8
Arsen
I dream of my brothers Damen and Dryas that night. I dream that I am young again, maybe ten summers. Father has disappeared, and my mother has taken to her bed with her pipe, smoking a little so that she won’t wake up shaking at night.
The three of us sit on a bridge, underneath the full summer moon, staring down at the water. Silence weighs us down as the distant blare of a ship’s horn sounds in the eerie night.
We’ve been shooed out of the house so that our mother can sleep peacefully. After a little pickpocketing down by the docks, which will pay for a chunk of bread each, we’ve settled here to sit and wait.
Damen scratches his head furiously. I eye him, thinking that it’s been a while since we had our heads shaved. We don’t want to catch lice again, or any number of the ot
