Saben, previously known as Sabriel

I have been working on my new idea, and the main character informed me as I wrote that his name was Saben, not Sabriel. But the name is unimportant anyway. This is the first chapter. I am having so much fun trying to write first person as a male character. I'll probably screw it up, but I find it entertaining anyway.

Chapter 1

            I raised my face to the sunshine, closed my eyes, and tried to remember what joy felt like. It had been five long years since I had been able to feel any deep emotion. The best I could hope for was a mild interest in something new or complicated. I knew, in the way I knew most things I couldn’t explain, that I hadn’t always been that way. I had been able to feel once. But it didn’t matter. I survived without strong emotion, muddling along without real enthusiasm, but unable to grow depressed enough to contemplate suicide. It was a wasted life, but luckily, I didn’t possess the emotions to be concerned by it.

            My companion didn’t make a sound, but I knew she was trying to get my attention. I opened my eyes and looked at her. The red-tailed hawk perched on a rock beside me, her keen eyes on the fish I had just caught from the river.

            I took the fish off the hook and held it out to her without ceremony. She snatched it with even less ceremony and began to eat it. It wasn’t in the nature of a hawk to be thankful or appreciative. Luckily, it wasn’t in my nature to desire thanks or appreciation. Red was a good companion for me in that respect. She was by no means domesticated. I found her with a broken wing four winters ago. I set her wing and kept her alive, not due to any goodwill on my part, but because she sparked what little interest my broken mind was capable of producing. She stayed of her own volition, probably because I provided easy meals. I couldn’t have been around an animal that needed affection. I didn’t have any to give.

            I stayed by the river until I had caught three more fish. One I would give to Red whenever she nudged me. The other two would be my dinner. I didn’t need to eat often, but I found some small pleasure in it. I also found that when I ate regular meals, I had fewer black-out rages. I didn’t possess the capacity to be remorseful for anyone I killed or anything I destroyed during my violent mindless episodes, but I remembered the emotion and tried my best to avoid doing anything that should have been regrettable.

            I picked up the old metal bucket containing my fish and stretched my legs. I unfolded my leathery wings and tried to enjoy the feeling of the sun on them. My naturally copper colored skin had grown darker as the summer continued. I hadn’t found a style of shirt that comfortably fit over my wings, and living as a hermit in the woods didn’t require clothing. I didn’t possess the ability to be embarrassed, but I always wore shorts or pants out of habit. I also needed to have pockets to store things that interested me. Sometimes, I would find rocks that had the hint of a shape and I would take them home and carve them. It was one of the few activities I had found that resulted in the tickle of my lost emotions.

            Red landed on my bare shoulder, her claws not managing to puncture my thick skin. It wasn’t particularly comfortable, but I didn’t have my leather gauntlet with me, so my shoulder was her best perch. She preened her chest feathers while I walked.

            I became aware of a presence a mile away from my cabin. I had a sense of smell that would make a bloodhound envious, but it wasn’t her familiar scent that gave Kate away. I stopped walking. I knew it was her because of the crushing pressure I felt in my chest. It would grow worse and worse as I closed the distance between us. And when she touched me, I would drown in the storm that had been suppressed since our last meeting.

            I only experienced emotion when I was in her presence. She was like a light switched. As soon as she was around, I could feel again. But it came in a maddening rush; an overwhelming attack of feeling that left me huddled on the ground sobbing hysterically. Adding to the misery was that her presence allowed me to be embarrassed by my condition. I might not have been human anymore, or ever, but I was definitely a man. I did not enjoy devolving into a whimpering mess every time I saw her.

            I hadn’t moved since feeling the first crushing slap of real emotion. I was afraid to go forward. The novelty of being capable of fear brought tears to my eyes. I embraced it, pulled uncontrollably toward the source of feeling. Red fidgeted on my shoulder, probably sensing my unease. She rubbed her sharp beak along my jaw in a comforting gesture that had never had meaning for me before. With my emotions returning, four years of companionship-joy slammed into my head and it was all I could do not to pull the bird off my shoulder into a hug. It was good I didn’t do that. She was a wild animal and hugging her wouldn’t work for either of us.

            I kept walking forward, ignoring the stream of tears that lined my face. Five years of emotions were waiting to crush me with her first touch. But I wanted it. I needed to feel again. The bad feelings always came first and hardest, but they never lasted too long. She could redirect me toward the good things I had been missing. But would she?

            I stopped. Why was she here? Who had sent her? How had she found me? I lived in hiding for a reason. It had taken me a whole year after my escape to be sure I had gotten myself well and truly lost. I owned nothing, had no credit cards or bills in my name. I paid for the land I had built my cabin on with cash. The owner of the wooded mountainside was under the impression I was a high functioning autistic with paranoid schizophrenia. I had convinced him I wasn’t dangerous, and that all I needed was isolation. Over the past two years I started going into the small town that was the closest civilization. There was a library there, and reading was as good as rock carving to spark my dead emotions. Going into town was the mistake. I tried to keep a low profile. Considering I was six foot nine, had fangs and wings, one would think that impossible. But I could fold my wings tightly against my back and put a shirt on over them. They still showed, but I covered the odd lines and raised ridges with the lie that I was scarred from a fire. People accepted the lie, and my other lie of autism that kept them from touching me. I went into town once a week to get new books, buy food and to sell my carvings and custom built wooden furniture. It was a good simple life. No one should have been able to find me.

            But she was here. I fell to my knees and threw up as fear and panic tormented my normally calm mind. I couldn’t process the emotions. I wasn’t used to them. I felt my retractable claws extend from my fingers and I began to hyperventilate.

I must have passed out, because I had no memory of slamming my face into the dirt. Red was hopping around shrieking at me. Her unease allowed me to take control of myself. I pushed the panic back. I wiped the dirt and tears from my face and held out my arm to the hawk. I didn’t bother talking to her. She wasn’t like a dog that reacted to the tone of a voice. She responded to body language. She inspected my outstretched fingers critically, her feathers still fluffed. She nipped me when I tried to settle them with a stroke along her breast. A moment later she hopped up onto my shoulder and resumed preening.

            I started walking toward my home with my pail of fish. There was no need to panic. She had come alone. There was no other scent. If she had been sent to drag me back to the facility, she wouldn’t have come alone. But why had she come? Had she been sent, or had she escaped them just as I had?

            She had been there from the beginning; when I was nothing more than a mindless animal in a cage, unwilling to eat anything that wasn’t tossed into my cell alive and terrified. She had watched me, a young innocent girl. I shook my head, upsetting Red. She hadn’t been a girl, only younger than the others observing me.

            She had come to me alone in the dark. I had grabbed her by the throat and pinned her against the wall, intent on killing her. She had looked into my eyes calmly, and cried for me. I set her down, my brain filling with words I hadn’t known a moment before. The first words I remember speaking were an apology. It was little more than a grunted ‘sorry’, but she had smiled at me in a way that I would never forget.

            The night before I escaped, she came to me in a blue dress. She told me they had ordered her to seduce me. She gave me my first remembered kiss, and whispered that she loved me against my lips. I hadn’t said it back. I was unfamiliar with the gentle emotions. I was a creature of rage. I didn’t hold her when she kissed me. I was a breaker of beautiful things, so I kept my hands at my sides. I didn’t feel the softness of her skin, or run my fingers through the silk of her hair. I was made of rage. But she tamed the rage. She stole it with a gentle touch. She terrified me.

            It figured that they would send her.