Bartholomew

The monastery, perched on the craggy cliffside, held secrets as deep as the ocean it overlooked. But none were quite as perplexing as the boy. He was fourteen, a wisp of a thing, yet he moved through the stone corridors with a quiet confidence that belied his age. He lived within those walls, ate at the long, silent tables, slept in a cell no different from the others, yet he was an anomaly. His hair, the color of sun-ripened wheat, barely reached his neck. Straight bangs framed a face too young, too innocent for the life he now led. And the habit… it hung on him like a borrowed skin, the dark fabric a stark contrast to his youthful features. He was always dressed as a nun. I saw him once, beyond the monastery walls, lost in a sea of wildflowers. The vibrant colors seemed to swirl around him, a chaotic contrast to the rigid order of his life. His golden, amber eyes, usually downcast in prayer, were lifted to the sun. For a fleeting moment, I saw something else in them – a longing, a hunger. A secret, perhaps, as profound and unsettling as the reason a boy dressed as a nun lived within the silent stone walls of the monastery. He simply vanished when I blinked again, leaving me to remember the boy that I saw standing in the field of flowers.