Alone (late)

Exercise for Oct 29: Alone

After several rounds of introductions and tours and explanations, he was finally left alone in a small, sparsely furnished room. He took the time to sit down and breathe easily for a while, after the exertion of climbing all the stairs. He was alone now. There were others all around him, but he was alone for the first time in his life. He could no longer sense the gentle brush of minds that he was used to, the warmth and sense of belonging that came from being with his family. They were all gone. The monks had been kind enough to take him in, but they could not replace what was lost. He got up from the chair and lay on the bed, sprawling out. The bed, at least, was reasonably large, or at least, it was larger than the space he'd had to share with his cousins. The thought of his cousins nearly sent him to tears again; they'd all been younger than him, and they shouldn't have died, except for the crippling diseas that swept through the village and ravaged the populace. Gone, all gone, and only him alive because his mind-sense had been too weak for him to really be affected. He'd gotten headaches, but that was all. Not the splitting migraines his mother had experienced. Not the dizziness and seizures of his father. He'd survived because he was the most mediocre, the least capable, of the entire village. That seemed unfair.

And now he'd been taken in by the Aventine monks, who knew nothing of his heritage and would have quickly thrown him out if they had. To be able to read minds was to tresspass on the realm of God, for it was only to Him that the innermost thoughts of a man should be revealed. "Well, you have nothing to worry about from me," he said to the room. "I can't even tell what any of you are feeling." He sighed, and started unpacking his belongings.

333 words, 5 minutes.