Welcome to Gaia! ::

It was a burning sensation in him. That started with his back, the cold burn of his healing injuries, that spread out everywhere. This had a sense of familiarity.

The edge of the flyers smoldered and he did not notice it.

"Don't," he growled out, "call me dear boy." This was too much like he was a ******** child again and someone that thought they knew his life better was trying to direct it. He had made this deal but it was something he would fight about.

"It's a very serious consideration."

Jeremiah still could not tell if it was a man or a woman with a deep voice but he could hear the smirk and that was not working for him. He was angry enough to forget that he had already made this deal, there was no backing out of it.

The blood on his collar would have reminded him, the scratch that was along his throat, but this was Jeremiah and he never did well with ultimatums. Even if they were part of deals he made.

Jeremiah growled, something low and throaty, and deep in his chest. The flyers continued to smolder in his hand.

The only reason he had not turned was the feeling that weighed him down. The sense of predator, predator. It was not often that Jeremiah felt as prey. Not even around Sunny had he felt like that. That he was seeing things he was not meant to see but not prey.

"Stop trying to ******** goad me." Algie's voice in his head suddenly, telling him to stop being a child - to stop being that teenager that he had to always had to patch up - because this was exactly what was wanted. Not thinking clearly, reacting poorly, asking the wrong questions in anger.

What he should have done was the same thing that always happened to him when he spooked Algie.

"I'll abide by your favor and when I want to cash in mine, you'll be there to answer it." Then flight or fight was broken and it was fight, the flyers smoldering in Jeremiah's clenched fist as he spun around with the same hand to punch whatever it was behind him.

It was absolutely not what he expected. Not what he could believe either but the feeling of his hand being caught by his father's hands did not help the way he felt. Young and small and angry. It was so far removed from the man he was, the man he had become, that he did not know what to do.

The danger was there, he knew it, but the feeling was overwhelmed with something else. Something that trickled down into him as the blood did down his collar.

What he saw before him did not truly register but the smell did. The crackle of the fire, the smell of burning sap, the smoke of a fire that had gone on much too long.

"It does not," he whispered but it was to nothing - the figure gone. Jeremiah stood in the drizzle, face tilted up to let it hit his face as he closed his eyes. The pain of back, the chill that was now second nature, was a counterpoint to what he felt on the inside.

He leaned down, hissing at the pain of it, the burn of his back, and picked up the red leather case. It was empty now and there was nothing left in it. The fliers were gone, the smell of them smoldering left in his memory.

Mixed with the smell of the figure, the smoky, crackling smell.

The figure's parting words would linger in his mind long after he made his way out of other ashdown.

You're much more like the rest than you think.

The words had a weight to them he did not like.