Being with Olivia had made Willow feel guilty. She had always been the friend people came to when they needed support and when her oldest friend had needed her most, she had failed her. True, she had plenty on her mind, but that was no excuse not to be there fully for the women who had no family left. It would only add to the guilt to moan about her family when Olivia had none.

She didn't much want to go home, so stopped in on the Betrayers. She'd always enjoyed their lively ways, exciting compared to the bland, repetitive life they lived in the city’s day in and day out. Several others were about, mostly near the fire to hear the elders tell the older stories. The Betrayer's were the only peoples who could tell these stories, city-folk would face death for it.

The stark difference between then and now were always something people enjoyed about these stories.

Willow had heard all the old tales of course, but that took nothing from her enjoyment of them and she quietly slipped into a seat beside the baker and his wife. They were just finishing up the tale about man's folly.

Several of the stories told, Richard claimed were family tales, depicting the family history, although Willow was more than sceptical. One such tale was being told now, detailing a hunter tracking down a strange yellow beast with a venomous tail and two heads. Descriptions of things simply didn't exist in the natural world, so how could the stories be true?

Regardless of the fanciful nature, Willow still enjoyed the story, laughing where required and gasping as needed. It was a fun myth, made more interesting by being set in the far-off deserts of the northern realm. Willow had been told it was a land like the beach at the edge of the city, but stretching inward, creating a land where there was no dirt or great abundance of trees and there was very little water. Willow had disregarded this too, how could people survive without dirt and trees and water?

As the tale came to an end, Willow clapped along with the rest of the gathered peoples and waited patiently to see which story would be told next.

She felt her cheeks burn as they announced the tale, mischievous Betrayer eyes on her, waiting for her response. It was a tale about one of the very first Bearers, a dangerous tale to be telling regardless, but Richard had long claimed that this particular Bearer had been born on his farm, that she was his ancestor. Willow just found is a dangerous thing to shout about. If the King got it in his head, he'd have them killed for it.

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What did it matter being proud of such things anyway? Willow always wondered. The Bearers no longer existed, if they had ever existed to begin with, so who even cared about that history?

Once the story started and people were properly distracted, she carefully extracted herself so as to not draw attention. Some of the Betrayer's saw her but she was beyond caring about what they thought.

She found these tales far too dangerous to be retelling. The one before, with the yellow beast was completely unbelievable. Because of this, she had long written off such stories as false, too fantastical to be real and so by proxy many of the other family stories she'd been told as a girl must also be so.

She met up with some childhood friends, Moon Rose, Night Light and Laughs Loud, where they laughed at her retreating from the story. They were readying themselves for a hunt and Willow eagerly retrieved her bow to join them.

Over the years, it had become something of a competition between the four of them, much to the amusement of the adults around them. It doubled as an affront to the Betrayer children, as Willow usually won such competitions. It frustrated them mostly because they relied on the skill for survival and were actually well praised for their proficiency within the group. Willow, in comparison, did not rely quite so heavily on her ability to hunt and so they could never understand how she got so good.

As the sun set, they returned with their kills, Willow remaining the reigning champion and cheerfully lauding it over the others. The Betrayer’s joined her laughter and they deposited the animals.

Willow was sad to leave the warmth, but it grew late and she reluctantly said her goodbyes and made her way across the way toward home.

At the gate's Willow dawdled taking the time to read the old signpost. It had been knocked down, broken, and beaten in the years it had stood but Richard seemed to feel it was a point of pride to keep it standing for as long as the wood would handle the passage of time. The name had long since faded from the board, being known nowadays by the owner’s name, but Willow made out the letters that had contributed to her name: Willow, along with a jumble of other faded impressions. Family legend stated that the name had once been Willow Acres Stretch but no one could ever confirm or deny that now. The records had long since been seized and burned.

Willow was sceptical of the family legends since they included several events that seemed overly fanciful to her, including one owner hunting down and killing some kind of large grey beast with antlers the size of a house. The claim that this farm was the birthplace of the First Eastern Bearer were dangerous at best. Most everyone in town knew that Richard claimed ancestry that way and what if the King went looking for such information?

Fact of the matter was, the Bearers no longer existed, if they had ever existed to begin with, so who even cared about that history lesson and who had ever heard of such a beast with such antlers? Such stories were best safely in the past where they belonged.