Red

Reluctant cheers echoed through the crowd as the boy king surveyed the small faces that surrounded him.  “Who shall be our warriors today?” Gil inquired from the platform of bone beneath his feet, shifting his gaze only to meet eyes that quickly turned away.  His cruel games had slowly diminished the population, leaving some dead and many more wounded.  No child dared challenge him, so he was left to pick the participants for his sport.  He continued to look upon each member of his tribe as he tried to find a fitting match that would suit his tastes.
A minute movement brought his eyes to the trees behind the gathering.  There he recognized a shade emerging from the wood.  A low howl silenced the children gathered in the round as the darkness became a body in the daylight.  Its face, painted black from nose to chin, slit open to reveal the whiteness of its teeth.  Perhaps the prayers of the children had been answered.
“Are you the beast from my sleep?”  Gil awaited an answer as he adjusted himself in his furred throne.  This thing was not of his people.  The boy of half black, hair wild to his shoulder blades, raised his sinewy legs and hurtled toward the king.  The young tribespeople swiftly withdrew several paces back from the sporting ground.  Gil stood and was thrown to the broadside of the dirt ring. The young king rose once more and charged his opponent, letting out a reedy shriek before collecting the feral boy’s throat in the jaws of his grasp.
“Are you the beast from my sleep?” Gil demanded.  He felt a throbbing from beneath the palm of his hand and loosened his grip.  The fighter hacked and turned his face away from the leader.  The hands at his sides curled to small, rocky fists.  A blast followed by a dull ring banded through the king’s left cheek as two teeth inside his drooping jowl were ejected and abruptly embedded in the inner wall of his right cheek.  The children on the edges of the dell gaped at the scene in fearful silence.
The forest stripling smiled fiendishly once more, and the king offered a bloody grin.  Knees and fists lodged momentarily into their narrow, muscular torsos as the match continued.  Grime surged from below with each sure shift of a foot, landing on the king’s skirt of pelts and his opponent’s bare skin.  Jabs were rarely dodged, but were instead answered with stronger attack.  The leader soon gained the upper hand with the ferocity of his strikes.  He pummeled the boy’s sooty face and delighted in its bulbous swelling.  A last blow to the gut sent the creature into the earth.
             Poised above, Gil tongued the bony structures in his cheek until they were dislodged, and spat them on the ground between him and the weary beast.  The wild boy simpered despite his defeat.  The red on their teeth was of the same tint.  “Let us be friends,” the young king bellowed.