During archery practice on the blooming hill, his temper festers. It’s an itch that he really, truly, seriously wants to scratch.
Wonder ponders random subjects instead of training and takes forever to make decisions. Sorrow gets increasingly upset with each target she misses. Envy needs to quit viewing everyone as competition.
And don’t even get Anger started on Love. Her presence is the biggest distraction of all. Though she’s the most proficient archer, she’s neglects practice today, fondling her hand and daydreaming instead.
Cursed sentimentality. Her fixation with human touch grates on him, curling his knuckles into fists. The curious longing in her profile is dreadful. The more she does this, the farther away she seems, the less she cares how close Anger stands to her.
Later, when Envy teases Love, it forces Anger to grab her shoulders and prevent her from attacking Envy. That’s Anger’s calling, after all. He has to manage the tantrums around him, including this loose-cannon goddess who cannot curb her impulses like a normal deity. He has to watch out for her, before she loses herself.
Before he loses her.
The Fate Court doesn’t approve of her sporadic whims, nor does her feisty intrigue toward mortal touch amuse them. It’s not the way of their kind.
It could get her into trouble. Or it could change her.
“Stop acting like a human,” Anger sneers at Love.
When honestly, he wants to beg.Please, Love. Please, stop doing this.
Anger shouldn’t pay this much attention to her. In fact, he never should have started. But it’s easier to mock, scorn, berate this goddess for her shortcomings.
It’s easier to be angry at her, than at himself.
***
On a class excursion to the human realm, he and his peers stand in the crux of a snowstorm, the flurries blasting through town. The Guides have brought them here, this time as a group.
Anger can’t concentrate. The flakes spiral, hitting his face, whipping through his hair. The wind howls against stone edifices and horse-drawn carriages. The quagmire batters his tunic and slams into his quiver.
His pulse quickens. His palms moisten. His feet shuffle, because he wants to run and hide.
Because he’s…scared.
Back home, he retreats to a mineral cave covered in tufts of cyan plants. As he takes refuge on a corrugated rock, his fingers finally stop shaking, but his heart remains a rogue percussion in his chest. He should get Fear’s advice about this, but he’s too ashamed.
Just his luck, Love finds him. She approaches like he’s a sulky beast, picking around the foliage and squatting next to him. He wants her to go away. And he wants his arms entwined around her, around someone safe yet daring.
“Why were you scared?” the nosy goddess asks.
“It looked angry,” he says of the blizzard. “That’s one kind of angry I can’t control.”
And if he can’t control anger, what’s the point of him?
***
Wonder has been caught tampering with her power. She’s beguiled by a mortal boy, and as a result, she’s been sneaking unattended to the human realm, attempting to communicate with him.
A disgrace. An affront. A crime.
What happens to one class member, happens to all class members. They’re responsible for protecting and reprimanding each other.
That’s what Anger has been taught. That’s what he believes. That’s the rule in this land.
So when Wonder is disciplined, his class is ordered to carry out the torture. In a rotunda full of deities, the congregation makes an example of her. Sorrow and Anger shackle Wonder to a chair while Envy slashes her hands with the blade that Love was forced to sharpen.
Wonder’s wrists shudder beneath Anger’s grip, her wails of pain shearing into his canals. This isn’t right. None of his peers want to do this, a fact that radiates in every stunted lash from Envy, the tormented expression on Sorrow’s face, the shrieking protests from Love.
It’s barbaric and unfair. It’s too much, too far.