A Fleeting View of the Outside

It was just past sunset and the dying orange light of day was crawling across the village, a reminder yet again that another day had come and gone without much to show for it. The stillness of the moment felt almost like a cruel joke to me. But here I was — on the cusp of something, maybe even more than that little narrow, suffocating world I'd known — but the truth was the truth that always remained: I was still stuck.

I was sitting on the edge of the well, my feet dangling a few inches off the ground. I observed the steady, rhythmic turning of the wooden handle, how the rope moved with precision as it wound down into the depths, like a line from which I couldn't escape.

The air smelled of aged wood, of the earth, stagnant with the kind of silence that falls when everything has been said a million times, and nobody even bothers to speak anymore.

I thought of my mother, the way she stayed so still, even as the world surrounding her mirrored how it burned. When she wasn't yelling or crying, she was somewhere between living and dying, trapped in a zone where rest was impossible. Actions spoke louder than words ever could for her.

She had no power — no magical ability, no strength that could escape the walls of our house. But what she had — I came to see — was something more perilous: control. She had my father on a short leash and fed him alcohol, made sure he was numb. In this way she kept me small enough to house, under my own roof, so that my dreams wouldn't ever escape beyond our dirt-ridden walls.

That confrontation had happened a few days earlier. My father had not come home. Maybe he'd moved to a different town, or maybe he'd just sought shelter in a location where his vulnerability wouldn't count against him. I didn't really care either way. The silence in the house was what made it bearable again. I could sleep without the constant dread of his slurring words in the middle of the night.

But without his din, I felt a strange silence eating at my bones. I had to see something deeper, something I couldn't ignore, stripped of his anger and the acrid flavor of his tongue that made my life feel lived.

I wasn't like them. My mother. My father. I was unlike anyone around me, and the knowledge was settling like an iron weight across my chest.

I felt that homesickness for the first time in years — the homesickness to leave. To escape. The world outside this village was enormous, unexplored, full of promise, and every fiber of me cried to embrace it, to be more than this. I wanted to matter. I wanted to have a purpose.

But I was stuck. And you find yourself caught in the same old loop, seeing the same faces, hearing the same routine, living the same miserable life. The second I tried to push outside of it, to understand what was out there, the walls just closed in tighter.

I thought back to when I'd seen the knights come into town. I could not stop looking. The soldiers' armor shone even in the muted light of dusk, their horses glided over the dirt road as if walking on air. NO PLACE LIKE HOME With no location, they were free — free to wander, free to make meaningful choices. They were not constrained by petty grudges or petty fears. They were the builders of the world, not its reaction.

One knight, in particular, had caught my eye. He was older than the others, his eyes piercing to the point I felt he was looking directly through me. He felt no fear, was without hesitation. He did not blink in the face of villagers gaping, or of dusty roads he traveled by horseback.

There was strength in him, a sort of silent royalty that seemed to radiate from all of his movements. Even in time he wasn't even a fucking part of. That night, I couldn't sleep. I kept replaying the image of his face, how he had looked — certain, resolute — like he knew exactly who he was.

If only I could be like him. I long to be able to stand tall, righteous for who I was, without fear, without shame.

But how? How could a boy born into this prison ever be anything other than of it?

That was when I saw the shadow. At first it was subtle — just the faintest flicker of movement on the edges of my vision, like a trick of the light. But it was there, and my heart skipped a beat.

I turned slowly, my breath hitching as I surveyed the village square.

Nothing. No one.

Still, I couldn't shake the feeling. There was someone or something watching me. It wasn't an idle thought; it was a deep, visceral awareness that I was being watched from the shadows of the world.

I rose and started walking toward the path that took me out of the village, toward the woods that lay beyond the settlement. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe the quantum of it all was just starting to break me down, the chronic tension, the bone-deep silence. But I didn't think so. It was something else — something much chillier and more disconcerting.

I couldn't shake the sense that something — or someone — was watching me from the woods and keeping pace just out of sight as I walked past the last of the houses. It was so frustrating, how the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention, how my instincts told me to flee without any idea why.

I looked back slowly, urging myself to look down the path I had just walked. Through the shadows next to the edge of the trees, I saw movement.

It was quick—too quick. A figure — only a silhouette, now, against the darkening sky — standing still, watching.

But who?

Who was it?

The wind picked up and stirred the leaves and for the barest instant, the figure disappeared, sucked whole into the forest.

My heart raced inside my chest, standing petrified, unable to determine whether what I saw was truth, or merely another game my mind had created. But as the seconds passed, the unease sank deeper into my bones. Something—someone—was out there, And they weren't watching me though.

By the time I returned to the house, the sky was darkening. Evening had reached tentacle-like across the village, eating the roads in darkness. The few lanterns that burned on the main path flickered weakly, their glow somehow holding, just, against the encroaching dark. I shifted the strap of the bundle I was carrying over my shoulder, feeling the weight of the sacks of flour and salt that I had used our last of money to purchase.

Home. As if there was some word in existence that described the house I returned home to.

I paused before I pushed open the wooden door. The door groaned as I walked in. The air hung heavy with scents of aged wood, wet stone, and something charred. My mother was near the hearth stirring a pot with a wooden spoon. She didn't look up.

"You took longer than I thought you would." Her voice was steady, but something was coiled under it, like a snake ready to strike.

