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Cor had always loved animals, because animals weren’t people. People hurt you, lied to you, spit on you. But animals couldn’t lie to you, or hurt you, at least not in the ways people could. And animals couldn’t spit on you and call you a “dirty little bastard” like his father, who’d just shoved him into the dirt after taking the little money he’d managed to get that day. “This is all you got? Pathetic, you can sleep with the fucking bird tonight.”
He hated his father. He hated his mother more, as the woman saw all the shit his father put him through and let him. She always turned a blind eye to the suffering of him and his siblings at the hands of his father.
He sniffed angrily as he cuddled into the soft yellow feathers of Patrina, the family’s chocobo. She let out a soft ‘kweh’ and nuzzled him, trying to soothe him the best she could. The barn was cold that night, even during the late spring. His stomach growled angrily at him, but he ignored it. Not like he could do anything about it tonight anyway. Patrina wrapped her wing around his shaking form, holding him until he cried himself to sleep. Cor loved animals, because they weren’t people.