tears dry on my scales and my eyes are closed, my head bowed over her. I hear a silent prayer in my heart, that her soul becomes one with the ocean, and that she feels my love for her, as her spirit leaves this body.
I could never let her soul stay there, trapped in her rotting flesh, away from where she belongs. My heart aches, not only for Starfish, but for all those soldiers I imagined who died away from the sea: who died unable to rejoin the ocean.
This war is a terrible crime.
The sound of something sharply breaking catches my attention, snaps me out of my grief. I turn my head around, scan the treeline for whoever made that noise.
Rage and fear flash through me. Someone is here, an enemy… perhaps the same dragon who killed Starfish!
A MudWing steps out of the treeline. A bulky, dangerous looking dragonet. She holds her wings in a diplomatic manner, “I don’t want to fight,” she says, “I just want to talk to you.”
This is a trick, an awful, terrible trick! She must have murdered my sister, and comes for me too! I will destroy those dragons responsible for killing Starfish! She is, and always will be, the only thing that ever mattered to me.
I lunge. We grapple. 
She holds my throat down with one of her large talons, the other held high. I see those talons glint in the light, sharp and poised to cut my throat. My eyes widen, and I realize my foolish anger has once again put me in a life or death situation. This time, perhaps, ending in death.
But that isn’t my fate. Oh how I wish it was.
“Don’t be afraid,” She says. Her words are not just words. Ripples of power emanate from her vocal cords, vibrating through my body. My muscles relax. The fear is gone. I know I will likely die soon, but death no longer frightens me. Now I am a monster for rage, and rage only.
I fight her grip, clawing and scratching and struggling. I slash her forelegs.
“AAargh!” She shrieks, “Stop being angry, stop being upset, just love me! Love me like you can’t live without me!”
I stop. I stare up at her. I feel the power from her words reverberate through my bones.
How her maroon scales glint in the sunlight, her reddish eyes aglow. My heart swells with nothing but pure love and adoration for this new dragon in my life.
She lets go. We untangle. We stand and face each other.
I stare into her eyes, those beautiful eyes. I can’t resist. I touch my talons gently to either side of her face, and kiss her. Oh how wonderful it feels to kiss her!
I pull away. I must know more about this beautiful creature, “What’s your name?” I ask. I notice a twinge of something in her eye. Regret? But why? I cannot comprehend it.
“I’m Mosquito, what’s your name?”
Oh Mosquito, what a wonderful, wonderful name. The cadence of her voice, so beautiful. The lilting melody of that voice. I feel uncontainable love.
“Tide,” I reply, though I feel that I am wholly unimportant. All I care about is this new being in front of me, “You’re the most beautiful dragon I’ve ever seen. Sorry for attacking you, just instinct during the war I guess,” I glance at Starfish’s dead body. Before I felt immeasurable sorrow when I looked at her. Now I just feel… nothing. Nothing but love for this new dragon. There is nothing else in my mind, I barely pay attention to the words I’m speaking. They are nothing… nothing… “And I was a bit on edge since I came looking for my sister’s corpse. I’m not so sad anymore though.”
Not so sad anymore… that’s right.
== High Tide ==
I hear something behind me, but do not pay attention, until I see that Mosquito is looking. If she is interested, I am interested.
A dragon comes raging out of the bushes, another MudWing. I don’t pay much attention to her, I stare at Mosquito. Love, love, love, love. I love Mosquito.
Mosquito seems upset, she argues with this other dragon. The other dragon must be bad, to make Mosquito upset.
I feel a talon touch my shoulder. It is Mosquito, oh I love when she touches me. How wonderful.
“Do whatever I command you to do.” She says. I feel it again, that feeling of something going through me, becoming one with me.
“Kill Moss!” She yells. My head whips around to the action. That is Moss, the new MudWing. I must kill her.
I grab her by the neck and fling her as far as I can. She crashes into the sand, it swirls in the air. I leap toward her weakened body. She is disoriented. I pin her down with my tail and back legs. I shove my talons down into her throat. Wet, it is wet. Warm. My talons encircle around her windpipe, and with one strong jerk of my arm, and the crunch of cartilage breaking, Moss is dead.
I did what I was told.
Mission accomplished.
Moss makes an awkward, gurgling, choking noise. Her body convulses as her heart pumps her blood out onto the sand, reddening it. It clumps up, thickening. Things mix together to make new things.
Mosquito acts regretfully. She cries on her sister’s corpse. I don’t understand. I used to understand this, but now I don’t. I don’t understand why I don’t understand.
Why am I different now. I feel a cold sensation watching Mosquito. Not sad, but strange. I am not Tide anymore, am I? If I’m not Tide, who am I? This was difficult to answer.
Mosquito cries, and cries, and then she grabs a stick and enchants herself never to feel sad or guilty ever again. Somehow, I feel that this is not a good idea, but I don’t quite know why. It was vaguely interesting… not frustrating, no… how I didn’t seem to know much anymore. Or at least, I cannot comprehend.
She looks up at me. So beautiful, how beautiful. She clasps the earring in my ear, and with a mutter under her breath, my scales shift and become new.
We go to her home. She tells me what to say. Otherwise I just stare, stare at her, as my heart swells. I love her, I love her. I’m not sad or angry. I’m not happy. Just empty. 
Should I tell her? That I’m empty? She told me not to be upset. I’m not upset. But she didn’t tell me to be happy.
