[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/0Hh7rGs.png[/img][/center] [color=00F8FE]Time: Morning Location: Callum’s Room Interactions: none[/color] [color=9FA1A4]If there was one thing Callum excelled at, wallowing was it. He stared out the window of his room. He drank. He imagined what life was like for a bird. A life spent flying free through endless, open, skies. A solitary bird, one that knew how to be alone without feeling lonely. He drank more. Or maybe a cat, or a fish. Something that didn’t have to think far beyond the moment. If Callum was most like any animal it was a dog caught up in chasing his own tail, running in circles for something always out of reach until he tired himself out and accepted defeat. [i]Had Wulfric helped him because they were brothers or because it was an easier way for Wulfric to deal with him? How long would it take for him to forget what his mother had nearly done today? How long would remember feeling accepted by Auguste and Ana? How long before only saw Auguste’s unwillingness to stand against Edin and Ana as casually careless again?[/i] He’d love them, until they let him down. Then he’d hate them, and he’d hate himself for being one of them. They’d all be a family tree that bore only rotten apples. Until he needed something, or he wished for love and acceptance and he’d look for them. Then he’d remember how kind Auguste was, how brave Ana was, and how his mother loved him in her own, flawed, way. Then only Edin would be the rotten branch that kept trying to spread his venom through the tree. He’d love the rest of them until they let him down. It would be so much easier to let it go, accept what he had, and be grateful for it. Just be a normal family all the time, to not live under crushing tension around them. A life spent somnambulant. Maybe he could just accept them for who they were, in their faults and strengths, but it wouldn’t close his eyes to how much everyone else around them suffered at Danrose’s hands. He couldn’t be on both sides. He couldn’t live in circles. He tried not to fidget with his clothes or hair. Callum settled with picking and chewing at his fingernails. He over-picked everything, until it was ugly and flawed, in his thoughts, and towards his fingernails. He messed so many things up. Maybe he should leap and take flight from the window, pretend he was a bird for a moment. Thoughts like that used to scare him, but now he found them strangely comforting like there was always a way out if he needed it. [color=DAF6C7][i]“Try until you get what you want. Mess up until you get it right.”[/i][/color] And why did that piece of advice scare him more than anything? Callum walked over to his desk and pulled a small knife from his desk. He would be decisive, there would be no more forgetting, no more living his life in circles. He dug the knife into the wall and carved into the walls of his bedroom things he was going to remember. [img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjMyLjAxZmZmNi5SVVJKVGlCSlV5QkJJRkJCVWtGVFNWUkYuMA/krazy-nights.regular.webp[/img] He did not carve these words anywhere hidden and each letter ran the length of his arm. Callum would see this every time he set foot in this room. Edin lived off the suffering of others, his every success was to another’s detriment. But that was only the start. Callum had stopped thinking of Edin as his father a long time ago, the man who had sired him was a rotten soul beyond hope, and he’d never forgotten that, but that old realization had been the start. [img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjMyLjAxZmZmNi5RVXhKUWtWVVNDQkpVeUJCSUUxUFRsTlVSVklnLjA/krazy-nights.regular.webp[/img] This statement hurt more than just his hand as he carved the words but he knew he had to remember this one. He would not forgive his mother for what she had done today. There would be no gifts or hugs or small signs of affection that would soften him. She would’ve condemned a man to die today. He would not think of her as a mother. He was done with trying to see them as what he wanted, they were what they had become. Poor excuse for parents, poor excuses for people, and he wasn’t going to let blood tie him to them. Callum stopped thinking of himself as a prince a long time ago, but that had been easy, he’d hated that title from the moment he knew everything it meant. But he still thought of himself as Callum Danrose and he needed his surname gone too. He would not be his family's mistakes. [img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjM2LjAxZmZmNi5TU0JCVFNCT1R5QkVRVTVTVDFORi4w/krazy-nights.regular.webp[/img] This he wrote even larger than the last two. He was not going to become what his parents were; a parasite, a monster, another rotten Danrose. He would figure out what it was to be just Callum, to know exactly what it was he wanted and how he was going to try for it. He wrote no condemnations of his siblings, they didn’t deserve it, they were still just as much not their parents as he was. He was not going to hate everything, just the things he couldn’t live with. [img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjM2LjAxZmZmNi5TU0JYU1V4TUlFSkZJRUpGVkZSRlVnLjA/krazy-nights.regular.webp[/img] Callum took a drink as he admired his work written across the walls of his room. They’d see it, sooner or later, and that was scary, but not enough so that he felt the slightest regret about this. He’d see it, he’d remember it, he’d believe in it and he’d try harder. [/color]