OOC Prompt: Cliche: Damned if you do...
At the age of fourteen Thorn was deemed old enough to look after himself in the wide world. Certainly he was old enough to have an idea of exactly why he was cast out, which was more than it was hoped he knew. For some twelve years he had been a stable boy, which was an unglamorous life but there had been steady if not plentiful food and a spot beside the carthorse’s stall in the hay at night. He was never to return upon pain of death, and stones were cast at him to drive the point home. He had been struck by stones or clods of dirt before, but these were thrown in earnest and cut his shoulders, one to the head knocked him briefly to his knees.
Abandoned to a world he had never seen, those first nights he thought it would be worth returning home to die on land he knew, before starvation killed him in a strange place. Eventually he learned to survive, but the curse gnawed at him, ever calling him to return home.