Just a bit of a story I've been trying to write for years. This doesn't really fit in with the story at all, but to satisfy my own curiosity, I gave the main character a bit of a background.

Just a bit.

Fragment 0.1

Cain

At first, he refused to kill. There were other occupations in which he was far more proficient—farming, for example, and metallurgy, and he was always so good with music (although at the time everything happened, there were no such things as "tune" or "rhythm," and those were constructs he was forced to create himself)—so the taking of any breathing, moving life seemed a cruel art, and one that he had no time for. This boy and his brother, they were told to offer their sacrifices up to God, and as he was but a farmer, he had only the fruits of his labour to offer. He burnt his entire harvest until it was but ash, and even that he cast to the wind, that it might reach the heavens.

His brother, on the other side of a copse of trees, offered up only a single fatted calf. He burned the entrails, and cooked the meat and took it home for himself.

And yet, when a white-bearded figure emerged from the trees, he shook his head slowly, telling him, "I am sorry, boy, but I can only accept the sacrifices of my sons."

"Am I not your son?" he demanded of this aged figure as he clenched his fists at his sides. His hands, arms, and face were streaked with ashes and dust, though tears were slowly making tracks through the grime. He tried to blink them back unsuccessfully, this man's refusal too harsh a blow for him.

"You've none of my blood running through your veins," he spat scornfully. "Call upon your true father, I'm sure he would be more than happy to explain to you, boy."

With a final shake of his head, he was back among the trees again for but a moment before faded from view. He stopped trying to search for him in the greenery—the older one had doubtless gone to congratulate the younger man's brother on his perfect sacrifice, and the young one had no particular desire to hear. He loved his brother, but the fact that his mother, his father, and the old man favoured him so blatantly weighed heavily on him. Their favouritism made even more blatant the fact that he was so unlike any of them—all of the others, even the old man, had golden, sun-burnished skin and blue eyes, along with pale hair. In contrast, his hair and eyes were blue-black, and his skin was the milky white of the old man's beard. In such a small group, he stood out unpleasantly, inexplicably—one of them was his brother, one his father, one his mother, and the fourth his grandfather, and yet he looked no more similar to them than did any of the other animals in the land. For all the similarities they bore, he may as well have been a peacock, or an ass.

With the old man gone, his tears gradually stopped flowing, replaced only by a dull, throbbing anger. He was as much the old man's son as my brother, he had just as much right to acceptance—more, even, since he had given all that he had, and his brother had only given the leavings of his labour—and he had taken a life in the process. How could the pale boy not be angry?

And even then, how could he justify what transpired?

He could not have gone home, not like this, so he laid down in the furrows I had yet to plough anew, and made a small cushion of the loose earth as he pondered what the old man had said. His true father—did he mean the golden-haired man who was waiting a quarter-day's walk away, or did he mean someone else entirely? There was no-one else, though—only the pale boy's father's first wife, but she was a has-been, having died before he was born. That was the implication, at least, because she was never spoken of in the present tense, and rarely spoken of at all. The very mention of her name seemed to cause his father pain, and he could only assume that she had died, and that the old man had forged a newer, better wife for him. He had always innocently assumed that his brother was meant to be his partner, as his mother was for his father, but, since the old man did not seem in any way inclined to accept him, he could only reason that a newer, more palatable model would have to be created. The boy burned with jealousy, even though he had always been told that such emotions were wrong, and in the back of his mind, he wanted to run to the old man, and tell him everything that had transpired, present it in contrast with all the things his brother had failed to do, and force him to accept the peculiar pale skin and the proffered fruits. But the old man knew everything, the boy mused, and he had probably already dismissed the boy's brother's actions as acceptable.

He tossed and turned fitfully in the dirt, pushing his scythe to one side so he could more comfortably settle into the ground. The scythe met resistance, though, and when he glanced up he saw another man with his hand on the blunt side of the blade, features mirroring the reflection the boy had caught countless times when passing lakes and ponds. His face looked slightly more aged than the boy's, though, and when the boy glanced properly into his eyes he realised that this new visitor had to be at least as old as the white-bearded man.

"The old man prefers your brother?" he asked amiably, taking the scythe into his hand and examining the blade in the sunlight as he waited for an answer.

With a deep sigh, the boy told him, "Yes, he does. How do you know?"

"You could say I have a... highly tuned intuition, I suppose," he replied. "But things such as that are beside the point. You appeared rather alone, so I came to ask if there's anything I might be able to do for you."

The boy looked at his new partner in moderate surprise. "Why ought you do anything for me?" He may have been new to the world, but the boy knew its cardinal rule: there are no favours, and everything must be reciprocated.

The older man shrugged, turning the scythe this way and that in the sunlight. "You are my son, after all. I impregnated your father's first wife, and you were the result."

Gaping, the boy twisted and turned in the dirt until he could properly scrutinise this stranger—his father. The man continued, "He cast that woman aside, claiming she was too evil—too intelligent, more like it—and she came to me. The old man is no father of yours, he's merely an overbearing uncle who thought it would do you more good to be rescued from the disastrous upbringing your real parents would have given you. He's decided that his experiment is quite failed, though, as there's still more than a little of you in me."

