I made it a point to see R'osy every time I was in town with dad. I needed her off my back, and it seemed to please her to at least see me. For my part, I crafted my lies better, and learned the truths that were needed for what I needed to accomplish. To keep R'osy off of me and the matter of the woman of sin, I apologized (though my lack of sincerity wasn’t caught). I cracked jokes. Played the game. Even brought Bela along (my lie to dad was that I was having him learn the prices of what he made in uncle Nelg’s store so he could one day be a better businessman). All the while, my anger grew. Deepened. Compelled me. I had dreams of killing the woman. Or my dad. I would wake up, smiling, ready to greet the day. It was like a fire, fueling me. And I allowed myself the damage it was doing, because it helped me move forward with my days. My tinder was the injustice of an unheard scream; a soul that cried without a voice to those without ears. I was becoming blind inside the darkness shrouding my heart. It was more comfortable than the truth of what I could see when I opened my eyes. Because of the uneven schedule the woman of sin kept, it was difficult to find the times to catch her unawares and alone. In spaces where she might slip up and reveal more of what I could use against my father. R'osy’s appearance had ruined one of the very few openings. A slow and quiet part of me hated her for it. And to fuel that hatred, I found the woman’s schedule harder to follow and predict. It became almost impossible to catch her when she was home, and I was alone, at the same time.

I’d found a bottle that my dad hid in the closet in his room, and by slowly pouring some of the drink out over several days (while also making sure it had been drunk a little by him), I’d acquired a bit of my own hidden spirits collection. It occurred to me after the fact that if I added a little water slowly to cover my removal, he might buy more (thinking the strength was weakening). But then...if he bought more, he might drink more...which I did not know if I wanted to play a hand in increasing. I’d seen enough of his own rage to know that additional fire would only burn hotter and maybe melt metals along with brush. And all of this is to say, I’d been drinking on the day I’d gone to see the woman. And now I was out. It would take time to refill.

While my spying and tailing of her went along, with my refill of spirits also happening, it gave me time to also visit the bookstore. But I needed a means to do so. Nela has stopped visiting Dran by now (she’d simply had enough to keep up the lie), and I had decided to visit him as well, out of necessity for my need to move about town freely, but also due to a lie from my mom and to Nela. All of this, because it had also occurred to me, that maybe Dran or others knew about the sin, the lie, to my mother, and I could use this to my advantage. Maybe they would all be taken up and punished, all the people who had helped feed the monster who was destroying our family. Beating the kids in it. Shaming the mother…

I sat outside Dran’s door on some random weekday, looking into the town circle from this narrow side street. I took a deep breath, collecting my thoughts. The stones underneath had turned cool and a gentle breeze was making me shiver, though it was cat-basking warm outside in the midday sun. I wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothing. The streamers of blue and green floated on Dran’s house, from the breeze, as they’d been doing for the couple hours I’d been here. The smell of forest had wafted from his door, where the moss was growing onto the timber frames of his doorway. In a way it made me feel at home; in the countryside. There were more smells here, unfamiliar things. Exciting things. Compared to home, where I knew all of the smells, all the sights, the sounds. My senses were on edge in town. Alive.

By now, I had arranged enough deals with Gahn that I could also leave my spare set of good clothes with him, so that when I needed to visit the bookstore, I could just get those from him. They were kept for me, in a weather-proof box on his fourth floor landing, and I could easily sneak onto the roof and grab them whenever I needed them without being noticed. More so, I paid him to have them cleaned. I gave Mom a raggedy look-alike of my clothes, and made a tale of a beating I’d received on the way back home. To sell the story even more, I cut my face a little on jagged rocks and lost the money she’d given me to buy some items in town. It cost me a bit of money, and that money I’d only gotten by trading Gahn even more vials I could knick without getting caught. But it was worth it. The books were a salve on my soul. The words were helping define my world.

Dran walked up to his house and had obviously spotted me before I’d spotted him. “Tyth. This is a surprise.”

Silence sat there for a couple seconds. I had arrived at the same time and day that Nela had been coming just two weeks ago, but it seemed Dran had moved on, since he wasn’t there and I had to wait for him. The funny thought had passed inside my mind that I, who was planning all of these things, was now sitting, waiting for the plans of others. For the plans of Dran in this instance.

“Dran.”

