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As he wakes, Erik's alertness is pressed to several items. The environment around them has not changed, which means that he is still confined to the ridiculous clothing that makes do for the time and place. He takes note of several other facts -- the home around him is still changed, the metre and tone of conversation in the house -- and then remembers the date. It is the first day of Passover, Ta'anit B'khorim, and he is the firstborn to a family that is not here to celebrate with him.
As quickly as he can, he dresses in fabrics light enough to get him to the main area of the populace, far enough away from the house and its people to be able to walk and think on what he will do next. Were he a child, the answer is clear. He would fast until Seder and be grateful for his mother's warm touch to his cheek, for Jakob's attempt at making do with the meagre amount of food they could put together. Fasting for atonement, for gratitude, for mourning all took a different toll on him when they brought him to the camps. Starvation no longer became an option and it was as though the choice of his religion was robbed from him alongside so many other simple human dignities and that was before Schmidt's games even came into being. It made his stomach turn to even think of those days, but with the memories so clear and sharp thanks to whatever this island does to them, it is the camps that he thinks about on this first day of Passover.
By the time he has reached the main building -- the heart of the island -- he has come no closer to a conclusion. The sun reaches higher in the sky and he thinks, simply, of what his mother would wish for him to do. Unbidden, he imagines Charles would suggest that she would like nothing more for him to find peace, but he had dismissed that notion so long ago when he realized that no matter how many Nazi lives he took, it would never give him his family back. There is so much more to you...
No. He is not allowing himself to edge closer to those happy memories, so lost to him -- so foreign to him. Now, he stands here and must make his choice. Perhaps if he delays it long enough, it will be made for him.
As quickly as he can, he dresses in fabrics light enough to get him to the main area of the populace, far enough away from the house and its people to be able to walk and think on what he will do next. Were he a child, the answer is clear. He would fast until Seder and be grateful for his mother's warm touch to his cheek, for Jakob's attempt at making do with the meagre amount of food they could put together. Fasting for atonement, for gratitude, for mourning all took a different toll on him when they brought him to the camps. Starvation no longer became an option and it was as though the choice of his religion was robbed from him alongside so many other simple human dignities and that was before Schmidt's games even came into being. It made his stomach turn to even think of those days, but with the memories so clear and sharp thanks to whatever this island does to them, it is the camps that he thinks about on this first day of Passover.
By the time he has reached the main building -- the heart of the island -- he has come no closer to a conclusion. The sun reaches higher in the sky and he thinks, simply, of what his mother would wish for him to do. Unbidden, he imagines Charles would suggest that she would like nothing more for him to find peace, but he had dismissed that notion so long ago when he realized that no matter how many Nazi lives he took, it would never give him his family back. There is so much more to you...
No. He is not allowing himself to edge closer to those happy memories, so lost to him -- so foreign to him. Now, he stands here and must make his choice. Perhaps if he delays it long enough, it will be made for him.
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