Flashback Hiding Humanity(Solo)

[Maedoc]

Tenth Day of Winter, 502 A.V. Hope had died for him. Justice, honor, the code of the knights. It was all just a sad, laughable mockery of a dead father. He had abandoned such lofty ideals, children’s illusions had no place in this hellish camp. At seventeen years of age, Maedoc had grown tall and thick of shoulder. There was really no way he wouldn’t have, with the daunting load of labor he and the other slaves were put through on a day to day basis. Keeping quiet and silent was the way to survive, and numbing yourself. Emotion was weakness, and weakness would get you killed. So Maedoc no longer cried for his father, he no longer troubled himself with thoughts of his mother. Sweet bliss was found in the absence of thought, of memories. He was a thrall, another rock in the caverns he resided in. He breathed, he ate, he shat, but he no longer lived. Ambition and dreams no longer warmed his heart. Thus was the life of a slave in the mine. Maedoc was one of many. Many sorry, lost souls had the ill fortune of having life drop them here. He had not talked to many, keeping mostly to himself. Until one evening a new batch of slaves was shoved into the depths of the mine by their foreman, a shirtless brute with a necklace of finger bones. Some of the slaves whispered that it made him indestructible, but Maedoc did not believe such stories. One of the new slaves was a small girl of about eleven or twelve, pale and sickly from the journey. She came to stand next to him amongst the shadows and rocks, a pick too large for her held loosely in her hands. He stared at her, once she must have been a bright, pretty girl. Now she looked more like a sun dried skeleton. She looked more like the rest of them. She glanced at him and then began to cry. Tears rolled down pale cheeks, leaving streaks of clean skin behind. Maedoc stared. He had not seen such emotion in a long time. Her anguish was like a refreshing breeze, and it brushed against the humanity that he had hidden away inside himself. This little girl had be brought here, through whatever horrific circumstance it was. She had been put in the darkness and now she wallowed in her misery. He was enthralled. Her small, weak identity still held on to the belief that things could be better, that standing here in this mine was the worst that it could be. Maedoc had a brief impulse to tell her it would get much worse. But that cruelty could wait. He coughed, even more sick than the girl. But sickness came with the air down in this damp place. “Stop crying.” He said to her, not comforting her. He simply felt the sudden need to make her stop. Her sadness was threatening to awake emotions in himself, and that must not happen. She sputtered and let her wet gaze drift upon him. Bright blue eyes stared out from underneath a mane of black hair. She expected him to say something else. She wanted him to reassure her, to do something. He felt obliged to say something else. “We need to go back to work, Foreman will come back soon.” He voiced. He had no interest in helping her, or advising her on how to survive. He simply didn’t want the Foreman punishing him for her mistakes. She moved closer, clearly under the impression Maedoc wanted to talk to her. He watched her step up next to him and stare down at the stone he had been crumbling. “Will we get to sleep soon? I’m tired.” She asked hopefully. There it was again, her blatant naivety. Maedoc shook his head. “Shut up. We stop when the Foreman says so. Work now.” He swung his own pick into the rock face. The blow jarred his hands, sending a familiar shock of pain into his palms. He barely even felt the calluses on his hands rip off and reform, or the splintered wood of the pick haft stab into his fingers. Such physical pains were nothing to the sickness, the hunger, and the tiredness. And all those things were trumped by the fear of the Foreman. “I can’t lift it.” The girl complained, staring up at him. Once again he found himself expected to give advice. What did he know? He was clearly not equipped for such a task. Just a slave abandoned by society and thrust into captivity by the vile Zith, he felt inadequately equipped for this situation. "Just move the stones, I'll swing the pick." Maedoc instructed her, swinging again. He waited and she moved to pick the rocks up. The small girl grunted with the effort of moving the stones. They both worked silently for an unknowable time. Time was an abstract thing deep in the mines, with neither a sun nor stars to signify it's passing.

[Maedoc]

