Ruins and Silence

 

Tommy was a boy who visited the ruins every chance he got. Even though he liked the same games and roughhousing as the other village boys, he also liked to stand alone in the shadows and let the silence bear down on him.

He noted that some horses liked to wear a blanket when it stormed, and he guessed he was the same. The silence was his blanket, calming the storm in his mind, helping him forget the beatings.

Years later, after many adventures and battles that had torn the boy out of him, Sir Thomas the Bare returned to the ruins.

He earned the nom de guerre "The Bare" for selling his great war helm to buy food for his troop. After that, he never wore a helmet in battle again. It was foolish, but it emboldened his soldiers, and that was enough.

Sir Thomas let the silence soak in. It took a while, for he was out of practice, and his mind had become accustomed to a continuous swirl.

But, inch by inch, he calmed, reclaiming a bit of the boy. The boy recalled the bruises from a capricious drunkard. He recalled a bloody mother, her broken nose pouring even as she tried to soothe the younger children.

He recalled how the kitchen knife had somehow appeared in his hand, how it had opened a long, jetting slice in the drunkard's neck.

He had come to the crumbled walls that night too.

Sir Thomas stood a long while. Just another ruin among the stones.

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