An Untitled Pastiche of Goodness
an excerpt

I was captured as a slave while I was traveling with my mother and father to the Far East. I did not realize it at the time, but most slaves were not captured, but instead were born into it. But I was captured. I don’t remember it very well, because it happened in the middle of the night. I was probably, oh, twelve or thirteen (it is hard to remember, with the years after my capture blurring together so perfectly due to the things I endured in those early years), and the caravan was going over land in the two week journey from my home to the coast, where we were to board a boat that would take us to my father’s new job in the east. It was going to be a new beginning for us, and I was excited about it.

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“Are you sure you want to go on, Grace? Are you sure you can deal with remembering all this?”

“That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? To get all this stuff out in the open so I can heal, right?”

“You don’t have to tell me everything all at once, Grace. I’m not going anywhere. We can meet again some other day, if you’d rather.”

“No, I want to get it out of the way. I’ve held onto this for a long time. It’s best if I just get it all out.”

“Okay, Grace, if you’re sure. But if you need to stop…”

“I’ll tell you”

"Go on then."
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