Prelude 12 – Shadows in the Night
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Prelude 12 - Shadows in the Night

Dusk drew back whatever stray warmth with the retreat of the day against the eternal forces and fierceness of night, ice, and oblivion. Cestia rubbed her boots and gloves together despite the thickness of her cloak. They waited in a cluttered thicket, rough bushes and dark trees swaying against the renewed gale. Despite the lush green of this land, nightfall would bring a sparkly, dewy frost which crept away soon after sunrise. He expected the Wormwools and Hairnuts retreated into the earth but wondered what the Charmies, especially those like Cast, did when this weather hit.

It wasn’t as fierce beside the river and before the turn north, but even beyond the six months of winter back home, the cold slipped through the cracks of prosperity and growth.

Fortunately, the winds indulged whips and howls just a brief spell before settling into a quieter pace. Pushing through when it was easier, they finally made it back to Rufus and Suray. Both had slipped on dense, tan furs. Nearby, Momo cuddled up to a wood-heated boiler while Sekina used her immense beak to fiddle with a blanket that’d been placed over her.

“Goodness, I knew you wouldn’t get lost, but that was quite a time you took. All by yourselves.”

Suray flicked her eyes between the two of them with a thoughtful frown, but soon wore a calm smile. Rufus brushed down Sekina‘s feathers with a free hand while preparing a feed bag full of fruit and seed for her beak. She trilled affectionately and ate ravenously.

Following an earnest apology from Cestia with her arms folded and tucked inside her cloak, she explained, “It’s my fault. I wanted to climb a tree, and that led to a few encounters.”

Kaye tried to accept some responsibility for the delay, but Cestia assumed full ownership. Suray dipped her head with a tight, faint smile. “Sounds like you had a decent time. I was just concerned about whether you could navigate back here in the dark, if it took you even longer. Be warned, if you’re out there, I will relentlessly hunt you down and drag you back to safety. No matter...what manner I find you in.”

They both nodded solemnly with their cloaks drawn close for warmth. Glancing skyward, Suray explained, “There’s a touch of a storm rolling in overnight. Might catch a few flakes. Rufus volunteered his lodgings for the two of you, but I have a better idea. To the east, not a long walk fortunately, there’s an encampment of seasonal travelers and the occasional, lost Daring. They can provide company for the night. I know you’d prefer to bed inside the castle walls. You’ll get there soon enough. Come along, while we still have light to guide us. When we arrive, I’ll see to it that your crafting work is fully appreciated and rewarded.”

Soon, Sekina was laden with supplies and Momo made some motions of preparation while flashing a look of concentrated, steadfast determination. The bags given to the Charmie were not featherweights. Still, it managed to bound freely.

The clearing they took through the woods merged into a trail not far from the train route earlier. While walking, Momo was at the lead with Cestia and Suray walking together as a pair. Despite her actions earlier, Cestia didn’t seem to intimidate the modest Charmie. Kaye wondered if its glee from carrying things overwhelmed any predatory aura it might’ve sensed. In the rear trio, Sekina continued to eat while Rufus kept her aimed in the right direction. It wasn’t even the men in one group and the women in the other, as oftentimes happened in the longhouse back home. He was simply alone for this trek and Rufus just happened to be beside him while he tended to his mount.

Since his last parent passed, he was intimately aware that this was the default state of things. He would go over to the forest to see Cestia or check parts of the village. She would be around, one place or another. He learned, easier than any academic quandary, never to ask around the old Rastad house. Those were the people Cestia's eldest brother escaped, which she survived for as many years as necessary until Suray gave her an alternative.

Reflecting on all that, Kaye found it difficult to sulk. Suray brought peace to Cestia. And Cestia protected him. But it felt like he was scrambling up a tree several moves behind either of them.

Alone in the forest, with their adventures and hopes, it felt to Kaye like nothing else existed or mattered in this world or any of the others, but the two of them. Then, on the best days, Suray would peer into his eyes, ask him pointed questions, quiz him about this and that, and he would know just what to say. Cestia would chase away the nasty kids. And it would feel like he was blessed. But blessings, like summers, were all too brief.

“Did either of you happen to run into a peculiar young man named Twenlevr out there?” Despite the howls of the wind, the cracking and squishing of Sekina‘s noisy eating, and the depths to which Kaye’s attention receded, Rufus’s modest query sounded in his ears like a declaration from Asgard.

