Custom Angelic Endeavor
"Don't change, Aaron. For me."
They were the final words of a seventeen-year-old boy, driven adrift in the head by something more than anyone could have anticipated, and there wasn't a soul that could save him in that moment. A single self-inflicted gunshot, and it was all over for the boy, but not his best friend who stood just feet away, shaking and silent in a blanket of shock and a deep and sudden sort of despair at what had just occurred.
He ran when he was aware of the world around him, ran as far as he could, as fast as he could.
In this world, he learned quite soon, demons existed and they housed themselves within small animals. The talk of an insane man, one might assume, but it was simply a barely visible piece of the world to most unless you looked deeper... or, in the case of Romulus, one could simply follow you home. It followed him, pursued him, even spoke to him within his head, and few would suspect a stray cat of such maddening behavior, but that cat that had once belonged to his friend had been imbued with a demon's soul like many other tiny pets children may have had.
It was an acquaintance of his by the name of Angelo that had stepped in between Aaron and this devil, shooing it away with an unseen force until it had given up on the boy. When Angelo revealed the truth about himself, and implied that he could have helped, he could have saved him, it proved too much for Aaron to bear, and he had lashed out in anger against the older boy, severing all contact with him as desperate as Angelo was to keep him safe.
Years down the road, he hadn't followed that boy's last request; Aaron he was no more, and instead he had adopted the name Romulus. He had become sullen and angry at himself. He had also become someone that could have helped; now he knew and much too late, his friend's mind had been ransacked and made anything but his own by demonic influence. To those that are aware of the darker world beyond the superficial, he is known as an angel. Angels in this world were only just of the supernatural; they merely had the predisposition to create and wield things that could banish a demon housed in the most innocuous of places.
He lived a life secluded from others. Sure, he lived and worked around people in a small convenience store, but never once, not since he had moved away from Angelo, had attempted to connect to anyone. He spent his time alone, perfecting his talent in charm crafting as a skilled apothecary. His charms and their ingredients lay in vials, beakers, bottles, and jars that littered the house, and he read everything he could on the subject at hand (little of it that there was) as he could manage. His own charms kept whatever unsavory forces that may seek to harm him and those in the immediate area at bay. In essence, they were his lifeline in the form of a liquid security blanket.
Truly, he thought he didn't need anyone until a night filled with desperation, loneliness, and a bit too much alcohol, he managed to get into contact with Angelo in a realization of how alone and afraid he really was. Angelo had welcomed the friendship again with open arms, and it wasn't long at all that, even with only loose contact through phone calls and the internet that he had begun to grow too attached for his own good and there was, well, never a dull moment between them.
He had changed from the happy boy he once was, for sure.
____________________________________________________________this pet has been nominated for the pet spotlight!
owner:
Savior
