Colours of Memory - 3 (part 1)
03: Auburn
Three children were playing tag in the middle of the street. They looked happy and boisterous, and it was hard to tell how many times they'd come close to ploughing down some hapless passerby. One of them, in particular, was exceptionally fast. He was truly running circles around the other two. They had yet to lay a hand on him.
"Minato!" a familiar voice called.
The boy's blond head turned from where he had been leaning out the window, spying on the three kids from his hospital bedroom. Stuck sitting on the only chair in the sparse room, he took a deep breath and waited for the person on the other side of the door to come in.
"Hi, Minato," the same brown-haired nurse who had visited him every day for the past month greeted him with a warm smile. "How are you doing today?"
Gone were the creepy masked men stationed at his door - ANBU, he reminded himself, was their name (although how so many people could have the exact same name without it becoming confusing was beyond him) - and the three-year-old hadn't even seen the scary lady with the pigtails in a good while. Or at least he thought it had been a while. He had been spending so much time asleep from all the surgeries he'd had to undergo because of his legs that he wasn't really sure what day it was anymore.
Since it didn't really matter to him anyway, it was all good.
"I'm okay," he answered with a meek voice. As okay as he could be without parents and living in a completely strange place. The fact that he couldn't stand or go anywhere on his own particularly sucked too.
"Well, I have a surprise for you!" After saying that, the nurse quickly turned around and skipped back out of the room.
Wanting to know more, Minato leaned forward in his chair as much as he could without aggravating his legs or toppling onto the floor. To his misery, he found that he could not reach the right angle to see what the excited lady was up to. His only hints were a series of clicks and snaps that could be heard coming somewhere from the corridor.
"What is it?" he asked aloud, suddenly forgetting all about how much he missed playing with the other kids back home or how much he'd wished that it had been his mother who had come into the room just now.
Rather than answer, the woman reappeared on the doorstep, pushing an elaborate-looking chair that had some strange metal contraptions - and wheels! - attached to it. To Minato's curious eyes and starved mind, it looked like the coolest thing in the world.
"The doctors said that you're free for the day, so how would you like to get to know the village?"
The three-year-old's cheek-splitting grin was answer enough.
TBC...
Three children were playing tag in the middle of the street. They looked happy and boisterous, and it was hard to tell how many times they'd come close to ploughing down some hapless passerby. One of them, in particular, was exceptionally fast. He was truly running circles around the other two. They had yet to lay a hand on him.
"Minato!" a familiar voice called.
The boy's blond head turned from where he had been leaning out the window, spying on the three kids from his hospital bedroom. Stuck sitting on the only chair in the sparse room, he took a deep breath and waited for the person on the other side of the door to come in.
"Hi, Minato," the same brown-haired nurse who had visited him every day for the past month greeted him with a warm smile. "How are you doing today?"
Gone were the creepy masked men stationed at his door - ANBU, he reminded himself, was their name (although how so many people could have the exact same name without it becoming confusing was beyond him) - and the three-year-old hadn't even seen the scary lady with the pigtails in a good while. Or at least he thought it had been a while. He had been spending so much time asleep from all the surgeries he'd had to undergo because of his legs that he wasn't really sure what day it was anymore.
Since it didn't really matter to him anyway, it was all good.
"I'm okay," he answered with a meek voice. As okay as he could be without parents and living in a completely strange place. The fact that he couldn't stand or go anywhere on his own particularly sucked too.
"Well, I have a surprise for you!" After saying that, the nurse quickly turned around and skipped back out of the room.
Wanting to know more, Minato leaned forward in his chair as much as he could without aggravating his legs or toppling onto the floor. To his misery, he found that he could not reach the right angle to see what the excited lady was up to. His only hints were a series of clicks and snaps that could be heard coming somewhere from the corridor.
"What is it?" he asked aloud, suddenly forgetting all about how much he missed playing with the other kids back home or how much he'd wished that it had been his mother who had come into the room just now.
Rather than answer, the woman reappeared on the doorstep, pushing an elaborate-looking chair that had some strange metal contraptions - and wheels! - attached to it. To Minato's curious eyes and starved mind, it looked like the coolest thing in the world.
"The doctors said that you're free for the day, so how would you like to get to know the village?"
The three-year-old's cheek-splitting grin was answer enough.
TBC...