Cavalier

Chapter Five

As weird as it is to say, and as wrong as David feels saying it, it gets easier.

Not that there's anything remotely easy or simple about this situation. David is at the beck and call of Presidential Guard agents who tend to come around at literally any moment so that he can provide musical therapy for the President. They made it sound like he had a choice, kind of, but he really doesn't have a choice at all. While anybody would be excited to know that their music caught the attention of Saul, President of the nation, enough so that he wanted to hear it live, to pretend that that is all there is to the situation would be delusional.

It kind of sucks. David is fourteen; he wants to go and hang out with his friends and maybe finally buy a video game console with some of the money he's managed to save up so that he doesn't have to beg Raddai to use his on the rare occasion that Raddai is, in fact, not on said console. He wants to only have to worry about the sheep and his homework and that's it, that's all. He'd like to be able to visit the ice cream parlour more. He'd like to, maybe, make a few friends outside of his family.

There's a long list of stuff that he'd like to do but he can never find the time to do it because, more often than not, whenever he's not out with the sheep he's playing for President Saul or in transit to or from.

It gets easier, in the sense that he adjusts and lets go so that it doesn't always suck. But while it gets easier for him, it doesn't get easier for his family—mostly his parents—regardless of how well they try to hide it. They no longer wait up in the kitchen waiting for him, sure, but David sees in their eyes just before he leaves or right after he comes back, if they're around, that they're still just as scared to see him go as they were the first time. Like there's always a chance that he won't come back.

Which there is, of course, but that's one of the things David's good at ignoring. Dwelling on it wouldn't really help, anyway.

He treasures the few times that he gets to go to town and visit the little ice cream parlour. The owner is always up for some friendly conversation and he treats David like he's just fourteen, not "fourteen with a heap or responsibility on his shoulders" or "fourteen but still the baby of the family". And yeah, okay, David supposes not many "normal" fourteen year olds would have the patience to spend time talking with an adult about nothing in particular, but it only figures that David's "normal fourteen year old behaviour" is different than everybody else's. David's never really been in a position of normality.

He also starts to greatly value the time that he spends out in the field with the sheep because it's one of the only other times that he feels normal, as normal as he gets. Times spent with President Saul notwithstanding, his entire family is still treating him carefully, like if they push him too hard he's going to just—snap, one of these days. His mother is still diligently homeschooling him whenever he happens to be around but she never sends work out with him to the fields anymore, like she knows his time out there is something that shouldn't be intruded upon. If David's completely honest he's not sure that he would do it if she did send it; the good son in him says that yes, he'd do it, but if it weren't for the time in the fields, the time he spends focussed on God, then he's pretty sure he would've already broken.

Ethan helps him with his homework; it's equal parts help and distraction. Help, yes, because he definitely is able to pick stuff up faster with Ethan there to help him, but they also tend to get very distracted. It can be anything from a disagreement that escalates too quick because David doesn't want to concede that Ethan's right or talking about everyday things because Ethan wants to know what it's like outside or things that are happening around town.