It was you that your Lord first trusted so deeply. It was you that He bestowed upon your name, your title, and your life, rich and sweet like the tarts his cooks prepare for you. He saw a child sitting on the temple stairs with an unfathomably vacant expression and sensed something no one else could sense in you.
You were not the prettiest of your siblings, nor the most devout. Your sisters could sing higher than you; your brothers, lower. You had not the superior penmanship nor the superior temperament, and the first time you tried composing, you violated so many laws of music theory that you were permanently exempt from any kind of musical composition assignments indefinitely. The looks they gave you were unreadable at the time, but as you grew older, you came to understand what their eyes were saying.
This child is a lost cause. You are a lost cause.
After a while, your teachers stopped caring when you refused to go to your lessons. The temple elders would meet your gaze less and less. Your peers ignored you when you wandered the halls.
No one had hurt you, physically or emotionally. You were fed and clothed and given a place to sleep like all of your siblings. You were allowed to attend their classes; you simply chose not to. The boredom ate away at your mind until a new sensation replaced it.
You would later learn that this was called numbness.
While boredom clawed at your psyche relentlessly, there was something almost comforting about sinking into the cool embrace of nothing. In this state, you would stand still for hours upon hours, staring into a void that did not exist. Your siblings were frightened. The elders were unnerved. What could drive but a child to drift so carelessly through her world? What could drive but a child to spare nary a glance at the wonders of the Golden City, in all its glory?
What could drive but a child to such emptiness?
You were no prophet. You were no clairvoyant. No visions of the future revealed themselves in your mind. You only stared, unseeing, past every person you wandered by. More often than not, you were in the back of the audience at your siblings' performances, silent as the crowd cheered for the temple-raised children who would surely bring the Empire no small amount of glory.
The thought of leaving crossed your mind more than once, and you would consistently entertain it, turning it over and over and over in your head. Ultimately, you never went along with it, though to this day you are certain that no one would have bothered going after you.
As the weather warmed in the summer months, the porphyry steps of the temple became your preferred resting place. You would spend entire days sitting on those stairs and staring blankly into the city. Even the occasional visitors of the temple stopped paying you any heed after a few weeks had passed.
You were a lost cause. No one had to tell you this.
The sky was cloudy on that fateful day. An old man, a weary traveler, hobbled up the stairs and paused where he saw a temple child sitting absently on the ground.
He stared down at you. You stared back up at him.
With a groan and a creak of old bones, the traveler lowered himself to sit next to you. You noticed him, but did not react. The isolation had become your blanket. Whether or not this old man wanted to join you in your solitude was of no consequence.
The scent of incoming rain accompanied the comfortable silence. At one point, when you were still a young and bright toddler, it would have brought you peace, but in that moment, at the age of twelve, you felt nothing.
A soft hum permeated the air and interrupted your sluggish thoughts. You glanced over to see the man pulling a lyre out from under his cloak. Soon, the gentle plucking of the strings joined in the music. You did not recognize the song, but you stared curiously at him. When he caught you staring, he stopped singing to smile at you.
"I am a musician," he said. "Like most people in this city. I have traveled here from the west. My name is Sabulō. What is your name, dear child?"
"Nola," you responded. Your tone, like everything else about you, was empty. Flat. Sabulō noticed, but made no comment on it, save for the slight downwards tug of his lips.
"Nola, would you be so kind as to escort me up to this here temple? I have heard that places such as this frequently provide hospitality to wandering travelers like myself. I would be most honored to be graced with the beneficience of the people here." His tone was as sweet as honey, and for just a moment, a pleasant memory resurfaced.
———
I will give you a gold star if you can guess who “nola” and “sabulō” are
