The Star Strung Lyre

Augustus's Melody

I strictly know how to do several things, I keep at the things I'm good at, because I know what my skills are. I am the things I can do, that is how it's always been. My father, a ragged man, a man who has several values; None that relate to my own, has planted that into my mind since I was a child. I'll never be up to par with the neighbors son, or even the beggars son because we don't think the same. He doesn't want to see what I do different from him, he wants to see his ideas within me. For what I'm worth is little to him, for sculpting, and sewing isn't worth much to a butcher.

A small village off the coast-line is where I've always lived. The oceans always made me violently ill, a type of sea sickness that isn't from a teetering boat; But from a genuine feeling of discomfort and fear. The endless sea has never interested me, and never will.

My father makes a living for himself in our small town of Clovelly, England. Our families roots run deep as the towns main meat supply for centuries. My father knows every face behind every door he see's. He is the first to know the town gossip, although the biggest news we've had in nineteen years was the news of my upbringing. This town is old, very old. Young tourists come by for a taste of old England, but soon leave once they've found the better place to experience. Nobody that ever comes to this town is looking to stay permanently, so the individuals who remain were either born here, or married into a family that was. My Father certainly wasn't young when I was born, which surprised the locals. No baby had been born for decades before and even now families who had babies who are born here don't tend to stay for long.

School was a challenge, the school that had existed in the town long before I was born had been completely renovated, never being needed because at most there were two children living in Clovelly at one time. Luckily a nice old woman down from our house tutored me during the week, so I never fell behind. The woman who I mentioned, her name was Ms. Chandon She was a charitable woman, being in her late sixties and having the patience for a six year old growing eventually into a fifteen year old. Even in her old age she was strong, and never showed her decay. The sewing and sculpting part of me came from her, to be fair her intentions were never to brain-wash me even though that is what my father claims. My interests became too soft for his liking, if she had taught me how to cut firewood or hunt he wouldn't had been complaining.

Ms. Chandon passed away in her mid-eighty's. She had stopped teaching me a few years before, but I still made an effort to look after her like she once did to me. Ms. Chandon never had a family, and I often wondered why because she was such a delightful woman to be around. She made the small-town life tolerable, and when she did pass I took a heavy blow. As you can tell by now, my Mother was not in my life. I really don't know much about my Mother, my Father says she was a coward and ran after my birth. If I were a woman I would've ran from my Father as soon as I saw him. I never blamed my Mother for that reason, and I'm thankful that I look more like her than my Father, at least that was what Ms. Chandon said. That just added more stigma to my relationship with him, on top of all of the other things he deems as unacceptable. Even the way I talk bothers him, I think it makes him feel stupid, but Ms. Chandon taught me grammar with old books that had been passed down in her family, so old phrases and words came naturally to me.

With my own earnings I bought a laptop from a neighboring town. It was foreign, and it took me a long time to figure out how to properly use it, but once I did know I used it to finish my High school education online. It did it's job, but it was never Ms. Chandon. Every time I'd have to use it I'd go to the bakery. It was the youngest building in our town mainly for tourists, because for the locals it was too expensive, and importantly the only building with public wifi. I got used to the chaos of the after-noon when tourists began to get hungry. I learned to tune out my surroundings and focus on the task ahead. Eventually during one of my days of deep thought I might've become too ambitious. I learned of a degree at one of the most prestigious Universities in the United Kingdom I saw an escape from an old town.