TaLi63372
Adventurer
The child was left to her own devices as much at this new place as she had at the other place. Her highly intelligent mind was dangerously bored much of the time despite a room full of items intended for her personal comfort. Her caregivers, Gabrielle and Lyra insured she had food, clothing and the necessities, but she lacked any sort of social interaction. There were numerous expensive toys, books and even a parrot that would sometimes mimic her grunts and guttural noises. She had received yuletide gifts from Stevie and Faeryl and while the gifts were lovely and generous, they only alleviated that gnawing boredom for short bursts. The numerous windows tried to desperately hold her attention. The world outside of the building was entertaining until even the wandering creatures and the sun off the crystals became predictable and mundane. Her vollem helped comfort her when distressed and succeeded in postponing the onset of damage from the insipid environment.
Had this child been normal, the signs of her distress would have become obvious. A healthy child would have begun acting out in a desperate need for attention. Children lacking stimulation usually first attempt to get the attention of those around it, usually with destructive, disrespectful or dangerous behaviors. On the menu would be a wide range of behaviors including tantrums, destruction of property, stealing, running away and dangerous pastimes like promiscuity and drugs.
Lucky, or unlucky as some might see it, the abnormal child did none of those things.
She stayed in the house obediently, a perfect houseguest. Most of the time, necessities like food and water were delivered while she was asleep. The few times that she had been awake when a caregiver had stopped by, the item had been given or put into a cabinet. The child would be asked if she needed anything else and she would politely shake her head and they would leave. In her traumatized mind, even the necessities of life, were a privilege and not a right. She wasn’t entitled to anything and as such it wasn’t something to bring up and so the child continued to just simply exist. A slave to the horrific training and her broken mind.
Boredom.
The child began looking for anything to give her stimulation, her mind desperate for any fraction of a sensation. It started with her picking up a bad habit of pacing. She would walk across the wooden floor near the west wall of her room from end to end. She’d get to a wall and she’d turn in place before following that unseen path back until she had to turn in back. The physical sensation of walking helped at first and it became a way to relieve her boredom and burn off excess anxiety. This of course was escalated the longer she stayed isolated. An hour turned into hours which some days was all she did even avoiding food at times. She tried everything she could, but soon even pacing was not stimulating enough. Her mind busied herself as it would count the boards or nails on the floor over and over as she walked. Minute imperfections were next, how many they were and how many steps between them. She tried walking to avoid the cracks, the nails, the imperfections. She tried to avoid everything else, her bare feet targeting each of the specific things in turn or combined rather than walk normally. She was grasping at anything to keep her mind from going asleep. She had done the pacing in all its variety with such regularity and frequency that she had the pattern on that floor memorized. She would close her eyes and have walked each scenario blind, each pulled step and extended one became muscle memory.
She upped the ante in hopes of a large payout. Her brain turned to seeking patterns, mainly with numerals. It started with linear, sequential patterns simply counting high and then counting down as she paced. Her mind providing a goal of fifty, then one hundred, then five hundred. When that grew routine, she changed the counts and started counting by sets such as two or five. She did it forwards and backwards. Her small legs actually gained a bit of lean muscle from the daily pacing as she walked miles of wood floor in her pursuit of relief. She came up with new rules for the numbers that had more than one factor or a variable dependent on a previous factor. In her mind, “0… 1… 1… 2… 3…” She turned and paced back and forth as her mind continued to work the new sequence, “…55… 89… … 144… … 233… “ She managed another crisp turn on the floor as her vollem watched her silently.
The floor grew scuffed with the repetition as she worried the veneer more easily than she could the boredom.
Had this child been normal, the signs of her distress would have become obvious. A healthy child would have begun acting out in a desperate need for attention. Children lacking stimulation usually first attempt to get the attention of those around it, usually with destructive, disrespectful or dangerous behaviors. On the menu would be a wide range of behaviors including tantrums, destruction of property, stealing, running away and dangerous pastimes like promiscuity and drugs.
Lucky, or unlucky as some might see it, the abnormal child did none of those things.
She stayed in the house obediently, a perfect houseguest. Most of the time, necessities like food and water were delivered while she was asleep. The few times that she had been awake when a caregiver had stopped by, the item had been given or put into a cabinet. The child would be asked if she needed anything else and she would politely shake her head and they would leave. In her traumatized mind, even the necessities of life, were a privilege and not a right. She wasn’t entitled to anything and as such it wasn’t something to bring up and so the child continued to just simply exist. A slave to the horrific training and her broken mind.
Boredom.
The child began looking for anything to give her stimulation, her mind desperate for any fraction of a sensation. It started with her picking up a bad habit of pacing. She would walk across the wooden floor near the west wall of her room from end to end. She’d get to a wall and she’d turn in place before following that unseen path back until she had to turn in back. The physical sensation of walking helped at first and it became a way to relieve her boredom and burn off excess anxiety. This of course was escalated the longer she stayed isolated. An hour turned into hours which some days was all she did even avoiding food at times. She tried everything she could, but soon even pacing was not stimulating enough. Her mind busied herself as it would count the boards or nails on the floor over and over as she walked. Minute imperfections were next, how many they were and how many steps between them. She tried walking to avoid the cracks, the nails, the imperfections. She tried to avoid everything else, her bare feet targeting each of the specific things in turn or combined rather than walk normally. She was grasping at anything to keep her mind from going asleep. She had done the pacing in all its variety with such regularity and frequency that she had the pattern on that floor memorized. She would close her eyes and have walked each scenario blind, each pulled step and extended one became muscle memory.
She upped the ante in hopes of a large payout. Her brain turned to seeking patterns, mainly with numerals. It started with linear, sequential patterns simply counting high and then counting down as she paced. Her mind providing a goal of fifty, then one hundred, then five hundred. When that grew routine, she changed the counts and started counting by sets such as two or five. She did it forwards and backwards. Her small legs actually gained a bit of lean muscle from the daily pacing as she walked miles of wood floor in her pursuit of relief. She came up with new rules for the numbers that had more than one factor or a variable dependent on a previous factor. In her mind, “0… 1… 1… 2… 3…” She turned and paced back and forth as her mind continued to work the new sequence, “…55… 89… … 144… … 233… “ She managed another crisp turn on the floor as her vollem watched her silently.
The floor grew scuffed with the repetition as she worried the veneer more easily than she could the boredom.