Shame

The next week and a half passed without incident. Ruiz would wake up, don his poncho, eat breakfast, put on his sombrero and do some chores. What those chores were depended on the day. Early on, his tasks were easy to perform, such as making dinner, carrying lightweight things, or assisting in the heavy lifting that one of the others was taking the brunt of. As time went on and his injuries healed, he started taking more and more work onto his shoulders.

He was finding a fair amount of comfort in being depended on once more. They would ask him to do something, and he'd be right there, ready to go. What's more, he could feel and see the progress being made on the crops, in no small part thanks to him. It felt good to be working again.

As he was once more making his way up to his bedroom after dinner, less to go to bed early than to just be alone with his thoughts, he was cut off by Sadie, who blocked off his ascent.

"Not tonight, Mr. Ruiz," she scolded, waggling her hoof. "I know you value your privacy, and I respect that, but we can't have you hiding from us all the time. All this solitude isn't good for you. You need some non-work interaction."

Ruiz pulled back and looked to the living room. Jed was sitting in his chair, rereading a letter he'd shared with the family yesterday, Ruiz excluded. Maria was reading a very worn novella, one she had read hundreds of times and could almost recite. Mint was crocheting a series of circles, essentially just hooking them together for now, though she would likely do something when they were all finished. Next to where Sadie usually sat, one of Jed's shirts had a hole torn in the shoulder, and she was going to repair it.

He moved into the room and sat down, unsure of what exactly he would do. Typically, he would sit on the edge of the bed, reflect silently, remind himself of his past mistakes to keep from repeating them, and stare at the floor. He supposed that was still a possibility, he would just have to skip a certain reflection.

After a few minutes of staring at the floor in front of him in complete silence, Maria pushed her book across the table towards him. "If you need something to occupy your time, I'd be happy to loan you one of my books."

Ruiz shook his head and pushed it right back. "I can't take away your book, señorita. What would you read?"

"I have other books," she said, picking one off a shelf. "You looked bored. I wanted to give you something to do."

Ruiz lowered his head. "I'm not much of a reader, actually. I can do it, but it's not something I'm good at." He looked at the cover. It was not a novella, as he had thought, but rather, a collection of short stories and flash fiction. Of Mares and Monsters: An Array of Brief Fictional Tales of Beauties and Beasts.

"Not a big fan of the written word, huh?"

"In my household, we didn't have a lot of books. We read roadsigns and catalogues when we had to go shopping, but books weren't our preferred method of telling stories."

"What was?" asked Sadie, looking up from her stitching. "You don't talk about yourself much, so there's not a lot for us to go on."

"He probably doesn't want to talk about his family, Sadie," sighed Jed. "That's why he spends so much time alone in his room."

"We can't come to know you any better if you don't tell us about yourself," Sadie replied to Ruiz' nod of confirmation. "We want to know more about you, since you're living here, and if we start asking questions, we could very easily hit a nerve unintentionally. We don't want to hurt you by accident, and certainly not on purpose, but if you don't talk to us, we're going to say something innocuous that you might take offense to. Help us find that boundary so we don't cross it by mistake."

After a short pause, Ruiz nodded. "If that is your wish, señora, then I shall tell you. That is what we did; we told stories. The oral tradition of swapping stories has a good side to it, in that they can be modified easily to fit their need. In the process, a great many stories have lost their origins, but that's okay, so long as something comes along to fill the gap left behind. It is a very fluid method."

"So, the story changes every time you tell it?" asked Maria. "Or are there just multiple versions?"

"Both are true, señorita. In one case, a story of an imp that made a deal with a prince offered him an out if the prince could guess the imp's name. While the name can easily be changed from Flibby Wotzits to Spiderlegs, and all manner of other things to keep the listeners from shouting out the correct guess, the end result after the prince guesses correctly can be retold. For a more mature audience, the imp may rip himself to shreds or stomp the ground hard enough to shatter himself, but for younger children, he may just storm off, or stomp so hard that his claws end up stuck in the floor. Even the moral can change, as it may be about games of chance, or it may be on how one should never go blabbing a secret, or not making deals with devilish imps. I've heard it so many ways over the years that I have no idea what the original story was anymore.

"And that's what happens when it's passed down in such a way. It's a system based entirely on your memory, so if you can't remember how it goes, or how it's told, the whole thing can be lost. In such a way, I suppose I envy those who have the wherewithal to read the stories to their siblings and children and step-children."

"I suppose that makes sense," nodded Maria. "Books cost money, and if you have thirteen goats in one house, that's not the first luxury you would go for."

"What story do you know best?" asked Mint. "If you've heard a lot of them, can you share one?"

With another slow nod, Ruiz resituated himself. If he had to pick a story he knew well...