"What is your name?"
"... I don't know."
A young child- no older than twelve- was seated on a bed, and was leaning against a stack of cushions, sporting a blank expression on his face. His eyebrows were furrowed as he warily glanced at the people milling around his room, feeling frustrated at the endless tirade of questions that he was being subjected to.
"Do you know where you are?" An old lady with a seemingly stern countenance was seated beside him, asking worriedly, concern apparent in her gaze.
He chose to answer with a simple shake of his head, and a disappointed sigh echoed through the room.
"You are in your room in the orphanage. Why don't you look around and see if it brings back any memories?" The old lady- Headmistress Azael, one of the kids around him had called her- suggested softly, making him acquiesce.
The small room that he was currently resting in was nothing of note. It was cramped but well maintained. A long wooden table was haphazardly pushed aside, its chairs askew, to make way for the sudden influx of visitors. Four beds lined the brick walls in an orderly row, their slightly rusted frames giving the room a neglected feel. Wooden chests were placed at the foot of each bed- explaining the lack of closets in the space. A thin bookshelf was tucked into a corner, the rays of the evening sun falling against the open window and casting long shadows over the dusty book covers.
Homely but minimalistic.
He then turned his attention to the people in the room- his room, according to Headmistress Azael. Aside from her, four others were surrounding him, all showing varied expressions on their faces.
A young woman was gazing at him with sympathy as her hands tightened around the dinner tray that she was holding. That, coupled with her attire- a black, knee-length skirt, and a tattered white apron covered in streaks of dust- told him that she was probably a maid working here, an orphanage.
He supposed that it was a blessing in a way that he was an orphan prior to losing his memories- surely, his family would have been heartbroken if he had forgotten about them- but that didn't stop the bitter pang that resonated through his heart for a second. He willed the fleeting thought away as he took note of the others.
Two of them were kids who looked to be around seven years old. They had short, brown hair and blue-grey eyes. A smattering of freckles dusted their cheekbones, blending into the soot currently adorning their almost identical faces. Their builds were also similar, and added to their identical expressions, he wondered for a moment if he was seeing doubles.
Twins, he decided.
The last of them was standing far away from him, his entire frame almost hidden in the shadowy corner he had secluded himself to. One might think that he was approaching the situation with a laissez-faire attitude, but he could feel the boy's golden eyes bore holes into him. His aureate hair and eyes that seemed to almost glow in the darkness, added to the angular shadows that fell on his features, made him look like a legendary sphinx.
He had a sneaking suspicion that this teenager had purposefully chosen to stand there in order to appear more mysterious.
He decided to try and avoid the teen in the coming future.
He brought his attention back to the Headmistress, and shook his head softly.
"Very well." she sighed. "I will contact the temple and see if they can do something about your situation. Hopefully, they will help us."
She proceeded to vacate her chair next to his bedside, beckoning to the maid to leave the room with her.
"If I may ask." he suddenly called out, making her halt in her tracks. "What is my name?"
She blinked her eyes for a second, as if greatly astounded by his question, before revealing a small smile. "I suppose I haven't told you yet, have I? It's Avon. Remember it well." she said, before closing the protesting door behind her.
He jumped off the bed, ignoring the other three as he rummaged through the trunk placed by his bed. A few seconds later, he fished out an old, antique mirror, and proceeded to bring it up to his face.
A young child with fair skin and rosy cheeks blinked back at him. He had white, wavy hair that curled around his cheekbones delicately, an upturned nose, and thin, pink lips that were hooked in a slight smile at the moment. A portion of his bangs fell onto his eyes, partially covering two blood-red irises that were staring at him.
"Avon, is it?" he muttered softly.
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The twins were called Seyah and Aidan, he learns.
They were extremely timid- running off together whenever Avon so much as glanced at them for a second too long. An insufferable habit of theirs was that they both liked to stare, and would probably spend hours upon hours just looking at him if they could; Avon wondered if all kids were as inscrutable as them, or if it was a unique trait of theirs.
The aureate teen was named Reaval- or Reas, as he had asked Avon to call him- and one interaction with him was enough for Avon to ascertain that he was probably the most exasperating person he had ever met in his entire life- not that he had much to go on.
He'd sport an aggravating smirk every time their eyes met- testing and goading him for reasons Avon was yet to figure out. He'd constantly twist Avon's words into something indecipherable, bursting into laughter whenever he'd let out a huff of frustration- like a leech that preyed on Avon's ire.
If Avon hadn't been told that, prior to his incident, he had an almost invisible presence in the orphanage, he would have thought that he had somehow greatly offended the teen before.
The three of them were his roommates, so they were the only ones that he was allowed to interact with and talk to while he was on forced bed rest. Wanting to learn more about himself, he had tried fishing for information from them- but every time he asked them a question, the twins would simply give him blank looks while Reas would spin a story that would probably make even professional bards weep tears of blood in jealousy.
With the help of an overly helpful maid, Avon was able to learn that he had arrived at the orphanage three years ago with nothing more than the clothes on his back. According to her, his personality had been taciturn, and he had never bothered to interact with anyone if it wasn't necessary- so no one at the orphanage knew anything about his past.
He had tried asking Headmistress Azael if she knew of his origins, but all she had done was look at him in pity before slowly shaking her head. He'd given up after that, knowing that he couldn't learn anything more from them.
It threw him off- the feeling of not even being able to comprehend his own self.
Avon desperately tried to squash the panic that rose through his chest every time he woke up gasping in the middle of the night- forgotten phantoms plaguing his mind and heart. He felt oddly alienated from his surroundings, unable to find even a single flicker of familiarity from anything around him.
He had spent hours scrutinizing every object in his room, and had forced himself to hold lengthy conversations with everyone that he had come across- hoping, and failing, for a spark of remembrance to form in his mind.
It was frustrating, the feeling of having your entire existence forgotten- without having anything that attested to the struggles that he had gone through in the entire twelve years of his life. He had never understood the true meaning of the word 'insignificant' as he did now, knowing that his life up till now held no importance to anyone.
It was as though someone had wiped him clean, breaking apart everything that made him himself, till all that was left was a facsimile of Avon, someone who was similar to, but at the same time vastly different, than the true him. He wondered what he had gone through, to make the him of the past so reserved and uncommunicative when the him without his memories was the opposite- confident and outgoing.
Were his memories so jarring that they would frighten him into perpetual silence?
Avon tried to convince himself that the thoughts that swirled chaotically in his head were simply a result of his panic and anxiety- that he was taking things out of context and blowing them out of proportion- but then he would remember the look on Headmistress Azael's face when he spoke to her without stuttering and, for once, actually looked her in the eye.
'Pathetic.' he had thought darkly. 'How much of a coward was I before?'
He knew that for the time being, the only thing that he had which wasn't broken or worthless was his pride, and the mere thought of remaining timid and craven was enough to make him feel disgusted and sick with himself. Every time he imagined his past self, sparks of humiliation would prickle his skin, making him feel as though his heart was being squeezed inside his chest.
It was enough to make him feel glad, grateful even, that he had forgotten his entire life. It meant that he could build himself from the ground up again, giving Avon the opportunity to turn himself into something more, something better.
Now, he finally had a chance to start anew- and he was determined to not waste it.
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