Time's End.

Aleksandar Daskalov had never been one to promote suffering through relentless pain.

Of course, he had never held that opinion when it pertained to himself. Only when his small, ripe tendrils were wrapped around the thick, corse neck of the hound that struggled uneasily in his surprisingly strong grip. It wasn't that he had a particular, inbred hate for the mutt; though there were a few certain times where he had wished to disregard it's seemingly futile existence. It was because the hound, after relentless years of padding uneasily on aged paws, had come to the spiraling end of it's weary life. There was no bright tunnel ahead, no sign that pushed him onward. 

The dog was useless. 

And useless things were just that, useless.

It squawked and resisted under the boy's grip, but old age could not overcome the fingers that circumvented it's neck. In it's last few moments, it gazed wearily at one of it's former owners, darkened irises softening as each breath strangled from between it's lips. There was not a bone in the twelve year old boy's body that asked him to stop, no remote part of his cranium reasoning that cruelty was worse than faux loyalty. Some part of him that whispered that the hound had some sort of buried reason to live, to continue breathing air. There was no functional humanity that disrupted the glaze of his shadowed pupils as they rested on the face of the animal. There was a slight hitch, a last breath struggled, pushed through the thick of his neck and into his core, before the light faded from his optics. Where his muscles were once tense, rigid with the fight for life, they weakened, limp in the young boy's arms. 

The creature was dead.

It took moments for the boy's tendrils to relax, to detach from the creature's neck. Blinded pupils lit up, if only for a moment - like a sudden realization. But the feeling never sank, never rested in the pit of his stomach, and as quick as his humanity had appeared, it vaporized. The body of the former hound sunk into the dirt, his own ivory canvas blending with that of the rusted earth, and still the child didn't move. He watched the carcass apprehensively, waiting for a side to lift, or a moan to erupt from it's sewn lips; but no such moment occurred.

Minutes melded into hours. And what seemed to be days later (but in actuality was only a matter of seconds), a figure appeared in the breadth of the stone doorway. The boy didn't look up. The silhouette moved in a distinctly feminine fashion, it's slanted shoulders set upward with worry, the curves of it's face dampened with anxiety. Palms came to rest on his relaxed shoulder, circles traced lightly over the square of his shoulder blades. Hushed words were soothed into his ears. But she didn't understand, couldn't. It wasn't a mothers job to predict that her child was inhuman. 

A model on the outside, a monster inside. 

She hustled him into the house, her touch gentle, her words kind. He followed her, obediently. Not because he truly was upset, because he found there was no other option. They buried the dog in a hollow ditch later that day, and where he was supposed to cry, he didn't. He watched as the creature was enveloped in the dirt, and he couldn't help but affirm that he had done it a favor.

He had given it a purpose.