Thistles and Sparkling Souls
Leonard didn't want to leave though because he felt that if he left he'd have have failed at becoming a normal citizen. Now this wasn't true, he was a normal citizen no matter what. But while he knew very well how to be kind to other people he hadn't quite mastered how to be kind to himself yet. So he went back into town, bumped into Thomas again briefly, job hunted for a while, and also spent his time spying on the esttunities for him to free any of the slaves.
HIs folly caught up with him though as soon some of the slaveowners captured him for being an escaped slave.
He found himself again sleeping on the bare ground, working long and strenuous hours in sometimes extreme weather, and generally suffering. He was put to work picking crops, so he had the company of the other slaves at least. That was a fact that we was grateful for.
Sometimes the sun was searing down on him and he was incredibly overheating, making his head throw horribly. Sometimes the evening chilll bit into him. He had to work fast, incredibly fast, inhumanly fast, and it strained his mind and his arms and his focus so much that by the end of the day he felt like a bundle of frayed string. The constant fear of being punished weighed on him, terrifying him. And each day seemed more painful that the last. They didn't give him enough food, didn't give any of them anough food. Leonard quickly lost a lot of weight, became as thin as he used to be before he escaped for the first time. The hunger made the work so much more painful. He cut himself on the more thorny branches at times.
He knew that whatever he was experiancing wasn't any worse than what the other slaves were experiancing. He knew they all suffered together. There was a sense of oneness, of camaraderie and brotherhood amongst the slaves. He loved that feeling. He wouldn't trade it for the world.
But that didn't mean he wan't in a lot of pain. The experiance was harsh, unforgiving, terrifying oppressive, grating, ad melancholy. The worst part was when he was seeing one of his comrades die.
He didn't give up hope though. He knew that there was some power working within him stronger than he himself, that no-one else had. It was that flickering light he'd noticed before. Separate from but tied with the River Maiden's power. It was the act of crossing lines, of emerging into a better situation, of creating a better situation. He knew he had to use his power to help his friends. He knew he had to use it to help them emerge into a better situation, to free them. After all, that's what the power was for. He couldn't selfishly keep it that would be treacherous. He'd learned by this point to by kind to himself too, by the way. He didn't know how but he would go about freeing people.
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