Penwick

There he stands, narrow in the shoulders with disobedient hair and a face that gives to sudden and reckless grins. He’s quick of hand, quicker still with crude remarks in a husked voice, but quickest with his feet. Restless to the bone, he does not sit long in any place and if he does, it’s half turned so he can be off in a blink, though he does not know where to. Peculiar is his lack of artifice, the boy the world sees is the boy entire, without pretense, but the unsleeved heart is easily wounded.

There is caged inside his ribs something wild and unrelenting which makes of him a creature always at peril. His spirit bucks against the walls of flesh and bone, his frame too slight a prison for it, and at times the wild thing swipes its claws or bares its teeth through the cracks. The clay of him is yet soft, but the world is a cruel potter. What he is now is not what he will be, and the day comes soon when the grin will falter and he will find no easy ground beneath his feet.