When he was born, his father called him Muerte - death. He was the second-born twin; his sister Vida came into the world before him, a vibrant bay who mewled in fascination at the big new world suddenly presented to her, stumbling to her feet like she couldn’t wait to start exploring. She was beautiful and bright-eyed, full of life at only a moment old and counting.

He was not at all like her.

Darker in color and mood, he was a hard birth and it showed in his mother’s eyes as she struggled to unstick him from her insides, struggled until the fight drained out of her and she became almost still, only her sides heaving erratically with the effort of breathing. She took her last shuddering one as he entered the world, like he had robbed her of her strength to fuel his own. He did not mewl like his sister, nor did he make to stand right away. He was skeptical of it all - the world, the prayers to the gods his father threw up to the sky in hopes they would change their minds and give his mother back to them.

His sister cried for their mother. He never understood why - he didn’t know her from Eve, as they say.

They called him cruel, an unnatural child who favored the macabre and made jokes out of tragedy, inappropriate and without conscience. He didn’t disagree entirely, but their assessment of him was harsh and unyielding in ways that he wasn’t; he wasn’t cold or without love - he loved his sister, after all. Did it matter that she was the only one?

When he left their home and took to the waters, there were no tears wept for him - they were happy to see him go, and some of them prayed the water would claim him like the gods should have done six years ago instead of his mother, whom they all loved dearly. But gods don’t exist, he’s always known this, so when he crawls onto the island beach and shakes off the saltwater, it is not to the gods that he prays. There are no sweet nothings sent up to the heavens as he makes his way further inland, scheming up ways to serve himself the world on a silver platter.

Despite the tired ache in his bones, he does not stop his steady pace until the smell of others reaches him on a wayward wind, until he’s certain he isn’t alone in the dark that had fallen within the last half hour. He can’t see his companions, but he knows they are there, perhaps slumbering in the shadows without any idea that a wolf had found its way into the den - a wolf who certainly had questionable intentions.

”Come out, come out, wherever you are,” he sings cheerily into the night, never the sort to be shy and unimposing.