The armoured hearts

Decent

(Welcome 💗✨️)

It never had been this complicated for Porchay to understand words. He was always thankful to Porsche to have been able to learn how to read. The boy could be with their parents when they were still alive but Porchay couldn’t learn anything from them. His brother did it, he helped him, even if he himself was struggling sometimes, he didn’t let his small one be tricked by the whole world.

It sounded logical but so unfair, that some people would have the power to defend themselves when others would just be taken for fools just because they couldn’t afford education. Reading was so important, for contracts, for buying things or even for wanted paper. The first time Porchay was looked for in another far away city, he could escape early because he could understand and read an innocent paper. Just one ability, just some luck to find the things and his life was saved. Not knowing how to read or having difficulties to talk was letting someone naked in the middle of a battlefield, and yet no one thought of changing this. If animals had natural rules, humans also have it : no reading, no freedom, no freedom, no life, danger. It was simple and so unfair. Sometimes Porchay laughed out loud about it, he had luck but not everyone had it and he had no power over it : he could only laugh. 

Even if he could read it, he had trouble understanding what it meant, not literally but for the man living here. Everything was written : how many breakfasts, lunches, dinners, how many showers, how long, how to hunt, how to cook it, what to hunt… It looked like a survival book for someone out in the wild, not in this pretty house. 

“What is this again?” 

“The rules.” The boy answered behind him. 

“Are you just…following this? Everyday?” He turned around, his expression in disbelief. 

“I do.” He just said.

“Who put it there?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Wait…since when are you living here?”

“Since I was born.”

“And…since when are you alone ?”

“Since…this.” He said pointing at a date on the paper. 

It was ten years ago. Judging by his look, the boy wasn’t too much older than him, it meant that he began to survive alone around eight or ten years old,which kinda terrified Porchay. Was he just living the same day everydays for years and years?

“And what are you doing here?”

“I…don’t know…” He said, his head down.