Eclad moves to the stables, his head pounding and his eyes beyond sore. He curls up in the piles of dry dusty hay and rests his arm over his eyes. A few tears ran down along his freckled cheeks as he did his best to take deep breaths, willing the headache to leave and go back to whatever pit it came from. Each sound around him was a new needle pressed into his scalp, each flicker of a lamp caused his eyes to scream. He was not a drunkard nor injured, no this was just how life was. The days of pain came and went. His mother would give him willow bark or cool water mixed with herbs to help him sleep. As he got older and had to work alongside the men in Ost Forod he did not have that peace or luxury as they considered it. He had to work through the headaches and act as though the pain did not exist. The brigand group he had been born into had no use for flawed brood. Brood. The word tasted awful in his mind and mouth. That was what he was to them. Brood. His mother had come from one of the villages they had raided as had most of the women. Any of the men could have been his father not that they showed him the care. He was a mouth to feed until he became old enough that they could make him hunt to feed himself. Of course, some of the brigands had wives and had children. The heirs the children were called. Those who belonged. He was caught playing with them once in the tall grass with some sticks they were using as swords. That was the first and only time his mother had taken a thin wood switch to him. The thought almost made him laugh. He never dared to play with the other children again but it was not anger he saw on his mother's face that day. It had been fear. ‘Thieves have no order!’ Ah, a line he had heard many a time. To their own, they did not but even they had people they believed to be lower than them.
Eclad’s mind started to drift as the pain ebbed away and sleep began to take hold. To be a boy again. To chase rabbits in the tall grass, or to catch frogs and let them go in the small pound the horses were given water from. How he wished to go back to that. To sing and shout and play loudly. His throat tensed and he swallowed down what would have been a bitter cry if he could have spoken. Days under the sun as a child are not missed until they are gone and his days as a boy were over. He was a man and what joy and happiness he had felt once were but figments of a dream in his mind. A peaceful dream, a warm dream. A dream of his mother holding him in her lap while she sang a lullaby. A mist that he could see through but could not move in. A cloud that turned dark and stormy when he stayed there too long. Oh, how we wished he could be with his mother as a child once more. The more his memories danced behind his eyelids the more he struggled not to remember. It felt like heading to a cliff. A drop so sharp and lined with jagged rocks that no man could survive. His memories kept running towards that cliff though and with a deafening cry in his mind, they jumped off of it. The storm bared down, hard rain covering the rocks over his home. Voices shouted and with each shake of his head in disagreement of what the brigands wanted him to do the hands around his throat grew tighter. They squeezed until he could not breathe. He clawed at the man's wrists but to no avail. He felt it then, a horrible pain as nails dug into his skin and tore it. He was kicked and thrown down into the mud, the hands following. He pleaded to whatever spirit there was that he hadn't cared to believe in before that moment that he would survive another morning.
Finally, the hands let go and he had gasped for breath and tried to scream only for no sound to come out. A laugh rang out above him and he was kicked in the stomach harshly before he heard footsteps move about in the mud. He sobbed silently while curled up, his arms around his stomach. As the memory faded the dry dusty hay found him in a place much as the memory had, curled up tightly while sobbing silently. How many nights he wondered had he been unable to sleep due to the memories, how many nights had he felt the pain as though it was still happening? How many nights more would it continue?
