That wasn't something you learned to cope with, really. Instead of the slow grind of destitution, he'd had his entire family ripped away from him by a natural disaster. Intellectually, he knew that the other boy didn't find smiling any easier than he did. Maybe he'd had a much more outward roundabout of change than Mikhail ever had, or ever planned to. Maybe he'd gotten it from Addam, or maybe he hadn't. He very much did not like to be cajoled.īut Milton was a cajoler, through and through. He found, soon enough, that he liked doing things on his own terms. Of all the things he didn't want to have happen, ugly strangers burying him in a ditch was probably at the top of the list. He'd only learned because very often the keepers of the house were too drunk and drunkenly contentious to deal with sustenance themselves. It's not often that one thinks to ask an eight-year-old boy to chop the cabbage for supper, indentured servant or not. He was a little statue, moved from place to place wherever it'd be least offensive among the décor - if he deigned to turn his hands up like a little waiter, maybe he'd even be useful. Does it matter if it takes more muscles to frown than to smile if you're so highly trained at the former over the latter?įor all his frailty, he kept the muscles on his face very active, staving down all possible flickers of hope and sadness alike. He'd never had anyone around who smiled much at all, let alone as a consequence of his presence. When he was much younger, smiling was difficult.
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