This was almost an entry for the Asunder competition, but life got in the way before I could meet the word count and the deadline. So, here's a little POV piece - what it would have been.

Children

I am one of the forgotten.

We were, briefly, loved. Told stories in the night, hushed to sleep by lullabies, held in warm arms when the nightmares came near.

The day had to come, eventually, when my circumstances betrayed me; like all the others, my memories are hazy, muddled, but I remember tearful, hushed goodbyes and being dragged away by hands so much stronger than my mother's.

Or perhaps she let me go. Does it matter?

They attempted to make it a home for me at first, smiled and told me to rest; things would be much better in the morning, when I'd settled in, adjusted. I blindly obeyed, not knowing what else to do, crawling under thin, moth-eaten sheets and onto a hard mattress. They were still better than anything I'd had at home.

If I had known then, I would have run somewhere, anywhere, if just to see their faces one last time - hold my mother's hand, ruffle my brother's hair.

When I wouldn't settle, the smiles dropped, and I saw their real faces. Harsh voices in my ear; endless lessons, with dire punishments for ignorance; the others like me, sitting exchanging stories of freedom and their families; whispers in dark corners of things a child should never know, of blank eyes and sun-branded foreheads.

We are locked here, now, with eyes watching, always watching us, wondering when our control will finally snap. Constantly, they draw boundaries between us with their looks and their postures, the way they all stare or never... quite... look at us.

I watch them, these poor children, and I pray that just one of them will look through my helm and meet my eyes; that they might understand that we are all prisoners here. They flinch away from me, from the sword I wish never to use, but I remember the frightened eyes and the shaking hands, the sobs and the desperate clawing at the walls, all too well.

I am just one more boy who never ran away in time.

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