He paused, then, waiting for the boy to comment. The coalblack eyes looked back at the man reproachfully. The boy was obviously more than a little shocked and wounded that he was little more than an experiment to the old man, and he showed no inclination to speak.

"I didn't mean to be away for quite so long," the man continued after an awkward pause, "but there were... things, I suppose, that came up. I couldn't come near you, not for fear of your brother."

The boy chortled—his brother was vicious, this man was smart to have stayed away.

"But at any rate, I've come now to help you in your hour of greatest distress, boy. What would you have me do?"

The pale boy glanced speculatively at the sky. "I wish I was my father's only son," he said at last, firmly.

"You are my only son," the other man muttered under his breath, but loudly enough for his son to hear, he said, "That could be easily arranged. Go back to your foster parents, boy, and I will come for you when my work is done."

The boy smiled happily, innocently, and stood. He reached for his scythe, but suddenly, the man was on his feet, and holding it above his head. "You know, I'll need this," he chastised, keeping the tool just out of his son's reach.

With a sigh, the boy rolled his eyes and conceded, heading towards his home with the slightest of springs in his step.

But when he walked through the door, he was greeted by the glares of his family (or his foster family, he supposed). They all looked at him so disapprovingly that, embarrassed, he bowed his head and said, "Please excuse my uncleanliness, I shall go and wash directly."

"No," said the old man, suddenly in the doorway and grasping the boy tightly by the hand. To the boy's parents, he said, "See how he cannot face you? It must be true."

"What?" the boy asked, confused. "What must be true?"

The adults glanced at one another, and then the boy saw them throw a quick glance at the corner. He stood on his toes, and though the old man yanked him down again, he still caught sight of his brother's headless body, and the scythe laid by his brother's side. "Do you think that I would have—"

"Yes," all the adults said, their hard voices interrupting before he could even finish his sentence.

He looked from one to the other, bewildered. "You can't think that I could do something like that—why would I want to kill my brother? I love him."

The old man glared. "I saw you, boy. Your true demonic nature, it seems, has finally emerged. Go to your father—you should never have been brought here in the first place."

In a blind sorrow, he stumbled from his home. "Father!" he called, as he wandered to the woods. "Father! I need to speak with you!" He came to the river, calling even as he waded across it. "Father!" he called, one last time, before his foot slipped from the rock on which it had rested, and, under the water, his neck gave a sickening crack.

"Sorry about that, boy," his father said, some hours later. "So long as you were alive on the old man's terms, I couldn't take you with me. The fall was a necessary evil, I hope you'll be able to overlook it?"

The boy nodded, and mumbled, "Of course."

"When I fished you out of the river, your windpipe was a bit crushed, and your neck was rather broken. You should be fine, though, as long as you don't need to breathe to live."

He sat up quickly then, staring incredulously at his father. He then looked down at his own chest, and watched it rise and fall as he inhaled and exhaled. He seemed to be breathing in the normal manner, but, just as a test, he stopped breathing for one moment, stretching it into two minutes, until he had been sitting for a full ten minutes without drawing breath—and without dying. "What did you do to me?" he demanded of the older man.

The man shrugged. "I told you that I couldn't bring you here unless you were alive on my terms. So I simply helped you die, then I brought you here, drove the blood from your body, and filled you with my breath—and now, you are alive again. Isn't it wonderful?"

"No," the boy said, glumly. "How did you manage that?"

"Simple," the man said proudly. "I gave your thumb a bit of a cut, sucked all the blood from it, and then blew back into it. I blew a little too hard the first time," he said with a chuckle, "and you inflated rather too much, but I got it right on the second try—and now, here you are."

"Thank you, father," the boy murmured respectfully. He wasn't sure whether he ought to be grateful, or alarmed, by this turn of events. He decided impassivity would suit, for now, and he rolled off the slab to go in search of something to eat. He was feeling ravenously hungry, as though he hadn't eaten in years. "Have you anything to eat?" he called over his shoulder.

"Of course, son. Take a right at the next turning, and you'll find a meal all laid out for you." In the other room, the man chuckled with glee.

"Thank you," the boy called back, taking the suggested turning and running straight into an old woman.

"Adam!" she screamed, "Seth! Save me! He has me—Oh, Cain, thank God!" she cried, clutching at the boy's shirt and sobbing into it. "You cannot understand how wonderful it is to see your face again. You may have been my foster son, but I loved you, oh, yes, I loved you! Lead me out, and I'll take you back home again, make the old man accept you, and—"

"I'm hungry, mother," Cain said simply.

The woman looked at him curiously. "Don't worry about that, Cain—we'll lay out a feast when we get back to our home."

"No," Cain said, softly, "I didn't think you'd understand..."

With that, he lowered his head to the side of her neck, and, plunging his teeth into her paper-thin skin, began to suck.