I Got Abandoned

Cid could feel her arms trembling slightly. Her breath was uneven and she was crying as she was closing in to the river.

"She's scared..." he thought to himself. 

"Okay... This feels bad. This feels really bad."

Cid suddenly remembered what he heard a while back.

"I won't have a blind heir. Take this child away and execute this woman."

"Wait, don't tell me."

She started muttering under her breath.

"You didn't see him. You didn't see him. You didn't see him..."

Cid felt the air turn damp. Musty. Then colder, like open air.

Water.

He could hear it now. A river gushing nearby. Definitely not a calm one.

"Nope. No way. This is how my second life ends."

The woman knelt down. Her arms loosened.

"Please," she whispered choking on the word. "Please forgive me. I'm sorry. It was the king's order."

Cid's tiny body was lowered onto something wet. 

She stood up, walked away but suddenly stopped. Back turned, frozen.

Cid cried, or at least tried to. Just a raspy squeak.

"What the hell, i was literally just born."

"From being blind, to being Drowned. Fuck it."

"i'm sorry," she whispered again. "Let him never be remembered."

Footsteps faded.

Cid was left alone abandoned in a cave.

No warmth, just wet moss and the sound of the river creeping closer.

"Cool. Abandoned in a fantasy world, blind, naked. Possibly cursed."

"What next? Amputated."

He tried to scream, but his voice failed again. 

"Someone please help me!"

"I don't care who."

Cid felt the ground shift beneath him. And then...

The current took him.

Water filled his ears. He couldn't scream.

"NONONO, this is not how reincarnation works!"

"I thought this was some cool isekai where i'll get an op system but.."

He twisted in the dark, the river rolling him over like trash.

His body hit something. Then a voice broke through the rush.

"Oi!"

Someone yanked him from the current and dumped him onto a canoe, coughing, gasping and crying.

"What kind of mother throws a baby in the goddamn river?" the voice growled. An old woman.

"Looks royal too. Shit-stained bastards don't even raise their own kids."

Cid tried to think something smart but all that came out was a wet burp.

After a while, she slung him under one arm like a wet sack of potatoes and started walking.

Cid couldn't see it, but he felt it. The shouting, the sharp smells.

This was not the safe part of the city.

Years passed and Cid knew three things; fish guts smelled worse in a summer, the guards didn't patrol this far down, and no one gave you anything unless you bled for it.

He also knew the city was...the stench of rotting fish and old piss baked into the stone — a scent the nobles up top would never smell.

The woman who saved him always asked for thanks.

Everyone just called her Old Marla. She smelled like fish and blood. Her voice? Rougher and louder than an AMG C-63. She fed him, barely. And let him sleep near the fire when it was freezing.

That was love, around here.

Did she name him? He named himself.

By ten, Cid knew how to gut a fish, ride a canoe and vanish from a drunk guard's reach without making a sound. He could pick pockets by sound alone.

Cid was walking down an ally. One hand brushing the moldy brick wall to know the way he was going and the other holding a small pouch of dried fish guts.

"Hey, Blindrat," one of them called. "You robbing Old Marla again."

"Yeah," Cid sighed. "And now i'm selling her fish guts for ten copper. Want some?"

The boys laughed.

"Just give us the pouch, freak."

"Sure," Cid said.

Cid pretended to hand it over then shoved one and bolted.

They were on his tail. He hit a rock and fell down hard.

One of the bullies held him by the neck.

"Hey Blindrat, look at me," the bully said while forcing his face to look at him

"You are nothing but a freak, so when i say give you give."

Then a voice came.

"Touch him again," Marla barked, "and i'll use your skulls as crab pots."

Everyone froze.

Cid smirked. "Took you long enough."

She stomped down the alley. 

"Go on, get!" she snapped. "Before I gut you limp little eels!"

The kids scattered, swearing under their breath. One of them tripped and landed in a puddle that absolutely was not just water.

Cid stood up slowly, dusting himself. "Aw, you care."

"Don't get the wrong idea," Marla grumbled, "If anyone's beating sense into your thick skull, it's gonna be me."

"Hmph," Cid feeling proud of her, "Touching, put that in a poem."

She smacked the back of his head just enough to sting.

"You blind and stupid?"

"You're old and smell like shit," he shot back.

Then she sighed. "...You okay?"

Cid paused. "Yeah."

"You just got ten, there might be a way to make you see."

"Really??"

She didn't say anything else. Just grunted and handed him a half burnt fish from her pocket.

It tasted like charcoal and salt. Best meal he had all day.

"See? After all these years? She better not be messing with me."