The Musings of a Man with Burns Charcoal Black

[Alikiforever 56]

The musings of a man with

burns charcoal black

 

Leonardo was just making an order. Just out on an errand, just walking the streets. When he heard the  screams and shouting of his niece fighting a battle. Concern filled him as he ran making his way up as stealthily as possible. She and his daughter were all he had left. There was no one else but them. He reached his destination without being noticed, ready to pounce at any second. He had forgotten his armor tho and this…this was a fatal mistake. For when he was about to pounce from the heights above to land on an enemy…he felt a sudden tug on his hair. Someone had grabbed him by the braid. He was furious ,beyond angry, he despised when people touched his hair but then his rage disapated.

 

Replaced by a traumatic response of fear and desperation. He felt it before..oh that familiar feeling…the wretched feeling of being burned alive. He could almost feel the smoke filling up his lungs again. this pain was beyond anything he had ever felt. He couldn't think, he couldn't breath, he couldn't hear. To top it all off it was as if this specific fire was burning his very soul. He bit his tongue determined not to yell. But as soon as he was knocked out he let out a pained cry before everything went dark….

 

Next thing Leonardo knows he is speaking to a masked man in a strange place with shadows whispering in his ears…the temptations are endless. the world has been so cruel…first his mother then his sisters, his brother, his studies and just when life was getting good again? Just when he had started to love again. His husband, his children, his home…it would be so easy to give in oh how easy it would be ...but that's just it- it would be far too easy

 

this man has learned that when something comes easy it comes at a cost. a terrible cost he does not know of. If he gave in he wouldn't be able to face his former loved ones in the afterlife. They would not recognize him; he would be warped beyond comparison. That is what keeps him from accepting. the knowledge that if he were to give in he would be disappointing everyone he loved up to this point.

 

He can imagine it..his mothers face full of sorrow and horror. His siblings disappointed stares, his children's fearful gazes. He is better than this, his mind is not so weak, not now, not after all he has been through. So he resists and is thrown into a cold cell where even though it's freezing his burns are a horrible constant ache on his skin . He attempts to trade himself for his fellow prisoners but it falls on deaf ears. 

 

So he converses with his fellow prisoners instead and tells his niece an old story about her mother. By the end of the night he seeks to escape his pain through sleep.  even that does not succeed as the skin on his left arm and side slightly glowing and covered in black patches burns with unimaginable pain.

 

this pain jolts him from his slumber It came at random suddenly and without warning he was writing in his cell. right in that moment all he wanted was to be safe. To be home and for someone to be waiting there. For someone who cared to stay. he wished it so badly and through his cries, ripped from him against his will. He finally fell unconscious again. Reduced to a lone wolf in a cage with a pack containing only two cubs that he protected viciously, one in the cage beside him and the other waiting back home.

 

This painful process continued for days, then weeks, then a month had passed. He hopes this isn't his end. There is much he still hasn't learned. Subjects he still wishes to pursue. At least one person who still needs him around. He will survive this, he needs to there is no other option now.