In his youth he had his own servants. Every need and want was seen to. When he got up in the morning there was an attendant there ready to dress him in his morning clothes before breakfast was served to him.

If he had a mane there'd also be someone on hand to brush it for him. His hairlessness is a family trait, however, and something his house took pride in. They didn't even bother to hide it in portraits.

His mother knew what he really was. Things like that had happened before, and usually the foal was anonymously dropped off at an orphanage and the affair was conveniently forgotten about. But Guillermo had come out hairless like his half-siblings, and so his mother decided to pass him off as one of their own. She taught him how to comport himself, how to walk and especially how to talk in ways that would not raise suspicion.

"You're acting like a stupid donkey!" she would say, within earshot of her own hoofmaidens, whenever he failed to live up to her behavioral standards.

If only he knew what she was protecting him from—though for the charade to work, he couldn't know.

All that seems like a lifetime ago now.

Now Guillermo is the workhorse for a ship of thieves. His once-smooth features have been weathered by age and adversity. His flesh bears the scars of a hazardous existence. He will never walk with a steady gait again.

It must be hard falling that far, especially since he was cast out through no fault of his own. How much must a man suffer simply because his blood is tainted by a member of the "wrong" species?

That's not to say there weren't other ways he could have handled the transition, however undeserved or traumatic it was. It was a long journey from Aragon to the Antilles and he wasn't just blown by the winds of fate the whole way there.

If only he'd been forced. If only his mother had told him what to do, like she always had before. That would have eased the burden on his conscience at least.

Forget the stories he tells others—the stories he tells himself must be just as elaborate. Perhaps the reason he works very hard and says so little is because he fears that, if he loosened his grip on the reins even slightly, his mind would snap in two.

Now that I think about it, there's a pattern to the sorts of people Victor attaches himself to, isn't there? They're individuals whose personalities are not entirely whole...

Raffle headshot of Guillermo by  hornedhut