Acceptance

[Yyan]

What’s the matter, an duine? I can feel you muttering to yourself.

I’m sorry, Mother. Kahas has me late in the eastern storerooms. Our lessons from last week-

May wait. Do not fret, Yyan. There will always be other opportunities. You must learn patience.

Patience… the second edict.

Very good. And what is the first?

Acceptance…

…acceptance…

Yyan came awake in a dark place, lying on a stone floor with his lungs filled with dust. He curled onto his side and coughed, long and raking, and felt nauseous when he was finished. Rolling onto his back again, he concentrating on breathing, on bringing order back to his confused body, and contemplated why he had been apparently sleeping in a storage shed.

With a soft groan, Yyan sat up. Light filtered through wide cracks in the shed door, and he could see the side of another building across an alleyway where his shelter was situated. Voices and strains of music could be easily heard. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

He remembered a road that ran on and on, and a house, the weather-beaten face of an old man looking at him with curiosity and concern… Then images failed and it was only sounds… voices, many different voices, harsh voices, angry voices, cruel and malevolent voices…

And then a single voice. The sound of it stood out within Yyan’s memory like a drop of oil in a puddle: educated, melodious, and far more frightening than anything he had ever heard in his life. The memory of what was spoken was as fractured as the rest of his thoughts, even seemed to resist Yyan’s attempts at recall.

One thing he knew with depressing clarity: he was a prisoner once more.

Yyan got shakily to his feet and checked the money pouch sewn inside of his hooded jacket. By some miracle his meager savings was untouched. He hoped it would be enough for a decent meal and a warmer place to sleep than a storage shed. His fever had broken, but he knew he was not yet recovered from whatever illness had felled him.

With a clear goal in mind, his first since coming to such a forsaken place, Yyan left the alleyway.