"We'll be fine."
"You'll be home soon."
"Just keep walking."
"It'll be over soon, sweetheart."
Lies. All lies. How could his parents stand there and lie like that? He'd trusted them with the whole of his young heart, and no words spoken contained the bitter truth. If his ignorance was bliss, then the revelation was misery. He knew that much.
There he lay, covered in a tattered blanket, an unfamiliar argyle. He longed to be enclosed in a baby blue duvet, warm and woven together with sweet dreams and memories. Mr. Dickson was nice enough, but he'd never love him like he had his mother and father. Regardless if all the lies, the love remained intact despite the hole torn in his heart.
He didn't remember much, but bits and pieces were clear. The snowfall glazing his hair, frost biting his lips, wind chilling his skin. His mother's halfhearted smile and the melancholy hope in his father's eyes. He contemplated whether or not it was just he wanting to forget, but there was something else. He was sure of it.
A strange something it was, too. It was an undefined presence coursing through his chest as if in a repeating cycle, each run-through varying in strength. He only noticed it if he tried to, but it was always present. It churned his stomach and broke his train of thought whenever its evidency became apparent, so he tried his hardest to avoid it.
Peering out the window, his only light besides the fireplace, he gazed at the landscape. The dark outline of the mountains came into focus and hate filled his eyes. Things would never get better for him. Never in a million years.