Time: approximately 10 mins
Word Count: 278
Comments: done in school.

Darian was puzzling out a riddle. He had read it again and again for the past hour. It still made no sense. Finally, giving up, he put the book down and stood up from the couch he was sitting on. Darian looked at the time. It told him that the cook would sound the dinner bell in few minutes. He sighed. Darian thought that he might as well go looking for Calen. The slave was bound to be somewhere.

Calen intrigued him. The way he was captured was not particularly a mystery as the slave master had told him how he came by Calen. But his history. There was something that Darian was still puzzling about. No matter how much he tried to get the slave to tell him about it, Calen always found some other way to skirt around the subject. It was as if he didn't want to remember it.

Something must have happened for him to avoid it like Calen did. And Darian wanted to get to the bottom of it. He could see that every single day, it wore Calen down like some invisible weight that only he could see.

Darian sighed. Oh, well. Here was another try at it. He left his study and went to the gardens. More often than not, the slave was bound to be found in the gardens. Sure enough he was there, sitting on the edge of the fountain and looking at the fish, feeding them bread crumbs which they took greedily.

The lord plotted out his line of questions and prepared to bombard the slave with them. With a wry smile, he went to talk with him.