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Hazel wasn’t one of those lucky ones. He didn’t have everything he wanted, didn’t live in a nice, big house filled to the brim with stuff he could show off to others. No, his family only had the basics, could only afford the cheapest. They were poor, and his parents not only had him to care for but their parents to support and think of too. It made him realise something - that life wasn’t pretty, wasn’t easy, wasn’t nice like in those fairytales his parents told him. Life was hard, with its ups and downs and difficulties with no easy solutions. It was painful, and to live meant to fight and make a stand, to carve your own place in the world; you couldn’t just wait for the best to be dropped into your lap, you had to work for it yourself.[break][break]

So he did - as a child, he already knew what ‘responsibility’ meant, doing what he could to pay back his parents for taking care of him. He did odd jobs when he was free, helped with chores and errands around the house. He did whatever was possible to make life easier for his family, to make sure he wasn’t a burden. He even stole when he couldn’t find an odd job to do, or when they didn’t pay much. After all, to him, if they didn’t notice…then well it wasn’t his problem, now was it?[break][break]

Hazel grew up like this, with blurred lines between what was thought to be ‘right’ and what was thought to be ‘wrong’, concepts he could never wrap his head around. But life…life was as good as it could be, so he never saw a need to change his ways. As long as it suited him, then that thing would be ‘right’, and all else ‘wrong’. It was one of the many reasons that drove him to join the coven Silvertongue later in life, aside from the obvious need to elevate his family's living standards.