Foraine ( Eng)

Chapitre 1 : Kyrie Eleison

Prologue

Snow slowly opened his eyes and stifled a yawn while chasing the few white locks that hid his face. He straightened up and silently watched Leaf's broad silhouette dimly lit by the flickering light of the lamp he had himself failed to turn off before falling asleep. As often when he was reading the cards, Leaf had picked up his long black hair into a high ponytail that swung gently as he moved his head. As far as he could recall, Snow had always found Leaf gorgeous with his golden complexion, broad back, jet black hair and laughter as hot as an August sun. He had one of those vibrant and sensual beauties which even his blind, fixed eyes could not alter.

"It's ok, go back to sleep," Leaf said, interrupting the course of Snow's thoughts.

Snow was not even surprised anymore at the ability Leaf had to know what was going on around him despite his handicap.

Leaf took a new card and placed it next to the three previous ones before frowning. Snow chased the thick blanket regretfully and stood up, shivering as he put on Leaf's shirt, that was way too big for him anyway. He buttoned it awkwardly, his fingers still numb with sleep.

"God's house ... again," Leaf whispered as Snow approached the table.

Snow sat quietly on the floor next to Leaf's chair and put his head on his knees. Leaf smiled tenderly before pressing his fingers into the white hair to gently massage Snow's head. The latter strove to fight the soft torpor that the combined effects of fatigue and the caresses of Leaf caused in him.

"Sleep," Leaf ordered in a low voice.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Ironically I was born on a December evening, or at least that was what Annabella inferred when she found me screaming and whining on the side of the road, entangled in coarse wool swaddling clothes. Later she had told me countless times that far from being disgusted by the manifest depigmentation of my skin and my hair which certainly explained my presence on this deserted road, she had found me beautiful and fragile as a doll made of porcelain and silk. She picked me up and named Snow. Abandoned by the real world, I therefore entered the marvelous, burlesque and terrifying universe of fairgrounds so as never to leave it again. Annabella had raised me and gave me all the love a child could hope for. She had never considered me anything but her son. She stroked my white hair lovingly, telling me how much she loved me and every night she read me a story before going to work. Annabella was an exotic dancer, which, I only found out much later, was a kind of periphrase for a prostitute. I had never been ashamed of my mother, and I accepted her with as much simplicity as she had shown to my red eyes and my diaphanous skin. Moreover, among carny people, nothing was ever really monstrous or deformed and no one was ever too strange not to find a place in the community, quite the contrary. Marie, the bearded woman rubbed shoulders with the Siamese Leah and Lotta, who visited Carol the hermaphrodite, sometimes a mysterious and enchanting man, sometimes a sweet and seductive woman, such was my daily life and I was fully satisfied with it.
It soon appeared that I seemed to have a gift with the animals that calmed down almost instantaneously upon my arrival and as soon as I was seven years old I began working at the stables, taking care of the horses, feeding them, brushing them and tending to them when they were injured during one of the performances. I enjoyed spending time with animals, perhaps because I had the greatest difficulty communicating with humans. If most of the carnies treated me with kindness this was certainly not the case of the people of the towns in which we settled down and even less of their children. I was so often mocked, pointed, and treated as a monster that I was barely able to speak to anyone other than Mother and Leaf.
Leaf was five years older than me, and he had watched over me from a very young age. In spite of his blindness it was often he who came between me and those who wanted to hurt me. Underestimating Leaf was very often a serious mistake, first because he was extremely large and muscular, but mostly because he was much more dangerous than its handicap led people to think. What Leaf did not see he heard, felt or sensed with a precision that often disconcerted me. I admired and respected him infinitely, and that is why, when teenage hood came, we candidly explored a whole new facet of our relationship. We were not really a couple; I had never thought that it belonged to me any more than I had the feeling of belonging to him. Our relationship was of a stranger nature : simple and complex all together. Leaf was my soul-mate, my brother, my lover, and my best friend, he understood me without any words and never judged me. Leaf never judged anyone. He was such a part of my world that imagining my life without him was as unthinkable as life without air. We never wonder about the air we breathe, it's there, it's a given: we know it to be necessary but without paying too much attention to it. Leaf was like my air: stable, necessary and at the same time taken for granted.