He can't see.
He touches his face, and feels his eyes. He knows that they are meant for something. They are sensitive, and hurt when he presses them too hard, but other than being wet and stinging, they don't seem to have much purpose.
It is dark.
He knows that word. Dark. He here's his mother whispering it to him. you belong in the dark and with sorcery, Kari.
He wants to make sounds back to her, with his lips. He knows that is what they are for. He can feel how the air runs through them when he breathes or when he eats. Lips are for talking. But he doesn't know how to speak, except for with his thoughts.
So he curls up in a tight ball and rocks back and forth.
His mind drift off to the snowfields.
He can see here.
Not with his eyes, but with his mind. It's light and bright and endless. He walks in the cold and let's the snow and the wind rip at him. His mind is alight with color and sound and thoughts. He screams silent words that no one will ever here.
letmeoutletmeoutletmeout
Let. Me. Out.
But no one answers him.
He knows there are others out there. He can feel their shifting minds like the brush of ground against knees, like the scrap of the food bowl being pushed into his cell.
But they don't answer.
He falls back into the dark.
It is cold.
He's always cold. The ice seeps into his skin and coats him with sharp, perfect crystals. There's no warmth here.
What is warmth?
He thinks about it for an endless amount of time. It conjures up images of burning power and snow and it makes his mind hurt, so he stops.
There's no point in thinking of anything, really. He won't be able to communicate it.
So he sits in the dark and listens to the weeping of the wind.
He's trapped here.
He doesn't mean the cell. He's trapped within himself. Trapped in white snowfields and sorcery and burning, burning power. Some days its all he can do to keep himself concious-the power sears through him with such intensity. Some days he can't keep it together and he screams, the only sound he is capable of making.
If anyone hears, they don't come to help him.
He's alone.
So very, very alone.
Towards the end he no longer tries to find language or words or figure out who he is. He just sits and rocks and lets his mind drift through the endless snowfields.
Because no one is coming for him and no one ever will.
He doesn't really know light until the man comes.
He comes with something shining in his hand, and it lights the cell with such brilliance that-
It hurts-
why-
he wants-
Get me out-
please-
Please-
"Easy, lad,"
Words.
The man bends down and suddenly he is being lifted, pressed against something unexplicably warm and comforting and safe.
He starts to shake. His eyes are stinging, but he can see with them now. Like he's supposed to. He can see the man's face and read his emotions and twist through his mind and he knows-
"It's alright, boy," The man says. "I've got you."
The snowfields are fading into the back of his mind and he can see, he can see, he can see.
"I'm getting you out, Kari, I'm getting you out."
He's leaving.
For a moment he's blinded, completely overwhelmed by the sheer joy of it, but then he fastens on a sound, a sound short and long and wonderful all at the same time-
Kari.
His name.
His name is-
Kari, Kari, Kari-
His lips that are made for speaking and eating bend and move and air slips past them, and he whispers-
"Kari. Is. Out."