AUGUST HIDE
Erod had become so proficient at hiding in peoples blind spots that he’d forgotten how to be seen.
It was a special art, one that needed no particular power to speak of; which is to say, anyone could be trained in the performance. Mastery of The Hide as it was named required decades of dedication to form & practice. True Hide masters were dubbed Days of August & spent most days in seclusion. But he was different. A prodigy by all rights. He could Hide as well as any Day of August by age nine & entered The Hide Ministry at age eleven.
Its white marble halls were near liquid in their consistency, but solid to the touch, an architectural technique used to reinforce the principle of fluidity of movement paired evenly with the strength of foundation.
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The old monks said to him, "The eye is constantly moving & with it, so too moves the blind spot. One must be fluid enough to stay within is area, but grounded enough to know when moving isnt necessary." They taught him that the truest Days of August had mastered the art of both stillness & fluidity. But like any youth, Erod was impatient with their teachings. He felt he’d surpassed them in most ways, even redefined many of their techniques into simpler, more efficient forms.
One day he just, left. Bathed in a haze of hubris & arrogance, Erod abandoned the halls of the Hide Ministry, believing his destiny lay at the end of a trail far passed the horizons edge.
It had only been a month since his departure from the ministry when he attempted his largest hide, slipping into the blind spots of over 500 people. Thats when it happened. Erods foot got caught going over a curb & he tripped, falling over & cracking his head on the cement. He was only out for a minute or so, but enough damage had been done to scramble his mind up. When he passed out he was in the Hide. Now, he couldn’t figure out how to escape it. For months he tried, even traveling back to the ministry for aid, but not even his old teachers could see him.
He’d leaned how to become a ghost. Now he had to learn how to live like one.
