Dreams Deffered

Gentle is the Wayward

There wasn't a single moment that this little boy felt like he would be alright. He didn't know what it was to be afraid. He had spent his life in the comfort of the village and it was layers deep in people before he would have ever felt anything close to feeling what he was feeling now. It was true it takes a village to raise a child, and that's how they did it. Everyone knew everyone and there was never a time that anyone in the village would be for want of anything. If one child got in trouble you could believe he would get in trouble twice and that's what made everyone so moralistic.
But here he was lost in the hull of the ship but not knowing what it was or where he was. He heard strange voices and the songs were horrid. He tried to keep track of the nights and days but in the hull of the ship he had no way of knowing when the moon would set for the suns beginning a new.
He slept when he could but he was starving with barely anything to eat, the evil ones would splash him on his face with a bucket of gruel and all he had was what would run down his face stinging his little brown eyes and mix in with the mucus that ran from his nostrils as he tried to lap up as much of the rotten gruel mixture he could before it ran passed his swollen lips where his tongue could not reach.

He once thought they were bringing more food for them when he heard them coming in the dark and he could hear the sloshing of gruel in the nucket. He was grateful that he may get another chance to eat again even if it were just one quick grain of rotted rice, he was so hungry. As they came to walk passed they sloshed the hot liquid and before he had time to realize it wasn't the rotten food, his eyes began to sting before he had a chance to shut them. It was a bucket of hot water and lye to clean them up with. As it burn his little face it melted the skin off of his tiny forehead and he let out a little whimper but no one heard him, because his sound was drown out by the screams of the others as their eyes burned to a bright flash of pain.
The pain was so bad that all he could think of was his little bed in the village knowing that there was where he would go to feel all the comforts of home, as he laid shackled in the Bowles of this ship: but luckily he passed out from the pain, but not the pain from his burned skin but the pain in his heart. He quietly cried to his mother.
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She heard, it's him, it's him my baby, my little baby boy, it's him as she sat rocking back and forth with her head in her hands, trying to be still but her heart was screaming as she tried so very hard to dampen the thunderous pounding in her chest  so she could hear her little boy. And she did. She demanded silence from then on, she knew that she could hear him so she would not tolerate any conversation or any reassurances from anyone, because she knew she was never going to see her boy again, but she knew that she was able to hear him.