Chapter Text
By the time the Creature understood how the beings around it —humans, it had learnt they called themselves– measured time, it was already too late for it to properly calculate how long it had been since it gained life of its own.
It had had to go to sleep with an ache on its core —hunger, it had heard some small humans call it in the last village– multiple nights, it wasn’t sure how many, but it thought it could be one of those big numbers the small humans were taught about. Those nights were growing fewer and fewer now that it had learnt to observe animals in the woods getting food for themselves, though.
How long had it been roaming around, from one town to another, looking for shelter and food and hoping that maybe, just maybe, the humans would not chase it away this time? The Creature didn’t know for sure. It was long enough for it to start learning about numbers and letters and words and wild animals, though. Long enough to gain a reputation as a dangerous creature to chase away from your village, too. Long enough to learn that it could hurt humans, and that humans would all try to hurt it back.
Things weren’t so bad, it guessed. It couldn’t know for sure, it hadn’t experienced any other kind of life this far. But it had been discovering things that made it happy so far.
Muffins, for example.
It had been lucky enough to snatch a muffin that had fallen out of a bakery’s window once. Muffins were worth the risk of going inside a town to find a local bakery, more so if they were still warm.
Scones were too, but those were more rare to find with that tasty cream on them.
It was comforting to it, how something so soft and sweet could still exist in a place that was hostile to it; how it could still find that small pleasure in the middle of the roughness that surrounded it, even if it had to sneak them and eat them in the shadows. It longed for more soft and sweet things in its life. The thought that these could exist kept it going, visiting town after town, no matter what happened.
But most of all, there was theatre.
It had found out that was the name of the thing where humans would step onto a stage and tell their tales, reenact the stories that had made them hurt and laugh and love and grow.
It had been alive for long enough to catch three of these already.
It hoped one day it could be the one to stand on the wooden stage, sharing its story. It had learnt so many new feelings through theatre already. It had weeped for the humans who had gone through so many tragedies, and found hope in the stories with good endings. Maybe that way the humans could feel some sympathy for it. Maybe that was what it took for them not to chase it away as soon as it was spotted.
But maybe it had to live through enough things to fill up the five-act structure it has heard about first.
It hoped it would all be worth it after it shared its life story on the stage.
How much had it really lived through at this point?
Daydreaming about standing on the stage always made it think of this.
It hadn’t been through so much, not really. Not compared to the humans who had the courage to stand on stage and show the world their life stories.
Compared to them, the Creature hadn’t suffered so much.
What was having to roam about, looking for food and shelter, compared to having your own kin betray you out of a thirst for power? To see your so-called friends take what was yours without remorse after you’re dead? To lose your soul in exchange of ephemeral material goods?
The Creature probably had it easy to the humans who stood on stage.
It had no kin or friends, though, so some of these tragedies seemed impossible to match so far.
It didn’t give much thought of how it came to be at first. It wasn’t an easy task to focus on where it came from and the implications of being alive when it so desperately need food and shelter, when everything around it was so overwhelmingly confusing that it had to sit for hours, trying to understand its current situation, before giving in to the need to find shelter from the rain that had already soaked it up.
At least it had clothes. The worn out dress shirt and pants were a little tight on its body, but they kept it warmer than it would have been without them.
There was the question of where the clothes had come from, though.
So far, it had learnt —and not in a friendly way– that its clothes came from humans; that if it wanted to have more clothes in case the ones it had on were damp, like they were in its first memory, it would have to steal them from humans, just like it stole muffins and other food items.
So the clothes it had when it first gained consciousness had to come from some human too.
It was hard to recall its first night. It was a blur. It had no way to tell how much time it spent between running because of some unknown instinct and sitting in the middle of a haze, observing wild creatures exist around it.
The village it was at at the moment was nice. There were enough hiding places for the Creature to sit down and sort through the few belongings it had acquired so far. Or to let its mind wander, to speak to itself just like the humans on the stage did, except quietly. It couldn’t let itself be discovered by humans yet.
That afternoon, its mind chose to focus on the new clothes it had gathered.
Clothes came from humans.
It was wearing clothes from a human the first time it had awoken.
Something had to bring it some clothes before it had any consciousness.
Either a human or a very clever and helpful animal.
Animals didn’t know how to dress themselves.
And even if they did —which they didn’t, the Creature knew it was more similar to a human than an animal for this reason–, most animals fled from it, instead of trying to help it.
A human had had to bring it clothes.
A human had had to dress it up before it came to life.
A human had been with it before it came to life.
The Creature had to stop chewing on the berries it had collected.
There was an overwhelming feeling of emptiness in its chest, crawling up all the way to its mouth and making it impossible to enjoy any food. Not even muffins.
A human had been with it before it came to life. A human had abandoned it to its mercy before it could even have any conscious thought. Leaving it to learn all it had learnt from humans without any guidance. How much was there that it could have known had that human not left? How much more human could it be?
It couldn’t imagine what it was like, not being rejected by all humans.
And now it was apparent that this had been its fate, before it could even think of doing any of the things humans shunned it for.
The people on the stage always seemed to have a clear goal.
Maybe the reason this human had abandoned it could be its motivation. And finding its human, even just for an explanation, could serve as its goal.
It seemed reasonable.
Find its human, learn more about its origin, and complete the story it could tell on the stage.
It had to get moving for this, though, make its way back to the place it was from, somehow. Or at least as close as it could get.
The Creature counted four days of travelling off the road, going the long way around villages while trying to get close enough to recognise them. It was the longest it had gone without having any human try to hurt it.
Of course, its story wouldn’t have been interesting if things remained like that for too long. But it was a welcome change.
It had a good reason to think that its life was meant to be shared on the stage, though, as things didn’t continue this way for long.
It had been straying off the roads, avoiding every human, in order to get to his destination faster, but a human seemed to find it somehow, a human with very nice foxy features and sandy hair long enough to be tied in a small ponytail.
The sneer on their face when they saw the creature made their features considerably less pretty. The Creature froze on its tracks instinctively.
“Well, I’ll be damned. You do exist.” The human laughed, approaching it without any of the wariness or the outright aggressiveness of the rest of the humans it had met so far.
Somehow, that made this human worse.
“What was your creator thinkin’, makin’ something like you and runnin’ off.” The human walked in circles around it, sizing it up like a fox would with its prey. “If it were me, I’d have my name on the papers already.”
The human stopped right in front of the Creature, offering it a smile. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Banri Settsu. And I’ll be the one to prove whether or not the rumours about you are true.”
The Creature’s instincts kicked in and allowed it to move right as Banri Settsu threw themself at it. It was taller and stronger than them, so it shouldn't be hard for it to overpower the human, even if it tried not to harm them so much.