The Time to Run

Coming Home to find the Worst

This is a Chapter on Avon's past, back before she became a stable hand. It's commemorative of The Time to Run reaching 100 views.

Avon was only fourteen when her father became a drunkard.
Several months previous, Avon's mother had been suffering from flu. Unfortunately, she had passed, and her whole family had suffered. Avon tried to stay positive, but inside she suffered as well. Every night, she wept, quietly so that her brother would not hear.
One day, she walked home after a day of selling flowers. She had made twenty rirso. One rirso for each flower. However, she had left one, one for her brother.
Avon walked into her house and found her father at the dinner table. His head and arms laid on the table, fists clenched as if he were angry.
A stench that made Avon sick filled her nose. She had been encountering it more and more often lately. Her father was drunk. A whisky bottle, nearly empty, was next to him.
She was beginning to hate this part of him. He was rude and abusive. As an excuse, he said he was too sad to work, too grief stricken. But she knew her father. He would work no matter how much grief he felt. It was all an excuse to drink his worries away.
Everything she had experienced over the last few months had hardened her. People in the town said she acted several years older than she was, and it was a fact. She would see other fourteen year olds playing in fields, eating apple sauce made by their mothers, however, she was at home, comforting her family while she suffered silent heartbreak.
She walked up the stairs, to her little brothers room. Avon opened the door and the sound of sobbing spilled out. Her brother was leaning against the wall, knees on his chest. He was crying into the folds of his shirt.
"Bourne, what happened?" Avon asked, in a caring tone she only ever used for her brother.
"F-f-father," he stuttered. "Father was talking to me, w-when he said we should leave, me and you. W-w-we look too much like mother."
He continued to sob into the sleeve of his tunic.
"Oh, Bour, you know that father isn't thinking right, he doesn't mean it." But even Avon began to feel tears welling in her eyes, fighting to fall down her cheek.
She walked over to her little brother and hugged him. Her tears fell onto Bourne's shoulder and began to soak his shirt. Avon felt her brother's sadness and fear in that moment, as if his emotions were travelling from his mind to hers. They sat there for a few minutes, feeling comfort in each others embrace.
"Why do you call me Bour?" He asked.
Avon froze and answered, "Bour sounds like boar, doesn't it."
Bourne nodded, agreeing.
"Well, every time I call you Bour I call you brave and strong, just like a wild boar."
She tickled his cheek and he smiled.
"Am I really that brave and strong?" Bourne asked.
"Of course." She felt the truth in her words. Her brother was the bravest eleven year old she had ever known.

One year later, when Avon began her work as a stable hand, her father turned sober. He locked his whiskey away in the cellar and threw away the key. The family never spoke of what happened, or of how they hurt each other. However, the wounds scarred. Though it was never mentioned, never discussed, it remained in the back of their minds forever.