Calan
Calan looks down at his side, one hand still clamped there, and for once his face doesn’t quite know what trick it wants to perform. The pain is sharp and strange and much too large for the amount of boy available to hold it, and when Carlo asks if he’s okay, Calan has to think about it properly, which already feels like a bad sign. "Errr," he says, because that seems honest enough for the moment.
Then Carlo looks up, and Calan looks too. He squints at the sign with the serious expression of someone prepared to make the truth convenient if it refuses to be useful. The marks mean nothing, obviously, but that hardly seems like a reason to let them win. "It definitely says pull me," Calan announces confidently. He reaches for the slack end of the cord in Carlo’s hand, wrapping both fists around it and planting his bare feet against the dock boards. The thing is heavy in the way Carlo means, not just big, but big.
"Three," he says, and bends his knees. "Two," he continues, pulling the cord tight. "One." He tugs with everything he has.
The cannon answers with a BOOOOOOM so huge it punches the morning flat, swallows the hels, rattles the boards beneath his feet, and goes straight through Calan’s bones like the world has clapped both hands over his ears from the inside. The cord flies loose, his balance gives up at once, and for one stunned second he can only stare, blue eyes wide, mouth open, the stitch in his side forgotten beneath the discovery of an entirely new size of noise.
Then Carlo looks up, and Calan looks too. He squints at the sign with the serious expression of someone prepared to make the truth convenient if it refuses to be useful. The marks mean nothing, obviously, but that hardly seems like a reason to let them win. "It definitely says pull me," Calan announces confidently. He reaches for the slack end of the cord in Carlo’s hand, wrapping both fists around it and planting his bare feet against the dock boards. The thing is heavy in the way Carlo means, not just big, but big.
"Three," he says, and bends his knees. "Two," he continues, pulling the cord tight. "One." He tugs with everything he has.
The cannon answers with a BOOOOOOM so huge it punches the morning flat, swallows the hels, rattles the boards beneath his feet, and goes straight through Calan’s bones like the world has clapped both hands over his ears from the inside. The cord flies loose, his balance gives up at once, and for one stunned second he can only stare, blue eyes wide, mouth open, the stitch in his side forgotten beneath the discovery of an entirely new size of noise.
I've never been one to half-ass shenanigans.
