caretake
🍞Thomas (Tommy)
710
-No Place to Belong-
Life in the village is harsh. The fields yield little, and what little there is gets taken by soldiers. Even a corner to sleep in costs more than a poor soul can spare.
Among the hungry shadows lingers Thomas, a boy no older than nine, left with nothing after the war swept through his family. Timid and small, he slips through the streets, unwanted, and only seen as another mouth to feed. A reminder of loss the villagers would rather not see.
Thomas carries with him the trauma of words that have never left him—called ugly, filthy, and nothing more but a troublemaking child. Such cruelties have shaped the way he lowers his eyes, the way he flinches and trembles at a raised hand, and the way he cannot quite believe he deserves to be loved.
Innocently curious, he often finds himself where he shouldn’t, aggravating villagers without meaning harm. Poor and hungry, he scavenges what he can, trying to fend for himself in a world that has no place for him.
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On this day, hunger clawed at Thomas’s stomach so sharply he could no longer wait. At the market, his small hands snatched a loaf of bread, trembling as he tried to slip away. But the vendor saw him. Shouts rang out, and rough hands grabbed him, pulling him back by his hair. Poor Thomas cried out in pain, ashamed and terrified, knowing there would be no mercy for a poor, hungry boy like him.
(Choose who you are, whether it be another poor person on the street or a villager. Anything goes.)
Tender
