2025-12-04 Freewrite

He was a fussy baby. His mother was the kind and doting sort but had only so long to care for him. The elders never did figure out was wrong but after his birth she knew she would be gone soon enough. She would sometimes wake in the night far from home and her limbs felt like ash. Then came the cough and her eyes failed too and during those periods the boy became her caretaker in turn though at just five years of age.

It is a heavy burden to become an adult so young. He had few friends and those too were soon gone. His father never much liked having people around and even less so with his wife in her decrepid state. When she was gone he spoke to none and certainly not to the boy.

The men in town said that his father had been a writer at some point though they knew little for they could not read. The boy had never seen his father write much of anything nor tell stories of any kind. He never joined the other men at the bar nor enjoyed their company. As far as the boy knew the man rose in the morning and worked fields in the day and drank in the evening and every day was much the same as that. He was a stone obelisk, a deep impenetrable force from which little came.