He cocked his head sideways at me, squinting. Thinking. Not trusting me. Fair. I didn’t trust him. “Ty.” He said again. He expected me to explain my presence.

“.......” I sighed. There were several ways I wanted to attack this, but I didn’t know which would work.

“Tyth?” Although I didn’t look at him (I was staring at the cobblestone street at my feet now), I could almost see or hear him tapping his foot impatiently. “Have you come here for a reason?”

Yeah, to annoy you.

“One second. Thinking…” I put my hands to my face, trying to come up with the best way to disarm him. And after a moment, it came to me. “Do you know what day and time it is?” I looked to him now, keeping my focus for the debate to begin.

“Yes. It is the time I was usually teaching your sister. That is until last week.” He leveled his head at me. “And you are here now, at the same time and date.”

The bastard. He really wanted me to do it. “Yes. And it’s because I am considering coming to you.”

“For what? Teaching?” Dran raised an eyebrow at me. The beard moved ever so slightly along with it.

“Possibly....”

Dran shifted his stance and leveled his gaze at me. Although it was hidden by the beard, I almost thought his jawline flexed at the same time. “What is it you really want Tyth?”

I had decided well before this how the half-truth would be told, and I had tried as much as possible to think ahead of him and what response he gave. A quick breath and I decided to make the plunge.

“How much do you know about my family? I mean, you’ve been meeting with Nela enough...she may have told you some things during your lessons.”

He almost took a step back as his cocky attitude came undone slightly. A hand raised itself from his side, palm opening in a weird sign of submission. I’d almost seen the same thing done by my brother or my mom, when dad was getting after them. “Ty…” It was his turn to take a deep breath. “I know some things. Things you’re well aware of. But don’t worry, Nela hasn’t told me anything that wou-”

“I’m not concerned with if she told you or not.” The words came out hot. I didn’t care. “I’m concerned with whether you do know.” I had turned my face back to the cobblestone. I couldn’t bear to look at anyone, for fear of crying or hitting. Maybe both. I needed to keep myself in control. Dark anger, back in the room where I need you. The added benefit was that I was keeping Dran on the retreat instead of the attack now. Just like I hoped. “What. Do. You. Know?”

He stood there, helpless now. He knew enough, for sure. And if he didn’t learn from Nela, he’d known before. And I hated him even more now. Burn him and the religion he rode in on for not doing anything about it. Poor mom for believing such idiotic things. I pitied her even more now.

“I know some things.” He winced slightly. This was uncomfortable for him. Not that I cared now. I would’ve respected him for being ignorant. Now, I despised him for being arrogant. “What I do know...I don’t know if I can tell you, Ty.” He hung his head after a long pause. It dawned on me that he’d been switching between “Tyth” and my nickname. I didn’t know what to make of that. “I...I know you’ve been through a lot.” Swear to everything unnatural: I could almost see tears or compassion from him when I stole a glance his way. “If I could do anything, I want you to know that I would.”

I was caught up. Half between pure rage and also relentless despair. I was ready to undo myself. But what I could do, all I knew how to do, was not process those things. Leave them locked in the rooms they owned within me. I was keeping them from coming to the surface. Looking at them, without passion. Without emotion. I owned them because they did not own me. So I calculated what I could do with what Dran had told me.

“You know...there might.” I said this not with desperation, but with pure logic. I called that a win in the emotional battle I was mastering within. “I could use someone to talk to.” And there was the trap. If I could get him to admit to the lies he’d been helping cover up, and also tell me in what ways I might use them against him, against my dad, against everyone, then this gamble will have been worth it. Maybe he’d even help me learn what the King’s Bastion was, if it was something I could use to my advantage.

“Why don’t you come in?”

Sitting next to a crackling fire, warm cider in my hand, Dran retired for a moment to don more comfortable robes. While I waited, I took in the surroundings. The room felt only slightly familiar. I’d had faint memories of being here for random moments of my life (celebration of my sister’s birth, weddings or deaths of people my mother knew). It had been a while since I’d come back. Many years. Ever since I started to talk bad about Ygh near my mom. She stopped bringing me after that. Still, this humble living space was where Nela had spent a number of hours over the past couple months learning the lessons that she hated so much. I thought about how many times she’d argued with Dran. She would tell me as much each week, and over what. I would smile, thinking of the ways I agreed with her. In fact, I even helped her craft the weaker arguments into strong ones. And I had no doubt Dran knew as much. She always kept up the fake arrangement we had made, but I realized now that she had done a great thing for me, believing it would help Bela and me. I’d almost forgotten Bela. The lies were getting complex and I was making moves. Things were getting missed. I’d need to shelve that thought and come back to it later. I had a task to perform in the here and now.

