August DWC 2026
Day 4 - Burden, Support
Immediate follow-up to this story!
((tl:dr summary of previous story: When ten-year-old Veilos witnesses an abusive client attack his mother Maira and Zynia at Rose Manor, he is forced into a desperate confrontation despite being powerless to stop the violence himself. After taking a dagger wound meant for his mother, his fear and rage awaken a frightening form of mind magic, allowing him to command the attacker against his will and ultimately cause his death.))
When they returned from the emergency room, Veilos was quiet. The bandages around his arm were clean, the wound had been treated, and the worst of the pain had been dulled to something manageable. The man's body had been taken away, and the broken room at Rose Manor had been cleaned enough that no evidence of what happened remained. But Veilos could still see everything when he closed his eyes. That man’s hands around his mother’s throat, Zynia with the bat, the dagger entering his arm, and finally the sound of his own voice.
That night, he said nothing. Maira tried to coax a few words from him, asking if he was hungry, if his arm hurt, if he wanted something to drink, but Veilos only shook his head or pointed. When she asked him if he wanted to talk about what happened, his eyes immediately dropped to the floor. He was afraid to open his mouth, afraid that something might happen again if he did.
The silence continued the next morning, and the morning after that. At first, Maira assumed it was shock. Children could become quiet after frightening things, and Veilos had certainly experienced more than enough for one night. But as days turned into weeks, she began to realize this was something different. He had made a choice, however young and frightened he was, and he seemed determined to keep it.
Veilos learned that silence was safe. If he didn't speak, he couldn't tell anyone what to do. He couldn't make someone pick something up, couldn't make them hurt themselves, couldn't make them obey a command they never would have chosen on their own. Whenever someone asked him to speak, his shoulders would tense and his eyes would dart away, as though the very request frightened him. The memory of that night remained painfully vivid, particularly the look on the man's face when he had obeyed. Veilos didn't understand what had happened to him, only that his voice had somehow reached inside another person and taken hold.
Maira adapted first. She learned the meaning behind his gestures and the subtle expressions that crossed his face when he wanted something. She learned that two taps of his fingers against the table meant he wanted something to drink, and that pointing toward the kitchen followed by a glance at her usually meant he was hungry. She stopped asking him to speak unless she absolutely needed to.
The people at Rose Manor adapted too. Nobody treated him as strange, and nobody demanded explanations. He was still Maira's boy, still the little shadow who occasionally wandered through the halls, still the child who sometimes fell asleep in a chair while waiting for his mother to finish working. The silence simply became another part of him.
Zynia was perhaps the easiest about it, she never pressured him at all. She continued talking to him as though he were answering, filling the quiet with gossip, terrible jokes, stories about her clients, complaints about the weather, and whatever else happened to cross her mind. Sometimes she would sit beside him and talk for nearly an hour without receiving a single response, then get up as though they'd had a perfectly normal conversation. Every so often, she would offer him one of her cinnamon candies and Veilos always took it.
The first few months were the hardest. Every time he thought about speaking, his mind returned to that night. Sometimes he would open his mouth and then close it again, frightened by the possibility of what might happen. Once, Maira found him standing in front of the mirror with his lips parted, staring at his own reflection as though he didn't recognize the person who lived behind them.
By the time winter gave way to spring, everyone had stopped asking when he would start talking again. By summer, he had become so accustomed to communicating without words that speaking felt almost foreign. He could go an entire day without making a sound and not even notice.
The question remained.
He thought about it constantly.
Did I kill him?
Sometimes he wondered if the man would have died anyway. Sometimes he wondered whether someone else would have stopped him. Sometimes he wondered whether he could have told him to drop the glass, run away, or simply leave them alone. Other times, he wondered whether he had done exactly what he had needed to do. Those thoughts frightened him most of all. Because if he had done the right thing, what did that mean about the part of him that had been capable of doing it?
Nearly a year passed before Veilos spoke again. It happened on an ordinary night, which somehow made it more significant. There was no emergency, no shouting, no broken glass. The house was quiet with most everyone asleep, and Maira was finishing some work at the kitchen table when she noticed Veilos sitting across from her.
He looked older. He was still a child, still small enough that his feet didn't quite reach the floor from the chair, but there was something harder in his expression now. He had spent an entire year thinking about what he wanted to say. Veilos swallowed, his throat working as though the words themselves had become difficult to push through. His voice came out quiet and rough from disuse. “Mom?”
The single word was so soft that Maira almost thought she had imagined it. Her hand froze above the table. She looked at him, and her expression softened immediately. “I'm here, sweetheart.”
Veilos looked down at his hands. His fingers twisted together in his lap, and he took a slow breath. He had rehearsed these words so many times that he knew exactly what he wanted to ask, but saying them aloud felt dangerous. “When I told him to pick up the glass...he did what I said. When I told him to stab himself...” His eyes lifted briefly toward hers before falling again. “He did that too.”
Veilos took another breath. “Did I kill him?”
The question hung between them. Maira didn't immediately answer. She knew better than to tell him something easy simply because it would make him feel better. He deserved the truth, even if the truth was complicated. She reached across the table and took both of his hands in hers. “You stopped him from killing me. You were hurt and frightened. You saw someone you loved in danger, and you did whatever you could to make it stop.”
Veilos swallowed hard. “But I made him do it.”
“Yes,” Maira admitted quietly. “You did.”
His eyes immediately filled with tears. Maira squeezed his hands. “That doesn't make you a bad person, Veil. It means something happened that none of us understood, and we need to learn what it was. You didn't wake up that morning wanting to hurt someone. You didn't go looking for a reason to use whatever this is.” She touched his cheek, “You were trying to save me.”
“Then we learn how to make sure you don't.”
Veilos stared at her for a long time. “What if I can't?”
“Then you won't figure it out alone.”
His expression finally broke, and he leaned forward until his forehead rested against her shoulder. Maira wrapped both arms around him and held him tightly. She didn't tell him that everything would be fine, because neither of them knew that yet. She simply stayed there, reminding him without words that whatever had happened that night, he wasn't going to have to carry the burden by himself.
A few moments later, there was a soft creak from the doorway. Zynia stood there, having apparently woken when she heard Veilos' voice. She didn't say anything at first. She simply watched the two of them for a moment before quietly crossing the kitchen. She reached into the pocket of her robe and placed a familiar cinnamon candy on the table.
Zynia smiled faintly. “Figured you might need one.”
His eyes remained wet, but the smallest smile appeared on his face. He picked up the candy and turned it over between his fingers. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he quietly unwrapped it. It was only one word that came next, “Thanks.”
Zynia's smile widened and Maira closed her eyes for just a moment, letting herself breathe. After a year of silence, Veilos had found his voice again. This time, he was going to learn how to use it carefully, with people beside him who would support him while he learned.
