out. His grip loosened. The void was there as always.
The void.
It was how he’d come to describe it lately – this feeling he’d been carrying for awhile now. It was like a small black hole located somewhere near his stomach, threatening to suck everything in. Sometimes it nearly did, bringing him to his knees as the world swirled around him and dragged him down, down, down… Usually though, it left him empty, a small hole that he lived with daily, always threatening to swallow him at a moment’s notice. He could still hear the yelling.
“When is he going to grow up?!”
How long had the void been there? Was it always there? It took him so long to notice it. He was always so busy trying to sort out everyone else’s feelings. For as long as he’d been awake, he’d found it a struggle – the sea of feelings, he called it. A mess of tears and laughter and scorn, all felt at once. Whose feelings were whose? Were they his feelings the whole time? How can you notice a hole when it’s so often filled by others?
“I worked so hard to get him a good job! And an excellent mentor -I raised that blacksmith myself, he’s family!”
He’d slept in his clothes again. They felt… dewy. Ugh. He tore them off, and started searching for new ones. The room, his room, was a disaster of clothing piles, trinkets, sketchbooks, metal work, and books. His hands searched the piles for something fresher, deftly navigating through all the junk. They stopped for a moment on a book, hidden in the folds of clothes. “The Tales of Albeni” – an adventure book he’d bought off a traveler with what was supposed to be his waypoint fare to the market. He’d had to walk to get groceries that day. Ascon was furious.
Tora let his fingers trace the book’s worn leather binding a moment before he set it aside to keep searching. He settled on a wide sleeved lace-up shirt, and a pair of black slacks. The shirt was a bit stained, but he still liked it. Good enough.
“He’s been here too long! No sapling stays with their menders past age two! It’s just not normal! How is he supposed to enter society if he can’t even keep a job?!”
There was no such norm. Plenty of saplings stayed with their menders for long past two years. It was just Ascon’s norm. The man treated raising saplings like a business, and he was proud of how fast he could get them out the door. Hayle was the youngest at one year so she was exempt from judgement, but Tora and the rest of their siblings were two and thus had to leave. Many had left already or were in the process of. All but Tora who’d messed things up like usual -the family weed in Ascon’s garden of prized flowers.
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