Dran returned a few minutes later, as I meditated. He wore simple pants and a shirt, almost the same color as his priestly clothes, but they looked much more comfortable. The baggy earthen pants and threaded shirt he wore out and about was a sign of his humility and connection to the earth. He mended his own clothes too. But here, he was in something resembling the attire dad wore at home. Simple knitting, but expertly done. Not done by Dran, for sure. He wouldn’t have the skill, time, or want or his own priestly work would be of higher quality. He almost caught me staring but I turned to the fire as he started speaking.

“So. Let’s begin simply. What did you want to talk about?” He seemed nonchalant in this moment, and to that point, I noted that he’d failed to mention or even look at my damaged hand. Maybe it was something he chalked up to kids hurting themselves.

“What do you know about my family?” I repeated my un-passioned question from the street.

A slighter sigh from him this time, now that he had readied himself. “Ty, you know that your mother is a much more devout follower of the Ygh than...well anyone else in your family.”

He stopped speaking, waiting for something. My response probably. “Uh-huh.”

“And as her spiritual leader, I know a lot of things that you almost certainly do not. Things I cannot share because I will not. Out of respect to your mom. And whether you know it or not, out of respect to you. Do you understand?”

I kind of did and yet at the same time I disagreed completely. “Yeah that makes sense. I don’t think I can argue with you.”

“So. The question becomes, Ty: what do you know?” He was putting me on the defense, but I couldn’t really do much to upset that balance without showing more hand than I wanted. So best to play what he thought I had.

As I thought about the question “what do you know?”, I closed my eyes. Very real emotions were jumping around inside me. As I tried to put the words in the air, I was caught. There was SO much shame and anger that I was dealing with. And as a consequence, the words I wanted to say would be themselves an admission of what I was going through. But I would’ve rather pulled teeth than name that darkness in my life. In fact, killing him would be better than speaking of what he’d done. To kill the darkness along with him and never put it in the light. But...here I am, trying to take the next step in ending the darkness.

I had been breathing pretty hard by this point. When I opened my eyes I saw that my hands were on my chest. Dran was looking at me with concern, his eyes wide. He looked ready to jump out of his chair and come over to me. But something told me he was waiting. Wanting me to speak. He would only come over here if he needed to. He wanted me to work through this. I hated him for a half-second and then went back into myself, focusing.

All of the emotions, every single one: I dumped them into a void within myself. They disappeared and my breath steadied. I brought up the words before me, in my mind.

I stared at them, in my mind. And then I let them disappear into the void. And when they had gone, I said them outloud, as if they weren’t part of me:

“My dad beats us.”

I blinked away from the fire and looked at Dran, my job was complete. He was now the burdened, carrying my secret with me. As intended.

Dran leaned back in his chair and looked at the fire for a bit. When he had worked out whatever was within him, as I stared at him, he returned to me. “I know.”

It took a second, but the words leapt at me without warning: then WHY HAVEN’T YOU DONE ANYTHING, YOU WORTHLESS SCUM!

I blinked in the face of the emotion and looked back to the fire. It was my turn to process. I rubbed my left eye, feeling very, very tired all of a sudden. The emotion came and went quickly, like a sudden reflex when someone taps you without warning. I was surprised that I hadn’t needed to fight it off again. Thankful really. And I didn’t give it much more thought, out of fear it might return.

This is where I needed to be very careful. It was the moment I needed to use to get what I wanted, but I couldn’t be honest about that. I needed to play a part that gave me what I wanted. And to do it, I had figured out what strings to pull:

“There’s other things too.” At this point I could just name old hurts that had become scars more than anything, just to fling his way and put him on the defense. “You’re new to the position you’re in. Two years ago, before you arrived, I was reading the Yghtl, following Yhg, going to the weekly meetings.” I let that sit for a second, to surprise him. It didn’t do the trick. He kept listening and watching, not making a response. Oh well. I continued. “There were things…” I took a short sigh and quick heavy breath. “Things that happened while I was in the young group. I was picked on. Messed with. Things happened to me. Things I didn’t want.” I bit my lip slightly, without wanting to. “Let’s just say that I experienced things that I won’t talk about, and that I don’t believe Ygh would’ve wanted. They did not match the goodness of the earth, that’s for sure.”

