aldersprig | Hatred, a story of Dragons Next Door for the Pre-Giraffe Bus Call

kelkyag's prompt

Content warning... fantasy bigotry

It's not something you can say 'no' to, Cathal.

So his mother had challenged him, at the tender age of eleven.

It's just something we are.

Cathal had shaken his head. "No." Her repudiated it. His mother wheedled.

That's like centaurs saying they aren't a four-legged hooved being, Cathal. It's ridiculous.

Cathal had been unmoved by his mother's ridicule, by her later logic, by her even-later yelling. his answer had been No, and that was that.

Nobody thought to ask him why - not his mother, not the others in the far-flung community. Let him pass, they advised his mother. It will be easier for everyone.

Slowly, reluctantly, Cathal's mother accepted this advice. By the time her son was seventeen, she had ceased speaking to him about his heritage. By the time he was twenty-five, she'd stopped mentioning her own.

She'd always passed, living in the suburbs, keeping her gifts quiet. Now she just passed... more. Her son, after a few pointed remarks, kept the bigoted comments away from her house and her table.

By the time Cathal was thirty - and married, to as normal and white-bread a girl as was ever dreamed up - the two of them, mother and son, hand managed to delude themselves into believe there was no problem at all.

By the time Cathal started hunting, his mother was dead. His new friends asked no questions, either, and his victims weren't often in a state to do so.

The one who knew had long since forgotten.

Cathal himself had internalized the hate long ago. By the time he was teaching his son how to kill dweomers, the words he'd heard in childhood were as long gone as his mother's pleas.

You can't be a dirty dweomer. Everyone knows they're horrid cheats and filthy liars.

No.

It's not something you can say 'no' to, Cathal.

Watch me.