The two were totally silent as they worked, but communicated all the same. Looks thick with questions and emotions came from the girl, and Maedoc found it increasingly hard to be indifferent. She worked without complaint now, all tears dried up. In a way the work kept the girl’s mind off of her situation, Maedoc expected. The labor had a way of making time pass fast for him. Eventually his death would creep up on him and he would be none the wiser. He had resigned himself to a meaningless life, but now this girl was here. She had a brightness to her eyes that almost made him want to… to do something. He couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it, but it was definitely a foreign feeling. He glanced at her, her face covered in a sheet of black like the night. His pick came down again, heavy and fast. Rock fractured with a twang of the iron pick. The sound was his music, the rock his home, the darkness his world. “They will come for me. Don’t worry, when they rescue me I’ll tell them you are my friend.” The words came soft and gentle to his ears. For a split second he thought he had imagined them. No, no it was the small child next to him. Her bright eyes were staring at him and her face cracked into the first smile he had seen since before his father died. Maedoc said nothing. The assurance in her features was so vivid, so human he almost believed her. “No. They will forget you. Keep working.” He said, his voice gravelly and rough, like the dark place they were trapped in. He hefted the pick more violently than his usual swing and the extra pain in his hand stung sweetly. Pain meant life, when that went away he would know he was dead. What if there was nothing but pain? Did that mean life no long held it’s value? Was there still value in his life? “Yes they will, my Momma and Pa love me. They have money and Pa has friends who can use swords.” The girl told him in a haughty tone. She was totally unperturbed by his weak words. She smiled at him again, then bent and moved more rocks. “They don’t know where you are. We are lost.” Maedoc told her. Perhaps she was too young to understand such things. Did she not see the Foreman? Did she not see the camp of guardsmen at the surface? No one dug in holes for the lost. Maedoc found himself wondering what it would be like to have parents who left such an impression on him as to still believe, after all hope was gone, that they would rescue him. The single thought brought flashes of his past, like pale bodies floating to the surface of dark water. His father hoisted into the air by Zith slavers. The sorrowful look in his eyes as the arrows tore through his torso, and the murky shadow that was the corpse they had dropped to the ground. A woman cried, her eyes burned out and bleeding. Begging him to find his father as she was taken away. He swung the pick again, spittle dripping from his mouth with the effort. “Shut up! You don’t know anything.” He roared. She simply looked up at him. “You don’t know they won't.” Her persistent, calm logic was irking him. Why couldn’t she just cower at his tone and go back to the nice peaceful silence they had been working under. Silence was tranquil, silence was safe. “There are killers above us, and the Foreman. He has a chain of bones that make him immortal.” Maedoc explained, as if that ended all argument. She grinned again. “But you don’t know for sure they won’t come. I think they will.” Simple, happy words. “That is not enough.” Maedoc muttered, feeling defeated. She shrugged. “It’s enough for me.”

[Maedoc]

Was it though? He had, he thought, figured out how to survive here. But here was a girl, young and untested. A child with a child’s outlook. Purity where all is tainted. Good where all is corrupt. Bright in this world of shadows. And he was burned by the light of her hope. He peered down at her, really staring at her for the first time. In the light of the torch that lay a few yards away from them his face was black with grime, an orange light reflected off eyes thin under lids. She noticed him staring and looked nervous under his scrutiny. “Hope is nothing without chance. And we have no chance, girl.” Maedoc said, breathing doom into his words. This was his belief and his method of emotionless trance was crumbling before her simple words. Why? Was this girl wise beyond her years? Or just naive. “Hope” She said, “is food for the soul. That’s what momma always says.” She smiled at him again. He hated it and loved it all at once. He hated it for melting the ice from his soul and making it ache with feeling again. And he loved it because that ache, that pain, was beautiful to him. He consigned himself to the fact that he could no longer be emotionally dead. She had robbed him of that. “What does your mother know, anyway?” He mumbled weakly. He had been so sure of himself. Now his views seemed foolish and weak in the face of her bright resolve. She knew nothing of these mines, and he had been here for years. Yet he began to doubt himself, and believe her. The girl frowned slightly in the darkness. “Well she taught me a song.” “A what?” He did not understand. “A song. About winter.” “A song?” “About winter. It’s winter now.” She said matter-of-factly. And she began to sing. Goodbye Bala, a wolf did whisper, Autumn leaves, burnt and fallen, Snow rode on the winds of winter, And so brought the carriage of Morwen. And came down Morwen’s storm, And came down Morwen’s storm. Darkness pressed and danced with light, Sorrow and the fickle thing took flight. Grief struck wolf and stole her fight, But again sun will rise bright. But first came Morwen’s storm, But first came Morwen’s storm. To cave of brittle stone wolf did crawl, In shadowed crevice wolf did sprawl. Dreaming, green fields hunting on, Wolf slumbered ‘til spring’s fair dawn. Wolf remembered Morwen’s Storm, Wolf remembered Morwen’s storm. The pick lay on the ground beside the slave. He had forgotten such a brutal and mundane thing in the light of true beauty. He stood and felt more alive, here washed over by her music, than he had ever felt. He did not feel good, but the fact that he felt again, made it good. It hurt, for the most part. His heart ached for the light of day, the parents he had lost. His heart hurt for the poor girl in front of him. How had he lied to himself? How could not feeling be better than feelings, no matter the pain. Life was about pain and the brief flashes of joy. It was about this. A young girl singing to the darkness, unafraid. He lived again. And he would feel, no matter what it meant. He would be himself again. He was a son, a slave, a man. She had sung his heart awake and now it ached. He fell to his knees in front of her and gave her a look of confused wonder. She stood there, waiting for his appraisal of her singing. She, in her youthful elegance, was totally unaware of the effect she had on him. “How are you so strong, girl?” She laughed a light, tinkling thing. “I’m not strong!” She giggled, “I can’t even pick up the hammer!” She indicated the pick with her hand. He didn’t look. He felt a pang in his eyes that he quickly tried to subdue. “You are way stronger than me.” How wrong she was. “No girl. I am wind and you are stone. He knew it was true. He had been weak, and thought it strong. She had been strong, and not gave it thought at all. It broke his heart that such a good person found themselves here, where only the dark and the hopeless should skulk. He and his ilk. Sinners and Slaves.