Dran waited the right amount of time before responding, to respect what it took for me to tell him all of that. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Tyth.” His use of my full name didn’t have the same sting in it that it seemed to have just an hour ago. He was showing (whether authentic or not) compassion for my hurt. Which I found annoying at the very least, and wasn’t sure if I believed anyway. “And, I don’t believe whoever hurt you was following the true will of Ygh anyway.”

There was the flip. Dran was starting to go back onto his horse, and if I let him, he’d start going on about the things we always debated and argued about. But if I put him on the right path, he would give me the very rope I was looking to tie him up with. “I’m not sure what’s happening with my family now is the will of Ygh either.”

“No. I don’t think it is either.”

“So. What can be done about it?”

“Well. Prayer first. And of course, the proper sacrifices.”

He said it so quickly and as if it was logical that I wanted to just start laughing at him. But all I could do was slowly exhale through my nose, so my mouth wouldn’t go completely loud with mockery. He seemed to catch part of my reaction. He lowered his head in slight, quiet submission. “I know. You don’t put much faith in the faith.” A slight grin from him for the joke he’d made to himself. “But if you’re looking for a more ‘skin on tool’ way, then you can love your father.”

It took a second to hit me. “What?”

“You could love your dad for who he is. A hurt man who is hurting others.”

I blinked several times and then it started to sink in. “You want me to forgive my dad?!” I could’ve shouted the words if I weren’t unsure Dran was misunderstanding my situation.

“Yes, but-”

“NO!” I yelled the response. Not meaning too.

“But Ty, your father is worthy of love.”

Dran’s words both made me angry and confused at the same time. Logic left me as I stood up. “NO! I mean...just...No!” I was ready to throw something. This response was unplanned for. If he was trying to say that my father was somehow not at fault for what was happening…

“Ty, listen.” He put out a hand, trying to calm me.

I didn’t want calm. “Did you hear me? He beats us!”

“I know but-”

“THERE IS NO BUT! DEATH UPON YOU, DRAN! DISEASE, THEN DEATH!”

“Ty-”

“NO!”

“Ty listen-”

“LISTEN TO WHAT?! YOU’RE NOT MAKING SENSE.”

“Ty…”

Silence. Waiting for Dran to continue. He didn’t. Just looked at me.

“WHAT!”

“Ty…”

“I SAID ‘WHAT’!”

“Ty...listen to me.”

I waited for him to keep speaking. I almost yelled at him again but stopped myself. The room had started to spin a little from how quickly I’d stood and how much emotion was boiling.

I looked back to him and he was still looking at me, not saying anything. I assumed he was waiting for me to calm down. A couple deep breaths later, I let the conversation resume. But when I tried to speak, I found myself still in the throes of anger: “Ok...what do you want to-BASELESS CREATURE!-one second.” I returned to my seat. The thought of Dran speaking again made me want to punch him in the face. But I needed him. Not for him to fix the problem with dad (he was part of the problem that it happened it seemed because he knew and did nothing) but to help me do my own thing in response. Dran was a tool. Haha. I laughed almost but caught it quickly. He was a ‘tool’ to use for my own work. But he would need to say the things he needed to say. I would need to let him say them. And nod where I could or needed to. So I went back to locking down the emotions that Dran had helped escape from their rooms.

It took maybe a whole full minute, but I came back to myself. “All right. What do you want to talk about?”

Dran chose his words carefully. “It seems to me...that you...are having a hard time...with thinking of your dad as human.”

I tried to think of the words. They seemed to not mean anything. “Of course he’s human.” The fact was obvious.

“Yes, and that means he’s allowed to make mistakes.”

I was in debating mode now. I would nail his religion to the wall as part of my prize for getting what I wanted at the same time. “That doesn’t have anything to do with what this is. What he’s doing is wrong. And he knows it. It’s not a mistake.”

“I disagree.”

“And how could you?”

“Because maybe he doesn’t want to do the things he’s doing.”

“I don’t care. He’s doing them. On purpose.”

Dran shrugged. It made me slightly angry, because it seemed he wasn’t caring about my pain. “Maybe he thinks he’s doing them on purpose? That’s my suggestion.”

