Plaything in one's palm
The colors were murky, violent: deep burgundy like old blood, sickly yellow like a bruise, charcoal black like a void.
He painted a gnarled, diseased family tree, its roots strangling a smaller, healthier sapling—his father’s legacy. He painted a figure with wings of wax and string, plummeting from a great height—Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. Lucas. He painted a larger, shadowy figure standing at the edge of the abyss, looking down, its face a cold, featureless mask—the obedient son, the executioner. Caius.