From there, the entire mood of the party shifted, or at least Kaye’s perception of it did. Cestia swung around and walked backwards with the wind layering her cloak to her shoulders and around her head. She encouraged Kaye to recount their story of the smelly man they thought was dead. Perhaps Kaye laughed a little too much to be the best storyteller and his voice wavered like a leaf tangled up in this cold wind, but he appreciated the way the separate halves of the group slowly bent back together. Suray flashed them the occasional, hawkish glance as her ponytail dared not to move, as though held in place not so much by expert ties and bands, but rather by her indomitable will.

Following partial reenactments of their best performances earlier, Suray emphasized the utility of the skill. Alive and looking silly was better than the fate of any self-honored dead. You can’t control how the other realms and the Valkyries judge you. Nor can you consciously curry favor, she warned them. All you can do is fight truly, with all your heart, brains, and spirit for those you must protect and yourself. She also spoke highly of the stand your ground ability, noting that “side quests” such as this often had a great deal of use, no matter how small they may seem when performed. Rufus elaborated that rewards of all sorts often had unseen depths to them.

When it came to the subject of the strange singer, Suray and Rufus not only knew Melody by name and reputation, but were quite flummoxed that neither Cestia nor Kaye had any awareness of her. Suray delved into the details of stories she had told recently and further back which alluded to this woman, adding, “I don’t think she’s any regular nortman. And absolutely doesn’t hail from Mithgard. Though I find her harmless.”

Nothing else of note followed before they arrived at the twinkling glimmer of a large and boisterous encampment.

A lamp-flanked tower of what had to be the bridge they glimpsed earlier pierced a hazy but imposing shape across the darkening skyline. The brutality of the bitter wind waned with each step. An idle, drifting air carrying the traces of the sea placated the ravaging cold. Still, drifting flakes wandered between patches of light, to vanish before touching the ground. Kaye caught one on his outstretched palm with a pinprick of coldness.

They set up their camp towards the center as a burly, animated man with a golden beard wrapped his arms around Rufus and invited “his party” to join in the festivities.

Drinking, singing, along with games and great platters of succulent meat filled one of the large tents. Despite being strangers, each and every nortman welcomed them like brothers and sisters. Kaye felt carried along, as though through a great, human tide, from one bounty to the next. Joining with the singing were a variety of foreign instruments.

They also chanced upon a phonograph playing traditional music. This model, however, had to be manually operated by a team of small rodents toiling under the guidance of a Charmie, undulating to the harmony. Despite clinging to questions about this, Kaye resolved that explanations were best set aside, as he filled his belly with all that was offered to him from pastries to steaming soups.

Later, with the ease of digestion and the warmth of a roaring fire beside their tents for the night, Kaye and Cestia sat together and listened to one of Suray‘s old stories with new flourishes. It was a tale of the dragon realm, Kowloon. The best nortmen analogy she could stretch for was Vanaheimr, since the dragon races lived in the early ages of the gods and walked with giants like Yaemir.

Before properly unraveling her tale, Suray inspected and approved of their charmets with Rufus’s grinning concordance and the reward of some Zel to complete their quest properly.

<QUEST COMPLETE.>

Her story detailed a humble farmer with a mighty ox who could not only plow magnificent fields but also cleave away entire mountainsides till just narrow towers of grassy spires remained. From up in the cosmos, a celestial white dragon, the beautiful daughter of the queen, seeking the excitement of the lands below, ventured where her mother ordered her not to go. While the lands of Kowloon were filled with so many royal wonders, the princess found herself drawn to the farmer. They fell in love.

But her mother forbade it. A humble farmer of the dragon land, with muddy scales and a dull luster to his horns, was not worthy of the princess or any of the royal, celestial dragons. Despite the queen’s relentless efforts to take her daughter back to the throne of the highest celestial sphere, every night the princess escaped. To everyone below, she was the faint, wandering star in the east. Meanwhile, the farmer, brokenhearted but determined, rode his ox so swiftly that it bounded into the sky.

It plowed a field of stars, creating the rivers, ebbs, and shoals seen when it was truly dark. Suray added that even further north from here, the edges of worlds bound through the Bifrost revealed their seams and colorful ribbons whirling in broad bands across the night sky. They were the celestial sparks from the farmer's plow, cleaving the cosmos in search of the dragon princess. And the dips and flows of that wandering star meant that she was still searching too.

Kaye didn’t mind Suray’s stories of lovers and romance, but she tended to save them for when Kearny had to walk home and Cestia remained behind. He wound up hearing them anyway in the treetops, recounted by Cestia with frantic enthusiasm but critical details breathlessly overlooked.

