In the Basement
CW: Abuse, captivity
The slap was loud enough to echo, but Kel had long ago grown numb to the pain.
“You useless git!” Pater Frisco shrieked. In the enclosed concrete of the basement, the reverberations were deafening. “Don't you know how to do anything right?” He pulled back his hand for another blow. Kel simply stood there, face a mask, eyes unmoving from straight ahead. As he'd been taught. The Pater threw his hands up in exasperation.
“No supper for you, boy!” he said. “And you'll beg for your breakfast, you hear me?” He spun on his heel and stomped up the stairs. The door slammed and clicked behind him, as it did every night.
There were no lights down here. No windows, either. Kel shuffled across the room by memory, collapsing into the rancid straw that passed for a bed. The Pater was right, of course. He was useless. Nothing he ever did turned out right. The butter turned sour. The sheep escaped their pen. And today, the new thatching had all slid down into the mud.
It was only a miraculous virtue that made the Pater keep Kel around at all. Though he regularly threatened to sell him off to the Utriscan slavers, it felt like empty words after so many years. Some days, Kel dared to think the man cared about him in some small way. Most days, though, the truth was more clear: Pater was a man of great charity. Without him, Kel would be dead in the swamps long ago.
Kel owed him everything.