Happy Monday everyone I hope you had a fantastic Christmas. I know lots are still on holiday this week so we will keep this short and sweet and just get on with the writing.
an interesting character. No clue where he actually is. Love the eyes though.
Monday, December 26th: The stars glittered like diamonds.
The stars glittered like diamonds. They were beautiful but cold and impervious like any chips of stone. Once when he was younger he was told that the stars were the eyes of those who had come before us looking down and watching over us. He was never able to decide if the comment was meant to be comforting or to make them believed they were always being watched and should thus behave better.
However it was meant the thought gave him nightmares for months as he imagined all of those glittering eyes looking down and watching him. The thought faded and as time moved on he began to see their beauty and even to see the romantic notions people put on them. He looked down by the lakeside and saw couples who had escaped the house and the gala within to stroll in the moonlight. He remembered a time when he might have been one of them.
Such romantic notions faded from him these days. Now he looked up and he saw the diamond studded velvet of sky and he was certain that some of those diamonds really were eyes and that they were once again watching him.
As he did as a child, he wondered what they thought of him. He wasn’t who he was back then, at least he didn’t think he was. That little boy left unceremoniously in a group home one rainy night was buried under years of hard work and dedication. He moved and changed so much since then. There was no one left from the old days. No one who could tell his past even if they wanted to. A fire in June took care of that. He had been at his part time job when the fire started and came home to find he hadn’t a home. He was a few days short of his eighteenth birthday and had been working and saving for most of his life. In the early days he kept a jam jar hidden in with his socks, but it was too risky.
One of the Matrons admired his motivation and helped him sign up for a bank account. She claimed it was to give him incentive to keep going but he knew she understood that it was a safety precaution. Twice before what he saved was stolen. This was much safer than the jar in with his socks.
Since having anything the others didn’t would have marked him as different it was easy to save in those days. If you didn’t have anything that looked different everyone assumed you had nothing at all. Since he had to be back before the bank closed anything he made he dropped off at the bank on the way home so that he never had anything on him.
After the fire when he spent an uncomfortable few weeks in a new home, Then he graduated and used a scholarship to send him to university. His small apartment was off campus because it was cheaper. In the beginning he kept to himself out of habit. Soon enough he learned how those around him acted and behaved and was able to blend in a little bit better. He made up stories about family holidays that matched the expectations of others so no one questioned him. He excelled a combination of brains hard work and fear of failure propelling him further than he planned.
Ten til Midnight 