The question threw me. But only slightly. “I am not here to understand my dad. I am here…” I caught myself. Needed to be careful.

“Here to what?”

“I am here to know. To know what can be done. We are hurting.”

He didn’t respond immediately and his lips pursed. I thought for a second that we had reached another stop in yet another argument. I would go backwards on what I truly believed if it let me catch what I needed from him. “If you won’t take the things that Ygh says, then you can…” It was the first time I’d seen him not have an answer. He was balancing something.

“I can what?”

“Within the understanding of Ygh, I could give you a path. But it is dangerous. It requires compassion, which I do not think you have. And it requires purpose, which I know you do have.” He stopped speaking, even though his words begged at something else. He wanted to say something about me. It was in the air.

“But what?”

“You are dangerous, Ty.” He was quiet now. “You are smart. And you are dangerous.” After saying this, he recoiled-physically-as if I were a snake he was afraid would strike. “Knowledge that you might seek would lead to things you might not understand. And I see into you. I see things that are powerful. But also deadly if not used well.”

I sat there, attempting to understand. His words had struck hard, and I didn’t know what to make of them. I was used to being invisible, and to have someone speak to me like that was almost like getting slapped and hugged at the same time. In shock, I thought of what I could get from Dran, besides this, at this moment. His statement had put me flat and I needed time to recover. But the time was precious. I would think about his words later. What did I need to do, right now?

“Can I ask you to write down what you just said?”

“Of course, Ty.” Dran started to get up, and then stopped. “Why do you want it written down?”

“I need to think on it.” And this was the truth.

He squinted at me. “I think it would be better…” A cock of the head sideways slightly. “...if you would write it down.”

He didn’t trust me. I got it. I wanted the time to think while he wrote it down, but I decided to just do as he asked. As I recalled the words, I put them to paper: “You’re dangerous...but more than that, you’re smart...you can do a lot...which is very powerful...but also deadly...oh, and think wisely on what you do…There was something else you said too...”

“Yes…(sigh)...the knowledge you seek is more powerful than you...if you don’t know how to use it.”

I looked at the words. They made more sense now. I looked back at Dran. “You mention the knowledge but you don’t say what it really is. That isn’t very straightforward.”

“I know. Because I refuse to tell you.”

“Because I’m dangerous.”

Dran leaned back in his chair, looking very thoughtful. “I should rephrase. You’re always going to be dangerous. But right now, I don’t know what kind of danger you are. Good dangerous or bad.”

“But dangerous. No matter what.”

He put his hands up. “But dangerous no matter what. I think it’s who you are, Tyth. And it could be a very good thing or very bad. And it’s really up to you.”

He seemed quite sad about that. But it was really only because he thought I was in the wrong.

The large swing between feelings in the last couple minutes, not counting everything I’d gone through while waiting outside, it was a lot. I thought to myself that I needed to get so much better at taking notes or keeping a daily journal of what I was experiencing. To do that...I would need quill and parchment. We had enough for me to use from what homework mom had once tried to assign to me. It could be put to better use now.

Back to the task at hand. Dran picked up the conversation where it was left off.

“What will you do, Ty?” He seemed without deceit as he said the words. I thought hard, not knowing the answer.

“I’m not sure. I have little that I think I can do.” It seemed that the lie I said in my words went without being seen. Or maybe Dran just didn’t care or want to let me know he caught the lack of truth.

“You can pray. And forgive.” He laid a hand on me, leaning from his chair as the fire crackled. “But beyond that, you need to stay strong. This will get better.”

There was the lie. The thing that allowed this evil to continue. The way of Ygh that meant Dran didn’t need to do anything about fixing this issue if he wanted to. Pray. Forgive. Stay strong. That was all passive. There was no action.

I would make my own action.

“Thank you, Dran. It was good to tell someone. It helped.”

“Is that why you really came here? To talk?”

The shift was fast, but I was at least expecting it a bit. But still, I flinched a little. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t come here for any reason other than to talk?”

This was the Dran I knew. He was studying me. Trying to figure out what I was up to. This is what I’d contemplated for the last several hours before even coming to his doorstep.

“I’m trying to deal with what’s been going on in my family.” I looked straight into his eyes, hoping to shut him up with my own pain and honesty. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I knew I needed to hear from you about what your opinion was.” I looked away, now saying the most honest thing I could manage. “I’m looking for a lot of different people’s take on all this.”

