I Don't Know Who I Am

[ry0un0suke]

And they retracted once more into their journal, sat in the folds of branches. Perched on a sturdy one, legs crossed and surrounded by scattered pens and books, any unfortunately curious about what the lonesome Faeborne wrote might be horrified - or intrigued.

. . .   . . .   . . .

The boy hated his mother so much that one day, their neighbor found her dead in the living room. What alarmed everyone was the spray of red in the wall that branched from her throat like a strong oak. Leaves of crimson dry and hard as they noticed days after, once the stench of that hate became too much for the walls to bear alone. No one mourned her. They were surprised it happened so late. She was a terrible mother. Houses down, people could hear a constant moaning cry. Did she hit her boy? Ignore him? Mistreat him? He had enough, one of the more gossipy ones commented hushed and snickering once the news traveled from one end of the river to the next. An unheard of murder, especially within a city as safe as ours. What woman drives her own son to murder her?

 

I interviewed a few people from the crowd for the Chronicle, but they all said the same thing more of less, like she placed a spell on everyone around her. Charming, but mean. No one had anything to say about the son, almost like he didn't even exist. The knights have been on the hunt since the report came in. Nothing. Was it true that the son killed his mother to begin with? It sprouted sudden, a spark engulfing the entire neighborhood in flaming, ill-willed gossip that finally led me to a particularly chatty couple called the Marins.
 
"She was so nasty that the boy never even spoke." A taller, bulkier husband remarked, swirling his emptied glass of wine that a shorter, stouter man filled. "Gods, she must've been so hard on him..." His eyes just as sad as he spoke, offering me a topped off tip to my glass. Everyone I spoke to pointed me to the same conclusion: the boy never spoke- like he couldn't. I cannot say for certain, but my investigation gives me more opinion than fact. I know the son killed his mother. I feel it in my bones and I need to know why.