Baldred's whims

There were many beauties to Baldred’s home mansion. The overall refinement, the curved staircases around every corner, which were copied and pasted throughout the many floors of the mansion, the spiky towers resembling swollen black thorns, and the occasional beautifully-patterned pillar in the fencing. There were satiated brunette mares and stallions walking out and about the pastures that were stretching beyond the mansion’s view. Pecan pie and chunky meat are being prepared somewhere down the corridors. It’s around 1903. The weather is mysterious.

The family who owned the mansion enjoyed owning it in every way. Well, the majority of them. The Fuchs family, originally from the germanic east, planted a large family tree in the depths of western England. They brought their mammoth prospects with themselves in the shape of highborn horses and gold bullions. 

Baldred didn’t love what was given to him, unlike his tense mother or his siblings.

He was an adolescent progeny of the Fuchs. He had long contorted limbs, parched yet thick raven hair, and eyes the color of warm hazelnut oil. His eyelids were almost stressed together, but he would squint away through the day. He had a smooth blanket of tight olive skin. 

He was the most lively of the family, as others would have described him. As a child, he always had immaturely-creative ideas and countless wishes which would turn on and off every few weeks. One of his scintillas per fortnight drained a fraction of the Fuchs’ chattels.

As he grew older, he grew slightly less ambitious and focused his desires on productivity. Baldred had at that point tried out many, many free-time activities and skills.

Life was, well, getting empty. Like a jar made of ephermal crystals, it was embellished by his parents’ riches and the fancy polite words he had exchanged during banquets in Liverpool. 

A few years prior, he attended a special event that changed the way he looked at things. 

It was no opulent dinner with other noblemen, nor was it another banquet in Liverpool. 

It was sports. 

Baldred had been raised to be classy, calm, and collected. The only sports he was expected to do was hunting, with a pack of akin beagles.

There was something about tracking the competitors in the Olympic Games that gave the young Fuchs a feeling of rawness, energy, power, challenge. It felt like a pouch of grainy kinetic sand that flushed in and out of his being. He was amazed; he finally knew that something was filling him out. 

Paris was where he first witnessed long jumping. It was crisp outside. The clouds floating above the Louvre looked greasy and opaque. 

Baldred had felt almost doltish staring into the clouds and thinking back about the sports, with his heartbeat becoming slightly overtaxed. 

He felt as if he had fallen in love with a prepossessing lassie. Butterflies were swarming in his stomach like pockets of thick laughing gas.

Looking at his family, he saw the blatant not caring. They were just passengers who attended the Olympics for reputation, vogue, and social upkeep. He walked behind everybody, tripping over grayishly-azure pebbles. It felt so right and so wrong because deep down he knew that his interests were an on/off thing.

When he was back home, he took some time for himself. He trained under the creamy yellow moon. It felt so forbidden knowing that it would be just another ambition that his parents would disapprove of, or even overlook. He couldn’t even risk getting seen by his pair of sisters and a pair of brothers. It wouldn’t be the first time that they would stand as plaintiffs against him, in front of mother and father. 

He leaped along the lines in the sand, far beyond the mansion walls. Every time his body left into the mid air it was like he was flying, or even capering. The night sky surpassing him never looked larger and more wonderful. The astral tapestry was laid out perfectly. At late hours he became thin Prancer in a snow globe which was lost somewhere in the English meadows with dark shaved grass. He was reverse-diving into infinity without laws of physics. He could only stumble upon some dormant limitations, which were crystallized underground. He knew better than to wake sleeping dogs under the soles of his feet. 

He kept consistency and firmness for a number of years, but Baldred could only get to a certain point before his beginner knowledge cut him short. It was time to take the next step. 

Autumn came by. The numerous servants were penetrating rotten apples with rakes and gathering the fallen leaves. Baldred was gathering bits and bits of courage to confront his parents about his mysterious hobby. 

They did, indeed, notice a new factor in his life. His mother and sisters thought that it was perhaps because of a woman. It wouldn’t be very unlikely of a teenager to sneak out into the dense gloom to meet their lust. 

On winter’s eve, he attempted at a serious conversation with the ménage. Olive and pale faces were looking at him with judgment and ignorance. The mansion felt significantly dim that day. The boy who cried wolf felt an instant breakage the moment they started the discussion. The most bitter was his oldest brother who bit straight into his soft spots.

It all ended up turning into another life lesson which illustrated how picking a different career direction would be like causing a deep dent in a dogma. 

Baldred Fuchs felt even emptier than he did before. They drained him of the sands of his soul.

Summers ticked by and time branched itself out. 

Sometimes, while dreaming, Baldred would get images of the old creamy moon behind his home. Yet he never dared to go face it. He showed his skin to the sky again. Out of many, many of Baldred’s ideas, the family only ever accepted one. 

Some say he became a dramatic drunk, but some, some know that his last whim was leaving all his riches in the hands of his kin. He only took a horse. 

The Fuchs weren't hesitant to leave him out. 

As he wandered across England and Wales he could only have grown. He could have leaped further and further. 

Baldred Fuchs, born in 1883, was never remembered as a playwright. He was never known as a shipbuilder, actor, nor even a competitive long jumper. When he realized his family’s crippling, his only option was to leap forward and look for the next big thing in life before he missed the train.