sara_may_sing

          Amadeo Clay. Born screaming and beet red, throwing his little clamped fists at everyone. His parents looked to one another, stars in their eyes, and smiled. This was their first baby boy. After him would be sister after sister. Four, to be exact.

          Amadeo grew up in the sand with the rest of his community. They were quiet but hardworking people. Strong. Determined. But mostly tired from the constant beating from the sun. Amadeo would run through into their shops every few minutes or so, asking the nice fruit selling lady or perhaps even the butcher if they could give him a cup of water. But other than sunburns, Amadeo had a fairly normal childhood, full of long days and bickering with his female siblings.

          School for Amadeo was at home with his father, who would squint at the page as his sight started to fail him, reading the word of the Creator. Amadeo fidgeted where he was sitting on the floor, daydreaming about being outside playing in the sand. For this, Amadeo would often be berated by his mother and father, who were very religious, and glared at by his sisters who were following in their parents’ footsteps.

          “One day, Imma leave,” a ten-year-old Amadeo declared one day to his sister, Clara, who was only one year younger than him and had quickly become his closest friend.

          “Yar leavin? Ma and Pa would be crushed,” said Clara, digging the little pebbles out from underneath her toenails. They were sitting on the beach, only a mile away from where they lived.

          “But I wanna adventure! I wanna see the world!”

          Clara raised an eyebrow at him doubtingly. “Ya know ya could be a trader. Then ya can come home when yar done.”

          But Amadeo shook his head, “I wanna leave, Clara. I don’t belong here.”

          So as Amadeo grew up, rapidly approaching adolescence, he asked himself where he did belong, if not at home with his family. If not in the desert where the Creator intended him to be.

          It was early in the morning of his sixteenth birthday when Amadeo packed his belongings and said goodbye to his family. His mother tearfully said a prayer for him. His father sternly wagged his finger at him, reminding him to follow the word of the Creator even when away from home and handed him a scarf, what had become a sort of heirloom in his family. Sown by his great-grandfather and passed down through the generations, the scarf had kept the sweat out of the eyes of many of Amadeo’s ancestors. And here was his family, gifting it to him.

          Amadeo accepted, a rock forming in his throat -which surprised him because this was the moment he had been waiting for. He was about to be free.

          Clara ran and gave him a hug. Following her were the other three sisters, all visibly and loudly sobbing. Amadeo couldn’t help but cry with them.

          And then, he was off.

He was a small teenager with big hopes and dreams. He stopped alongside Druidic communities, looking on in awe, and spotted a few Orcs along his way, too. However, it was when Amadeo reached Helena that his jaw dropped and the dreams he once had seemed comparatively small and closed-minded to the opportunities that the Holy Orenian Empire offered.

          The following years were not so kind to Amadeo. It seemed to him that the Creator had turned Their back on him. Amadeo, who was lost in a foreign and busy world, had to turn to small crime, like pick-locking. He found himself at the pubs, drinking deeply to rid his sorrows and homesickness because he was so far from his family.

          However, even though Amadeo has had much struggle in his young adult life, he has not given up on making lasting friendships and finds himself falling into them easily. He is dead-set on building connections and making a humble name for himself in this big, big world.