Dionysus was exiled to the family stable which was away from the village. There was no house next to the stable so he had to live among ships and goats taking care of himself on his own. Nobody cared that he was still a child but for Catherine. She kept on fighting to bring him home against people's beliefs. People say that there is nothing stronger than a mother's love. They are wrong. Neither the village nor the family was willing to bring a daemon child back.

Dionysus never stepped a foot at school. He wasn't allowed to learn how to write, read and learn how to count. He was destined to take care of the animals, to wander at the fields among them where they could feed, milk them and make cheese. He was allowed to show up to the village only to sell that cheese. His family kept all the money he was making and he had to return back to the stable without questioning their decisions.

Since he couldn't walk straight because of his shorter, left foot, he was easily recognizable from afar by everyone. The same whisper was mumbled behind his back "the one marked by a daemon" day after day, year after year. Most people would have given up, let alone a child. Dionysus was determined to go on living though.

He started picking up rubbles, putting one next to the other trying to count the ships and the goats of his herd. He started learning how to count at the fields one little, broken stone at a time. One day he entered the shop he was selling the cheese and demanded payment for the first time. He didn't ask for money. He asked for a blue writing book, similar to the ones kids took to school and a pencil.

"You don't need that at the stable" the man answered him.

"I want it." Dionysus said. "From now on you will be writing down exactly what I bring you to sell and its worth."

He started carrying his precious possession everywhere. Each sale he made was written down in full details with the date, the amount of cheese he had provided and the amount of money his family was going to get paid for it. He was holding the blue notebook on his one hand and with the other hand he was counting the gravels that he had collected.

While elsewhere devil hides in details at that stable, he has hiding at a pile of shattered rocks. At a slave farmers' land, he knew that he would never become equal to his brothers because of his leg. Yet he had no intention  of living his entire life at the stable.

"If you can't be the fish's head, take care of not ending up being its tail." was one of his life's mantras he used to say to his ancestors decades later.

Despite his crippled leg he wasn't cut to become his family's tail. He was illiterate and he couldn't work at the fields either. What was left for him at that Death's swamp? A profession that only a wicked mind could master, especially at a time that a human life had no value. He would become a merchant like no other ever seen at that suffocating swamp.