Proserpina: The Long Wait

Lucien

The days blended into each other, the greyness around them changing to white during the mid-morning, only to become a bleak grey at night.

One morning, a few days later, he caught the old man alone. On seeing him, the old fellow tried to quicken his pace but Lucien was swifter and lunging forward from his imprisonment near the bed, he grabbed the man’s neck.

‘How did I get here?’ he snarled, his cold eyes showing his willingness to kill if need be.

Quavering, the thin man sank to the ground. He barely weighed more than a few pounds, thought Lucien. the old crone kept him underfed but Lucien could not feel any pity towards him. he gripped the man’s thin hair, tilting his head back forcefully.

‘Speak, ‘he ordered cruelly and kicked the man savagely.

*

Wheezing in pain, the old man gave him a detailed account of how they had found him.

It had snowed lightly the previous night, he said and the river was in spate. Lucien’s body had washed up on the river bank near sundown when the