Ezra was about to leave Master Reis' bedroom door and wander about the manor, willing to search high and low until he found the lean, attractive, reclusive man. But a sound had come from inside, a surprisingly loud clatter, followed be a series of harsh-sounding words in Master's voice, words that Ezra did not understand, but they rubbed his ears the wrong way, making them tingle unpleasantly. "Master? Are you all right?" he asked curiously, trying the doorknob again in an eager attempt to rush to his master's side. The door was still locked, and he was no closer to seeing and touching his beloved.<br/><br/>Reis' voice came through the door again, a curt reassurance that the shadows did not lurk in his home, or even all of Belmir. But that certainly couldn't be right. Shadows lurked everywhere, everyone knew that. How had Master managed to go so long without suffering terrible nightmares at the clawed hands of the malevolent shadows? "But I have known them," Ezra whined, rapping at the door again, anxiety crawling up his legs and settling at his gut as he yelled through the bedroom door. "In Tuloa, I have suffered the most horrific of terrors, and when I awoke there was no one at my side. That was how the shadows crept into my head. I had been left by skeptics and non-believers and they had left me at the mercy of monsters. I have<i>seen</i>them, Master! You cannot tell me something I have seen does not exist!"<br/><br/>There was a long silence that stretched between them, and Ezra was about to call out for Reis once more when the door suddenly opened and stood there, his pale skin glowing in the lamp light. Ezra let out a heavy sigh of relief and stepped forward to be let inside, but Reis did not move from his position in the door frame. The Asha tipped his head curiously, his cloudy eyes darting past Reis for a moment to get a small glimpse of the room that stood at his back. It looked big in there. Too much space for just one person. His attention was brought back to Master once the Belmiran man began to speak, but his words were ugly. They were ugly and mean and not nice at all.<br/><br/>"Master?" Ezra inquired, his voice barely above a whisper as Reis spewed out burning vitriol. He had suspected that perhaps Reis had not wanted him, but he never truly wanted to believe those hideous thoughts. Sometimes darkness seeped into the brain even when awake, and Ezra had mused perhaps he was letting a very persistent Belmiran shadow nibble away at his sense of security, but no. His instincts had been right. Master, the one who was supposed to love him more than anyone else in the whole world ever could, did not want him. He did not want him and he remembered how despicable and worthless unwanted Asha were. They were beaten, caged up, taken away, sent off into the thick forests of Tuloa to be eaten by some larger, stronger, more bloodthirsty predator, because they were nothing. Asha who could not find masters, who were not claimed, they never lasted long. It was because they were ugly, or disobedient, or stupid, or bad at pleasuring humans. A heap of reasons why they would be sent away. And now it would happen to Ezra, too, because he could not please the handsome man standing before him, because he was a bad Asha.<br/><br/>Reis kept yelling at him, but Ezra did not hear the rest of it. Tears were welling up in his eyes and a thunderstorm was raging in his throat. "I am bad," he choked out, and his body tensed as he stepped away from Reis' door. "I am a bad Asha and they will kill me because Master does not love me." His chest began heaving as panic set throughout his body. He didn't want to be in there, in that manor, with its walls and floors away from the earth and its enclosed rooms and its mean master. Earth. He needed earth. Floors were bad. He needed earth.<br/><br/>Ezra took off in a sprint down the hallway, sobbing as he flew, down the stairs and through the now empty room where the sellers has first presented him to Reis, where the man had tried to say no. He did not want him. He raced to the doors that lead out to the garden but when he tried to fling them open, they were locked. He screamed, a high-pitched, ear-piercing wail that reverberated throughout the manor as he beat at the doors furiously, fists banging on the glass and pulling at the door handles. But doors had been locked with a key and could not be opened otherwise, and Ezra did not have a key. He only had fists.<br/><br/>He continued slamming his fists and howling, his long curls swinging about his head as he furiously shook it, desperate to feel the dirt between his toes and the cold, fresh air on his face. After a particularly determined smash, glass from one of the panels on the door shattered, slicing up the Asha's hand and causing deep magenta blood to spill out from his wounds. Pieces of glass were embedded in the Asha's skin but he did not care. He needed to be outside, and the panel he had broken wasn't big enough for him to squeeze through. He needed to break more. Smash more. He needed to get out.