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OLIVIA sighed, having finished chopping the vegetables. “He saw. I can understand why he’d have questions…”
She put all the vegetables in the pot and simmered them in a chicken bone broth. Once everything was just short of being fully cooked, she pulled the pot from the stove. She planned to make a fresh poached egg to add to the soup for each serving.
Arthur seemed like a tight-lipped man. He worried a lot, had a wounded heart, and seemed to have a strong desire to protect others, but he was so wounded that Olivia tried very hard to keep herself from feeling his emotions.
She put a small pot of water on the stove and brought it to a boil, then used her wooden spatula to swirl it into a vortex before dropping an egg in the center. She watched it for the perfect moment, then lifted it from the water, and she had her well-cooked poached egg.
She took a large, round loaf of bread and cut it into thin slices, which she then set on a grate above the stove, flipping occasionally until they were nice and toasted.
It will turn into a huge mess if I just talk to him about it, won’t it? she thought, feeling a bit glum.
She could feel humans’ and animals’ emotions. For humans, she couldn’t sense the details of what they were feeling and thinking unless she actively reached out to try and read them. Human hearts were usually folded up on themselves in complex ways and shrouded behind layers of defenses. That’s what it felt like to Olivia, anyway.
Animals, on the other hand, were bare and straightforward. Their minds leapt into Olivia’s without her trying. There was nothing she could do about it, it just happened. She believed when she was just a little girl that everyone experienced the same thing, which was why she simply told everyone around her about all the thoughts and emotions that came pouring into her from others. The adults thought she was ill.
She had been the daughter of nobles, but her parents had grown tired of the constant nonsense she talked about. Her mother would hold her in her arms, sobbing, and her father suffered as well. Her grandfather told them over and over to send her to the convent because she would ruin the chances his other grandchildren had of finding a good marriage partner. He and her parents often argued over this, since her parents were against the idea.
But, one day, a woman from the convent came to get Olivia, and the two of them left in a carriage. Olivia felt her parents’ emotions. Her mother was in pain, feeling guilt at abandoning her own child, while her father worried because she’d be taken so far away from them.
Their grief was so powerful that Olivia, only five years old at the time, found it difficult to breathe normally when she was close to them.
“Goodbye, Mother, Father,” she said. Her parents were still sad and suffering as they said goodbye. Olivia’s heart was banging in her chest because of those feelings.
She found her grandfather difficult to interact with because he was always annoyed whenever he looked at her. He was still annoyed by her the entire time he was looking at her, until she disappeared.
As the carriage moved down the road, the woman from the convent kept looking at Olivia, feeling disgust and disdain every time she did. Olivia sat in that small space, the two of them facing each other from either bench, and she despaired at the thought of living with this woman. She wasn’t even old enough to have heard the word “despair.”
A few days into their trip, Olivia was told to exit the carriage for a rest stop. She noticed the horse was looking at her with its wet, dark eyes as it munched on grass. Its mind flowed into hers.
Poor child. Painful place. Children cry. Children sad.
Olivia saw images of children sobbing. It seemed to be something the horse saw often.
“I need to pee,” Olivia called loudly. The woman from the convent looked at her with irritation and pointed to the tall grasses of the field.
Olivia went into the grass and crouched down, then, staying low, moved through the field until she was well away, then she broke into a run.
She ran, and ran, and collapsed to take a break, then ran some more. She ran as long as her legs still moved. She’d never run so much in her life.
Eventually, the sun set. She walked through a forest so dark she couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. Day broke, and she walked again while the sun rose. If she was tired, she’d sleep a little, then walk again once she woke.
Her stomach growled, and her throat was parched. Her body ached all over, but she was so scared of the memories she saw from the horse that she tried as hard as she could to keep going.
But she eventually reached her limit.
I can’t walk anymore…
Her last strength left her while she was still in the middle of the forest.
That’s when they came, the old couple who’d gone out to pick raspberries.
“What’s this? A lost child? Her arms and legs are all banged up.”
“Did she spend the night in the forest? Oh, it must have been so frightening.”
“Why don’t you come home with us, little missy? You must be tired. You don’t even look like you can say much.”
“Yes, let’s get you home and we’ll take care of all these scrapes and give you some nice warm soup.”