He had both hands on the tip of the axe, tilting his head almost as if he was trying to find something behind Ciaran. He let out a sigh and returned to his chore.
"What is your name?" Ciaran asked walking towards him. The dried-up leaves cracking as he stepped on them turned to dust that was lifted by the breeze. A ring of crushed leaves levitated and swirled around the blonde boy.
"She said I needed wood, lots of it, for a fire, the biggest fire." He said a bit under his breath.
"Who did?" Ciaran asked already inside the ring.
The boy turned once again to Ciaran who was already centimeters away from his face.
"Why are you here? I didn't promise you love, nor did my sister." Ciaran said with his hand on the boy's whose hand was on the axe.
"I'm not that kind of doll, the one from your mother's story, those are not common anymore."
The chopped wood on the ground smoked as warm water in cold weather. The fog emerging from the grass deepened. The white surrounded their feet forming something similar to a funnel cloud. As light as a breeze and as warm as a hug, unreal, almost like running in your sleep. Ciaran looked for his reflection on the boy's eyes but there was nothing, just a dull window to darkness.
"I don't know how much is real from your mother's story, but she was wrong about many things. Although it might have been on purpose. "
"Those parasites are not necessarily revengeful, they are very emotional unstable, but they are not naturally evil in anyway. Instead, they are mostly hollow. So, if you as a whole creation link to them in any way, they feed of your soul in tiny quantities, as if your connection was an umbilical cord."
"Once that happens, their existence begins a process of realization, similar to that of a child becoming conscious of life, they are not aware of. They don't know they are not your equal but they are aware they need you so they can be clingy. They might even think their link to you formed out of genuine love so manipulating them is very viable. Similar to that of a child when they become conscious of their life."
"If they reach a true form of body and soul, they can independently live, they will unaffiliate themselves from you by cutting the cord that links you. If they don't reach that state and you as a host forcefully break it, the string tied around their neck begins a different process. Feeding the bee queen."
"During the feeding process they will swallow the host entirely body and soul and return to their birth tree to be later gathered by their mother and devoured."
Ciaran only listened as the fog continued to rotate around them slowly swallowing them. There was no survival instinct, something about the air easily entering his nostrils and leaving them just as easy conveyed a sense of security like that of a blanket tightly wrapping around your body.
"Those are not common anymore?" Ciaran asked the boy.
"They were not efficient enough; anyone could break open a sack of skin hanging on low branches, so if your child were missing, you could enter the forest and find their corpse. Wasted meals everywhere, after all their soul and body detach leaving nothing worth caring for. If a mother doesn't eat it, it's no use." He continued to fondle a coin with his right hand, sometimes staring into the seamless ground, sometimes on his left hand which you could find under Ciaran's.
"Are mothers hungry?" Ciaran asked curious.
"They are not driven by hunger; they were raided away from their birth land and revoked from their previous ways of living. Their life span shortens as they use their soul so they feed on life itself, or they will extinct."
"Do you own a soul yourself." Ciaran asked empathetic to the fear of death.
"Parasites like me are created with a different kind of cord, I'm directly connected to my mother, so I feed of her soul." He said with a hint of shame.
"How long have you been alive" Ciaran asked.
"I don't remember, my consciousness is turned on and off like a candle, every time I wake up, my experience starts from cero, what I know and is a constant to never change is that I exist to serve my mother and will fade to nothing once she's been fed."
"When this is over, I will disappear, and you will be dead."
"In case you slay the witch, I will die off completely." He said with a smirk.
"What can I do?" He asked hopeful.
"If you could wake up, the fire would only burn your sleeping gowns." The boy said turning away.
Suddenly the fog turned to smoke violently punching Ciaran's lungs. He opened his eyes to the candle his sister had left unattended eating away the bedsheets. The fire reached the ceiling, and her sister remained unfaced by the rumbling of the disaster. He shook her body with force, but her eyes remained closed.
The smoke and the heat pressed on his brain. He could barely see the door to the stairs and felt the same weakness from his dream, the impotence to a situation that could be his very end. He was helpless but strong at will. He kneeled and pulled his sister's body on his back and slowly dragged her unconscious body outside the room.