With that I left. Dran asked no more questions.

The breeze had brought with it a slight rain it seemed, turning the gentle warm day into a drizzle. The sudden lack of sun, mixed with the strong emotions inside the house just made the day seem gloomy. I did not in this moment look forward to the quiet contemplation of the walk back home. If I didn’t leave for home at this moment, it would be nightfall as I walked back.

Dad had come into town today as well,knowing to also expect me in town. He’d given up on outright avoiding the times when I or Nela would be in town. We couldn’t afford that, not having the shop open on certain days. “Just don’t visit the shop unless I tell you to. Don’t want you learning to mix certain potions and get ideas in your head.” A month or two ago, I might not have mis-trusted him when he said those words.

By now, dad would have closed shop and headed home. He wouldn’t care when I got home. In a way, our house had become more “free” but also more violent. Because of his tighter schedule to meet the woman of sin now, most likely, he had gone to being more outraged over little things. Mom and dad fought even more over religious things, which was almost certainly because Nela was coming into town a lot more. Mom would almost give up on the idea, but then Nela would scream and throw a fit. Dad wouldn’t hurt her, and so Nela won those arguments. It was so bizarre to see how she was unknowingly turning the house upside down in a way. I regretted some of the lies I’d told her. But they needed to be for something better. A righting of wrongs. For all of us.

Without knowing it, I’d wandered up to the bookstore and was looking inside. The warm glow of the candlelight against the gloomy overcast made me want to go in. It had always smelled of coffee and slight mold. The smell of books. That was imprinted on me now. And I loved the words for what they’d done in so short a time. Painted worlds I hadn’t known, and gave me words to speak that explained my thoughts and feelings. As I walked inside, I thought of the idea of “Imprinted”.

I hadn’t known that word a couple weeks ago, But one of the earliest books I’d read was called “Works of the Poet Poul”. It was a strange work that wrote sentences about difficult or unknown words by their emotion or thought, and created paragraphs about what they meant. “Imprinted” had been filed under “impressionable, easy to mold, simple and unformed, mud like, stamped, pressed (as in ironed), left a stain on”. The one that had caught me there (besides the word “impressionable” which I did not know) was the phrase “left a stain on”. I’d read everything I could about what it meant to be imprinted and thought deeply about how the word meant something I’d been able to understand, but not express, until just then when I read it. I was lucky I didn’t tear up The Works of the Poet Poul by how quickly I’d moved through it in the time after that. Imprinted was a good word. Coffee and this bookstore had left their stain on me. An imprint. A stain in ink dripping onto paper.

Walking down the isles, I came to the place where “King’s Domain” was still resting. It seemed to not sell very well. Not a huge surprise, given all the lying that was being done by dad and by Dran. I mean, I was even doing some lying. But I hadn’t been caught. Not that I knew. And there were probably a bunch more laws I’d seen in the book that were being committed without me knowing or caring to look. I was focused on this one thing.

As I stood there, I was considering whether I should ask Gahn about this “King’s Bastion”, before I was interrupted.

“Can I help you, young man?”

The bookstore owner had never, not once, spoken to me. In all the times I’d been here, I would look around, but not buy anything. Maybe I would take one or two books off the shelf to look at them, but always when I was sure he wasn’t looking. And I didn’t stay long. Then a quick walk out the door with a friendly smile and short wave as I threw a small tip on the counter in front of him. My way of saying “thank you for letting me look around” without actually talking to him. I couldn’t afford these books and there was deep shame in how badly I needed and wanted them.

“Are you lost?”

His hands were on his hips. Having come out of my daydream, I heard the annoyance in his voice. His eyes weren’t on me either. They were looking me up and down. Did I have something on my clothes?

I was wearing my farm clothes.

In my stupid lack of thought from the talk with Dran and my daydreaming, I’d forgotten to change. The owner clearly knew who I was, but he’d never seen me dressed so dirty before. I had better clothes, nice clothes. I’d watched the people who came in and out of here before. I did not look the part of someone who belonged right now. What could this man be thinking of me? Would he ban me forever?

“Can I help you?”

He definitely recognized me. In a town this small, with only a few hundred people, there weren’t that many people who came here. But then again...maybe not? All I knew was that I couldn’t stay here like this, ashamed to be found out for what I was. I walked towards the door, right past him, while looking at the floor.

The walk home was cold and dark. I felt the same inside.