He didn’t mind any of her stories. Suray’s attention to detail infused them with unique beauty. Even Cestia‘s compressed second accounts still captured fragments of the original impression. The problem was him, as it always was.

His mind had flashes of talent. Though his father showed him something only once or twice, he could repeat it in any situation readily and eagerly. Hitches and ties were so automatic that they filtered like embedded ghosts into his dreams, like words spoken with and resonating through his body. But, when it came to all these stories beside the fire, it felt like a magic beyond him. Even thinking back on the details of the creatures he’d read about, not too long ago, he failed to resurrect even the barest details of what those pages said. The images at least lingered in his head. He just wished that he wasn’t quite so dumb in all the ways that hurt for an adventurer over a farmer. Maybe, just maybe, what Cestia had mentioned earlier about smiths and mechanics might be something he could fight through to be good at, with enough work. It was something to consider...

After thanking Suray for the story, he peered across the fire at everyone coming and going from the main area to their various camps. Few really stuck out until he chanced upon the sight of a man and a woman politely slipping past each other in the same way he and Cestia shared the branches of the same tree.

Only between the two of them it seemed more like a ballet of narrowly avoiding one another than advancing when the other had cleared a path. He tried not to read too much into a glimpse of body language, although Suray long ago told him not to dismiss his hunches instinctually, since in reflection later he often did much better with her questions than in the forceful pressure focus of the moment.

The woman didn’t appear many winters older than Cestia or him. Her clothes had a regal presence with a dominating shade of sharp red leading to fancy gloves of pristine white. Blonde hair similar to yet completely unlike Suray’s circled around her head like bands of sunlight being whisked together, especially with the tremors of the dampened, but persistent, wind. The ties further down her back seemed less decorative and more to keep a bundle of precious hay from flying away. If unrestrained, he expected it might overwhelm her legs and dash upon the grass like an immense broom brought to life. Frilly, ivory stockings rose up to her thighs.

She didn’t seem prepared for the weather, but she gave no sign of shivering discomfort, at least from the cold. Watching her, he could sense a great weight upon her shoulders, not the kind that would slow her down but the sort that might make her hurry from others. The young man called after her, but her name was lost in an upwelling of a dozen waves of laughter in the night.

She wore a golden, arching sunwheel like a brooch at her neck. Matching ones ran along the silver band at her waist and over the sides of her dress’s puffy shoulders. But, as the firelight caught her outfit, more were revealed like runes of protection. A matching, crimson ribbon held steady atop her dancing hair.

From his angle, they reminded him of the solid-red fox ears he had to chase out of the hen house. But the comparison was low and insulting to such a dignified presence, so he snuffed out the thought like a flame.

The young man behind her was decked out in what had to be royal armor, with intricate pieces also adorned with golden symbols of protection. Just trying to imagine how he fit into it boggled Kaye’s mind. A jutting, red cape, also unbothered by the wind, made Kaye think of a strange expansion and inversion of the lady's ribbon.

By better light, Kaye judged that his dome of hair, short compared to his own but perhaps a little long for someone of his appearance, had traces of silver and maybe a faded lavender to temper the stark white. Despite all their adornments and regal qualities, Kaye felt a reenactment of his childhood, with Cestia leading and he trying to catch up, only with a different cast and proper costumes. Naturally, he innately suspected his read was far from the mark.

As the pair slipped from their glimmer of light into a patch of shadow, Kaye noticed there was a third. They stood almost amidst the nearby camp, but not close enough to catch the flicker of their fire. The figure, looming while not appearing especially tall, wore a dark, gray cloak just a shade off black. The mouth of their hood rippled and shook with the harsh breeze at their back but revealed no face underneath.

Despite being turned slightly to the side, Kaye sensed that whoever was beneath the cloak was watching him. He turned to check with Suray, but she and Cestia were locked in a flowing conversation about job classes which covered Kaye's thoughts like walking into a brisk, sudden waterfall. Turning back, the cloaked figure was gone with only a few, disturbed flakes of snow as any sign they were ever there.

Heaving a long, tired breath, Kaye resolved that such mysteries could wait on the morning, at least, if they needed to be answered at all. As he promised himself earlier, he was the first to get ready for bed so Cestia would not beat him to an early rise and dash inside the gates of the castle while he was still pulling on his trousers. But the inside of the tent, with all his blankets pulled close, afforded him no easy slumber. Still, while his mind raced like a turbulent stream, sleep found him.

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