It was cold.
That was his first memory.
He was standing outside in the snow. The wind was blowing across the barren land, sending flurries of bitter flakes into his numb and reddened face. His long, spiky, golden locks, once rivaling the sun in brilliance, were now matted with dirt and grime and pressed tightly to his skull giving him a shrunken sickly look. His bright blue eyes were as chilly as the landscape that surrounded him, distant and dull from some internal scene only he could see. His clothes were in tatters around his thin frame, doing little to offer protection from the elements, and seemed more a formality, an attempt at retaining some vestige of belonging to society. His face was haggard and frighteningly thin from lack of food and pain.
He stood in the vast empty plans, his small figure hunched and shivering in the wind, and silently surveyed what surrounded him, thinking.
He wasn't sure who he was, not really. He had no recollection of his parents, both having died when he was but a baby, leaving him without even a name to be called by. He was taken in by a poor orphanage at the edge of the land of fire. For a time they had taken care of him, but they didn't have the manpower, funds, or desire to look after him properly. Eventually, when he turned four, they kicked him out.
He didn't mind, the orphanage was behind him now, already lost in the vastness of the snow-covered plains. He would move on, had to move on, but to where?
The question stumped the young boy, and this was the reason for his pause. What was he supposed to do? He was alone in the world, he knew that. Every child in the orphanage knew that. If any of them had some family member or person who cared about them they wouldn't have been in that dead-end in the first place. No, the boy with no name was alone. He had no one to depend on, nowhere to go, and nothing to look forward to. He had no purpose, no reason to take that next step. He was lost in an uncaring world. Standing in the snow he knew, despite his young age, that if he were to disappear in this vast monotonous whiteness, no one would even notice his passing. No tears would be shed, no remorse felt for a young live cut short, not even a moments recognition would be given. He was alone, and that made him fell colder than the snow that blew across him.
The wind howled fiercely for a moment, blowing the child backwards, and causing his weakened, atrophied, and numb legs to buckle under him. He collapsed unceremoniously into the pile of snow beneath him. His breathing shallow and weak, little more than gentle gasps that slightly stirred the snow beneath him. He struggled to rise, to stand once more on his feet, but found he no longer had the power to do so. After a few moments of struggling, he finally gave up. He didn't see the point, honestly. Even if he survived this storm, he still had nowhere to go. Even if he lived he wouldn't have a family to go back to, a home that he could call his own, a reason to continue on. He had nothing, he was nothing, and to nothingness he would return.
Slowly his consciousness faded into blackness. He no longer felt cold, in fact, for the first time he could remember, he felt quite warm. He smiled softly to himself, it was nice. His last thoughts, before he became fully unconscious, were only that he could have felt such warmness before now.
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An unexpected occurrence happened. This was not too unusual in his short life, which seemed to be a series of unfortunate events unfolding like some divine tragedy; like that one time with the rat and the bedding or when he was changing and had slammed the draw on his . . . in any case what was unusual this time was that he woke up.
After submitting to his receding consciousness, the young boy had fully expected to never open his eyes again. But as his vision slowly cleared, he began to realize that he was indeed still alive, he was too cold to not be. In fact he was freezing. His entire body was shivering violently under a huge stack of woolen blankets, which, despite their sheer mass, were doing little to warm him up.
The boy was terrified, his body seemed to be out of his control. His breath came in short gasps, and the pain was excruciating as the nerves in his extremities began to reawaken. He cried out in agony, a small pitiful moan that barely escaped his mouth, but attracted the attention of the only other occupant in the room nonetheless.
The boy was lost once more, lost in a world of pain. Every nerve in his body seemed to be screaming, he just wanted it to end he wanted the pain to finally stop. He had already felt so much pain, he had already experienced so much he just wanted it all to end. He didn't realize he was crying until he felt a calloused but gentle hand wipe the tears tracking down his face.
Glancing up and focusing through his hazy inferno, his oceanic blue eyes locked with gray eyes. Those eyes, eyes he had never seen before but felt familiar nonetheless. Eyes that help the same pain and loneliness he had. However, unlike him, there was a shining core hidden just beneath, like the sun behind a cloud, that seemed to radiate strength and kindness, which shone all the fiercer because of the loneliness, a strength that refused to yield even in the depths of despair. The young boy looked up into those eyes and felt, for the first time in his life, safe.
As he sunk once more into unconsciousness, he finally felt hope for tomorrow.