Sorry

oreramar:

Toby’s
earliest memory is of a man’s voice. It is booming, echoing through whatever
space Toby is in – indoors, he thinks, full of golden light, though whether it comes
from candles or those old incandescent lightbulbs he can’t recall. Bulbs,
probably; he thinks it must have been the main hall of the church, though it
might have been somewhere else. There are people all around him, and someone
pressed against his side holds his hand. He thinks it’s the sister he barely
remembers. He’s seated on something hard, and his toes can’t reach the ground.

He is
so tiny, and everything else is immense.

The
man’s words are the biggest things of all.

He can’t
remember them precisely. A lot of it made no sense to his young mind, and more
was lost to the dimness of memory besides. It doesn’t matter. Meaning had
nothing on the feel of them, and that was guilt, and shame, and unworthiness,
scintillating among the dust motes in the air, swirling off of the people
around him in a faint haze of not-quite-color.

I should be ashamed too, his tiny
subconscious self had decided, mimicking those around him. He was too young for
logic, but still there had been a question and answer he had hardly been aware
of: Ashamed of what?

Myself.

Keep reading