@lura-valentine gifted me this absolutely stunning ref sheet for Kalas. I haven’t had a chance to fill in the details yet (the woes of being Perpetually Busy™️; this time it’s HIPAA statutes). It will definitely go up on his Carrd soon. I just need to build out one more page, and then I can go through and tweak things I want, including fixing some gallery scripts and this upload.
In any case, as always, there's an expanded snippet below from Blackbird, Chapter 1: Heckling.
“So, they kept running their mouths?” Keigo asked, trying (and failing) to suppress a smirk. He took that to mean his son had tried to appeal to authority first, but his fists clenched at the idea of a teacher condoning bullying. “Lemme guess; you kicked their ass?”
Kalas hugged his crow tightly, hurt and regret that he’d thrown his blue jay, beginning to build to a critical mass. He was a deeply sentimental child, and he generally treated that blue jay as if it were the most precious thing in the world. To him, it certainly was, after all.
“They said she was weak,” Kalas choked quietly after a long moment. “Or that the reason she died was because she didn’t love us or care enough to fight it. That… that she deserved it. That we deserved it. So many things…”
Keigo's smirk faded, expression darkening to a cold, hardened glare that hadn’t graced his face since the war. The idea that someone could besmirch his late wife; not just insult, but shred the very memory of her. It set his blood on fire. He took a grounding breath before gathering the blue jay squishmallow and slowly entering his son’s room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he looked intently at his child’s back and iridescent black wings.
“You know that’s not true, right?” Keigo questioned, voice firm but as gentle as he could manage to at least attempt to console his progeny. “Your mom was a fighter and tried hard to beat it. When she realized she couldn’t fight it anymore, she didn’t want us to see her sick and in pain for years on end. She made peace with it. It wasn’t a matter of her not loving us to stay; she loved us too much to let us watch her slowly waste away.”
“I know,” Kalas pleaded desperately into his crow squish. “I tried to tell them that, and they just told me it’s my fault. My fault that she’s gone. That you’re alone. That she’s not here with you, making you happy. That all of this was my fault.”
Kalas paused momentarily, almost sure he could feel his father’s anger. His feathers fluffed with the effort before he finally let it out, whispering. “I wish I had never been born.”
Keigo's throat closed for a moment. He couldn’t speak; couldn’t breathe. That statement was a feather blade, aimed directly at its target.
The grief hadn’t vanished, but it wasn’t crushing him the way it used to. Ayea's letter had soothed something aching deep inside him. And for the first time in years, Keigo didn’t feel utterly lost. He was still hurting, still unsteady. But now he knew which way was North.
