icecream - and story snippet

The Frontier had a knack for tainting people. Whether you had the kindest of hearts or the most stalwart will, sooner or later you’d join the cesspool of thieves, murderers and liars that infested the county. Maybe sooner than later.

“I hurt Karel—gh—Ihurthim—real bad, I hurthiimm…”

Aaron returned to see his friend made a mess of tears and babbling. He’d gone to fetch ice cream because he was hoping he’d help the little tight-lipped son of a bitch to open up; it was hard enough getting him to talk sincerely with incentives.

But here he was, one of the most cynical persons he’d met (for the right reasons), sobbing uncontrollably and confessing his guilt and self-hatred in the loneliness of the forsaken mosque.

He sat beside him and waited until Pint quieted down into silent sobbing. “He deserved it.”

Those who were refugees from wastelander raids, or maybe survivors from a chalkurite tide usually found the way of the gun or the oppression of the whip. The homeless and lonely were scavengeable. The contaminated were shunned and left to rot with everyone else. The honest were—if not swindled to their last credit, left with the bitter realization that nothing’s fair game out here. Selfless acts are never without ulterior motives, and kindness is often rewarded with distrust in the best of cases—though a knife to the gut and your wallet smuggled right off your body was a much more common response. Cheating was the Frontier’s civility, and the bullet-hole ridden temple around them was a monument to the people’s ultimate religion: violence.

If you wanted to survive, you had no option but to join the ranks, and with danger lurking around every corner, behind every smile, inside every holster, rooted in every mind…well, joining will definitely seem like a tempting offer.

And you would take it, because there’s nothing more satisfying for the one who resists than to finally let go of the world on their shoulders, and the satisfaction would be unlike anything ever experienced before. It would be so disgustingly sweet and thrilling, like punching that one guy you hate right in his fucking face. It was just so ridiculously exhilarating you could do it again and again, and never look back, because it was just THAT GOOD.

Except…sometimes, after all’s been done and said, you do look back and feel your stomach churn and your brain retch. The price of that freedom is paid in regret.

And Pint felt regret because he’d given up and lost himself in the ecstasy of the moment. With Karel’s blood marring his hands, knees and shoes, smearing his hair and shirt the little Atlas wept in the resulting misery of his short-lived satisfaction. Such was the emotional hangover after beating the shit out of the asshole who’d bullied him for four painful years and shamed his girl in the most disgusting of ways.

“Karel’s awful…sooner or later someone else would have done it to him.”

Sooner or later. Pint shook his head and went back into a fit of feverish muttering, his bloodied hands clutching angrily at his head. “I’mjustlikehim.”

Aaron frowned. He’d paid his weekend’s worth in the ice cream he bought for his best friend and himself, and it was already melting under the desert’s dry heat. He didn’t feel like such a good vanilla-flavored cone should go to waste, and neither did he feel like leaving Pint to himself.

“That’s not true,” he spoke softly, nudging his friend so he’d look up to him. Pint’s hands came away, and his gray tearful eyes stared at him from a bloodstained face. The chubbier boy took this opportunity to push a cone into Pint’s hand, squeezing his red fingers around it for a grip. Pint’s hand was disturbingly cold, but Aaron held on to the chalkurite nevertheless. He saw that Pint’s lip began to quiver, and in turn he smiled brightly at him, a gesture he spared only for those he held dearest. “You know Karel hates vanilla.”

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So trying a warm palette for once. And introducing a character I rarely get to draw in spite of him being a badass. Meet Aaron Rashid, a quiet dutch/muslim kid with the strange power of making anyone confide in him despite him never speaking and/or asking for others to talk (except at rare moments like this) Heavily influenced by a rl friend who srsly has weird powers of trust-inspiration and you actually know zero shit about his life. Aaron is Pint's best friend and second only to Roxanne when it comes to having emotional/serious banters. He's the opposite of Bree in many ways, and a relief for Pint since she often pushes him to his limits. Plus, if there's any Marvel superheroes reflected in Psion (besides hulk lololol) it'd be Hawkeye...because in spite of his chubbiness and meek looks, Aaron can bullseye a hummingbird in flight with the shittiest bow you could ever give him. Kind of 'lame' considering how everyone just uses guns...not as lame considering how an arrow by itself is lethal, and even less how Aaron likes to upgrade his arrows with all sorts of nasty things. So much for the quiet nice kid.

I'll rant about him somewhere else--clogging up all da desk here