Adventures in Wonderland (Part One)

Her words stung more than the cold that had settled in over the past week. Winter had come and come fierce with claws and fangs. The cold bit at his skin and there was no snow to warm his heart. While the cold could be countered with layers, he had no armor against the things she said.

"You're just a boy!" She spat. "Just an immature boy! A boy, not a man!"

The words dug deep into a wound that had been there for years. He had never really admitted it, not even to himself, but this injury had to remain hidden. There was no fixing it, it was a terminal wound that would destroy him. And her words had stung it back into reality.

She was only joking. Pestering and sparring like they always did, but today she chose to hit hard. He would never know if she meant for it to hurt like that, but the pain made it impossible for him to fight back.

So he sank.

He sank into a fantasy where apathy was called invincibility. It was a weak facade, to be sure, not nearly enough to prevent the damage from her words, but it numbed the pain enough to where he could pretend everything was okay. So he kept pretending.

But he got lost in the fantasy. The black and white world was simple enough. It required little but took everything. The deformed creatures there seemed to be up to something when they called him "King," but they called him king and that was enough. He continued to rule there for years.