Today has taken a rather unexpected turn.

I was sitting there in Ari’s living room, and everything was perfectly regular; we were chatting about what we’d read recently, Cicilie’s antics. Ari was laughing, when suddenly everything went downhill very fast. 

He broke off with a ragged gasp, head snapping up, his eyes locking onto mine in two bottomless pits of deep grey. I was shocked at how wild and desperate they were, so full of torturous pain, so starkly different from the collected, calm boy who’d greeted me at the door with pleasant surprise. Ari’s fingers scrabbled at his inky hair, shaking his head violently as he started to shudder, deep convulsions, seeing everything and nothing at the same time. I cried his name, forgetting in my worry to use an honorific, but got no response but an agonised moan.

I was frozen, terrified. I didn’t know what to do, what would help, what would happen to him. I did know that I had to do something, anything, just to stop him making that terrible noise. 

Even now, he’s doubling over in his chair, rasping out unintelligible words. I can hear the same name, over and over, but I can’t make it out. I think I can detect an L or an M, but by now I’m just guessing. (I have more pressing issues.)

Ari’s on his knees, curled into himself, and he looks so vulnerable like that, like a small child abandoned in a game of hide-and-go-seek. I sit gingerly next to him, and my heart goes out to him – somewhere along the line, after my initial blind panic, I’ve realised that his pain is internal, not physical; it's in his mind. I don’t think I can help him, at least not right now. But I know for certain that almost every single person in this wretched town would have had no understanding at all of what he’s probably going through. They would have scorned him, maybe aimed a kick at him, called him a freak and made sure he was completely and utterly severed from everything he cared about. Definitely not try to help.

I just mean that I can’t let that happen to anyone. Not for struggling with your past. I know what it’s like; no one deserves to have elders breathing down their neck, waiting for you to slip up. 

No one deserves to feel how I did. 

Luckily, nobody here knew me then; and that’s exactly how I want it to stay. For now, I content myself with sitting by Ari, all proper conduct forgotten as I listen to his quiet murmuring and occasional whimpers, and patiently wait for him to be ready to make his way back to the world.