Shouldn’t I be happy, if I’m in love?
But if she’s gone for even a moment, I’ll die. I can’t live without her.
I meet her siblings, my mouth and my body is simply a tool for her to echo her own thoughts, yet she hates me already. She’s annoyed. I know she hates me, but my heart aches for her. I can’t live without her.
Her brother goes to prison. As she planned.
And we stay. I am a MudWing now. I am whatever Mosquito wants me to be. 
== Neap Tide ==
The war continues. Mosquito likes to fight. She wants me to fight. I kill lots of SeaWings, some I recognize, some I don’t. I don’t feel anything. I don’t speak when I am not told. I am nothing. A voiceless, thoughtless being, when she leaves me alone.
Those two years pass in a daze, a flurry of mundane life. Mundane war. Mundane mundane mundane.
I am a puppet, whose limbs are limp, whose voice is quiet, when he’s put back in his case.
Mosquito gets sick of me often. She hates what I represent. Her failure. Losing her brother.
It wasn’t my fault, of course. None of it is. I think she convinces herself I can’t feel anything she does to me. Not like she would feel guilty about it anyway.
I still feel pain. It simply doesn’t bother me.
She wants me to be more like him. She gets bored without him. He was her best friend. In comparison, I am a beautiful nothing to her.
The charm she saw in me on that first day is gone. I am a plaything. Yet I still feel nothing. 
Sometimes I wish I could feel angry again. Or even sad. I miss being able to grieve.
Instead I am empty. Empty. Empty.
The war ends. Mosquito is not happy. I recover for weeks after what she does to me. I feel the pain in my flesh, but still I am dull. She can heal me, if she wants to. She doesn’t.
I am a puppet. I am made of wood. I don’t think I’m alive anymore.
I can’t help but love her though, love her though.
She lets me be a SeaWing now that the war is over. But there is an egg. There is an egg now. Mosquito doesn’t want it.
It hatches. He is a little thing, a wingless hybrid. He wasn’t born right. Perhaps we were too young. I don’t know.
I want to keep him. I will probably be a horrible father, but I still want him. The love I have for him is different. It’s real. My love for Mosquito is manufactured, obsessive. My love for my son is real. I want him.
But I don’t say anything when Mosquito gives him away. At least she leaves him with my parents, at least they will look after him. I would be sad, if I could. But I can’t.
The war has been over for months. Mosquito doesn’t like it. She hears the dragonets of destiny making a school to further unite the tribes. She sees an opportunity to destroy a fragile peace.
== Low Tide ==
I’m a new person again.
I’m Seafoam now, a small student. Six years old.
I have to pretend.
This form is tingly. New. Unfamiliar. I don’t know him well yet. But that comes with time.
Mosquito looks a little different now too. She calls herself Gnat now. A disguise. We are disguised.
Mosquito wants to make chaos. Without chaos, she is bored. Boredom is all she has left, other than anger. She wants to be happy. I don’t know if she can anymore.
A purple dragonet attacks her. A friend of Caiman. She knows. We are seperated. She summons me.
I free her. And she sends me to destroy.
Destroy, destroy, destroy.
I fly but the pink one trails me. I ignore him. Mosquito told me to attack the students in the school, not the ones outside. I don’t need to hurt him. 
He tries to stop me, but I cannot stop moving. 
He fights me, but I keep going. He slices my gills. My body roars in pain.
I keep flying.
He tackles me, and slices through my wing membrane. We topple out of the sky.
Then there was darkness. 
I awake in a room. At first my mind is fuzzy, and I feel a terrible pit in my stomach. An awful, overwhelming sense of sadness and pain.
But with sadness, so comes joy.
In shock, I realize that I am cured. Someone had removed Mosquito’s spell on me.
I sob, with my mixed emotions.
It is the most overwhelming, fantastic thing.
Anger rages in my soul, sorrow, guilt, and the happiness I feel just to be experiencing these emotions.
I observe my surroundings. I am in a medical cave, likely at Jade Mountain Academy. I see the pink one sleeping in a cot not far from me. 
My wing and gills are bandaged.
Someone in the other room hears my crying. A nurse comes in, I don’t recognize her. She rushes to me, wraps her wings around me.
I sob for hours into her neck. It feels like a cleansing of my soul.
Several hours later, my son walks into the room. It is hard to hold back the fresh tears that threaten to come, because I was never able to fully experience the pain of losing him until now. Now I can feel the joy of reunion, too.
I smile, my eyes wet, clasping his hand tightly, “I know it’s you. I could tell as soon as you walked in here… I wanted to keep you, but she-” My voice breaks. I can’t mention her. I can’t.
“It’s ok,” He whispers, “It’s ok,”
“It’s so strange,” I say quietly, “I experienced all those things so long ago… But I’ve only been able to feel them properly today. And most of my memories are… poisoned…” I took in a deep breath, “I’m sickened, of what she made me feel… what she made me do…”
The dragonet reassures me as I tell him of my life.
“What did my parents end up naming you?” I ask, realizing I don’t even know his name.
“Mudskipper.”
“That’s a good name.”
Exhaustion overtook me, emotional, and physical. For the first time in years, I had a dreamless sleep.
Category:Content (DuskRose42)
Category:Fanfictions
Category:Fanfictions (Semi-Canon)
Category:Fanfictions (Completed)
Category:Genre (Short Story)