"There was a mill delay."

She exhaled through her nose. "Excuses."

I placed the bundle on the old wooden table, letting the ties loosen and the food spring free. I heard her weight shift, the scrape of the spoon in the pot, I braced before I knew I had.

I had learned to read her movements over the years, to anticipate the moments when her mood would turn from frigid indifference to cutting cruelty. It was like tracking a storm, making note of slight changes in wind and cloud before the deluge.

But tonight, there was no immediate hammer blow, no cruel words. Just the gentle simmering of water in the pot, the distant crackle of the fire.

I saw her from the corner of my eye. Her face was drawn, her dark hair slicked back and strands falling loose at her temples. The lines around her mouth were deeper than I had remembered. The years had taken their toll on her, though she would never say so.

My father slumped in the armchair by the fire, one arm hanging over the side, a half-empty bottle resting against his leg. He was snoring deeply and irregularly, the sort that spoke of too much drink.

I turned my back on both and focused on pouring the bread. The rhythm of it, the repetitive act of chopping and arranging, steadied my hands.

A dull thud.

I turned. My mother had slammed down the spoon harder than she needed. She wiped her hands on a cloth and finally looked at me. She looked sharp, assessing.

"You'll be sixteen soon."

I nodded. We both knew what that meant.

"I heard from the barracks today." She folded her arms, leaning against the table. "The knights are still hiring."

A familiar tension roiled in my stomach. I willed my face to remain inscrutable.

"Good."

Her lips pursed into a thin line. "You'll go."

It wasn't a question.

I reached down to tear off a piece of bread and took my time chewing, chewing clearly before replying. "I know."

She stared at me a moment longer, then pushed against the table and returned to the hearth. Whatever she thought, she said nothing.

I sat alone in the table, eating in silence. Creatures hushed their croons and buzzings, though the distant voices of villagers beyond our paper-thin walls went on, the crackle of the fire, the snoring of my father.

The knights.

I had known this was coming. This was the only way out of this house, this village." The only way to be more than the son of a drunk and of a woman who alternated between cruelty and reluctant protection.

And yet there was more under my mother's insistence. More than just wanting me out of their way.

She feared something.

And I had lived my whole life not knowing what.

The stew thickened on the fire, adding to the crisp, echo-y sound of bubbling that lingered as the quiet settled gently between us. My mother scooped portions into wooden bowls and set one in front of me, wordlessly. It was a thing she did — fed me, even when her voice cracked and her hands were sometimes sharper. A contradiction I had never been able to tease apart.

I accepted the bowl, nodding my thanks. She ignored it.

The food was basic, but inviting. Chunks of boiled potato and stringy meat bob in the broth. I ate slowly, but hunger clawed at my ribs. I had learned to stretch, to prolong every meal, never sure when I might get another.

Across the room, my father stirred, interrupted for a moment from his drunken stupor. His bloodshot eyes creaked open, unfocused. He muttered something unintelligible, then adjusted in his seat, the bottle in his hand tilting dangerously. My mother looked at him and said nothing. She rarely did these days.

I questioned why she wouldn't leave him. Why she remained in this house with a man who drank more than he spoke, who had long since given up on any charade of being a father. I figured maybe she was stuck in obligation. Or maybe by something else.

Now, I wasn't certain she thought about him at all.

The flickering of the fire threw wavering shadows upon the stone of the walls. I allowed the heat to absorb through my skin, forcing myself to think about the small relief of it. But my mother's words still loomed in my mind, heavy and fixed.

They are still recruiting the knights.

There had never been another way for me. I had known it since I was old enough to know how the world worked. The sons of poor families had no choices. They had obligations. They were sent off to the mines, to the fields, to the armies.

Or, if they were fortunate, to the knight barracks.

Not that luck had anything to do with it.

"You're not going to embarrass me," my mother said suddenly, cutting through the silence. Her tone was soft, but the gravity in her voice made clear there would be no misunderstanding.

I looked up from my bowl. "I won't."

She looked me over, as she always did — as if looking for something in me, some sort of assurance that I wouldn't crash. Or that I wouldn't run.

I had tried once. I had a small sack of food that I packed and slipped out into the night when I was eight. I hadn't gotten far before she found me. Pulled me back by the arm, her grip iron-tight.

"You think there's any other place for you? she had hissed. "There's nothing out there except death for boys like you."

I hadn't run again.

Now she lifted the cleaned bowls and set them, stacked away "Get some sleep," she said. "You'll need it."

I wanted to tell her for a second why she should care. Why it mattered to her that I get into the knights. But I knew better than to look for an answer.

Instead, I got up, pushing my chair back. "Goodnight."

She didn't respond.

I walked to the small cold room that was mine since I was a child. The cot up against the wall was thin, the blankets scratchy. At the foot of a single wooden bed sat a wooden chest, holding the sparse belongings I had.

I went down to lie on the floor, just looking up at the ceiling.) The wind outside was howling and rattling the shutters. Somewhere near the village, a dog barked, the sound piercing the night.

Sleep did not come easily. It never did.

My mind spun, repeating the same thoughts over and over again.

The knights. The path laid out for me before my opinion mattered.

And my mom, by the fire, looking at me like she knew something I didn't.

As if she feared some sort of thing I hadn't seen yet