cont.
Cold hard knots unraveled beneath his breast, sighing in grey steam rivulets from parted lips. Tactile sensations were a keener blade here, beyond the crushingly close walls of home. Each brush of snow-flecked lashes lay fine, stinging lines across his numb cheeks. Wool rasped against his palms as they began to tremble.
The boy’s first steps stumbled, caught in their own unsurety. Rational thought was snagged behind him, bound up in the plaster and woodwork of his past. This outside life, this plunging unfamiliar map that had on every other day of his existence been counted ordinary, was both an irresistible compulsion and the utter bewilderment of the old, soporific reality to which he clung.
The boy’s first steps stumbled, caught in their own unsurety. Rational thought was snagged behind him, bound up in the plaster and woodwork of his past. This outside life, this plunging unfamiliar map that had on every other day of his existence been counted ordinary, was both an irresistible compulsion and the utter bewilderment of the old, soporific reality to which he clung.