There is this peculiar feeling when you do something, and at the exact moment you can’t cancel what you are doing that you realize how bad your decision was.
Time stopped as Tyros was suspended in the air. His mind was racing, he truly understood what regret meant as fear overcame him. He felt so stupid.
Time resumed at once and everything accelerated. His body split the water as one of his shoes left his feet. Before he could try to swim upward, the force of the waterfall dragged him deeper. The boy started panicking a bit but managed to get further away from the waterfall even if he was still at the bottom of the river. His blood was all he could hear as he felt his forces diminished. He was not a good swimmer but mimicking dogs, he gave all he had left to go back up.
When he finally managed to emerge, he felt so weak that he simply used a well known strategy: the plank.
He laid there on the river and after a few seconds of coughing and catching his breath, he smiled. He did it, he managed to survive. Well he was famished, he never felt so weak in his life but he survived. Well if the people living around there were not bad guys at least.
He decided to start swimming slowly, being sure not to over exhaust himself. He could see a wooden pier advancing in the river. When he managed to attach himself to one of the wooden pillars he decided to try his luck by screaming for help. When he didn’t have any answer he kept going along the pier, and successfully joined the bank of the river. As the boy was painfully trying to get up the river’s bank, he saw a man walking his way. The man had a pruner in his hands and didn’t look very friendly.
The man pointed Tyros with his pruner and started shouting like a mad man:
“I told you kids not to come play by the river, I could make you thrown in jail. You know it’s forbidden to come in noble lands uninvited !”
The gardener grabbed the kid by the back of his clothes and pulled him over. As he was dragging the kid toward the huge mansion built on those lands, he kept rambling:
“That’s it, I'll send you to the guard and they’ll put you in jail. Look at you, you almost died here, y’all will get it in your head that it's not a place for you.”
“Wait, sir, I n..”
“There is no wait boy, that’s over for you”
Tyros was stuttering, trying to explain himself but when the man cut him one more time, once again, his emotion overwhelmed him. He started crying and asking for help, throwing a tantrum.
One of the doors from the mansion opened and a lady, around forty, fifty years old came out. She had a stern looking face, and looked even scarier than the gardener. She wore a white cloth on her hair, matching the one on her shoulders. Her dress was blue and an white apron was tied around her waist.
“What are you doing with that poor boy Edward”
Nothing daunted, the gardener replied:
“I’ll take him to the guards, they’ll take good care of him
- You dumb old man can’t you see that the boy his scared and beaten, he has scratches everywhere, look at his clothes, full of blood”
While speaking she slapped the gardener's wrist to make him let go of the boy. She looked at the boy in the eyes and started reassuring him:
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“It’s alright, boy, you are safe. What happened to...”
She did a double take as she looked at his eyes and resumed speaking, but this time she addressed the gardener:
“Look at his eyes Edward, they are amber
- Yeah so what ? you are took kind with him Evette
- Oh gods forgive him, he is dumber than the plants he trims” Said Evette while rolling her eyes to the sky. “Come boy we’ll patch you up, and you’ll tell us your story”.
Tyros didn’t say a word during this whole exchange, he managed to calm himself and even if the maid didn’t look particularly comforting, it was still better than the old gardener.
She led him toward a door, at the back of the mansion, there was a wooden shed nearby, full of logs. He entered a kitchen that was the size of his house, back in the village. There was a huge pot in the middle, gently boiling and perfuming the room with a bewitching smell. He didn’t even notice that there were other people in the room.
The maid noticed the look in the kid's eyes and asked one of the cooks to fetch him a bowl of broth. After asking him to wash his hands in a barrel of water, she watched him eat his fill while thinking about how a boy with amber eyes ended up in their backyard.
She handed the boy a mug of water and told him to eat slowly or it could make him sick.
After a few minutes she started to ask him some questions:
“So, tell me boy, what is your name ?
- I am Tyros, from Sunhaven
- Sunhaven you say, and where is that ?
- It’s a village, in the Plateau, we got attacked so we had to flee..
The kid's eyes turned somber as he was answering the last question.
- You got attacked ? The Plateau got attacked ? How did you end up here in Waedor ?
- I don’t know… They tried to capture me and hurt my mom, then I ran and fled in the mountains. I ended up getting out by the waterfall” he moved his head in the general direction of the waterfall as he spoke. pausing for a moment before he started eating again.
Evette understood quickly that it would be hard to have more precise information from the kid, first she would let him rest and feel safe… Tomorrow she would have to send him toward the city, Hillshire. If there was an attack on the Plateau the kid could get some crucial information to Lord Grudal.
“It’s alright Tyros, we’ll find your mom. You will rest here tonight and tomorrow we’ll go see people that can help you find her.”
The boy looked her in the eyes and nodded. Tyros didn’t know what to think of that statement, but he would take all the help he could.
Evette assigned a maid to guide him around the mansion, it was mid afternoon so there would be some time for him to rest before heading to the city.
Tyros got himself busy during that afternoon. The change of pace with the last days was weird, but welcomed. He started by washing and tending to his bruises and cuts. He was healthier than he thought.
Later he went with a maid and they managed to fetch some clothes, as what was left of his clothes were ragged. They found what he needed even if it was a bit large for him.
He spent the rest of his time speaking with the people inhabiting the mansion and understood that they were only working here. The owner of the estate was a noble, Lord Grudal. He was ruling the city nearby, and from what Tyros understood that’s where the soldiers from Waedor protecting his village came from. This was good news for Tyros and without even meeting the man he already had a good opinion of him. Nevertheless he didn’t manage to collect much information about the man's personality, that’s why he decided to not be too hopeful yet.
The room in which he was invited to spend the night was bigger than his house. He was starting to see a pattern. His mom would have liked the decoration here. There was a lot of wooden furniture with nice details, probably made by master sculptors. There also was a lot of art, more than in their house, on each wall there were paintings, some of them about battles, and some about divine entities.
Finally he went to sleep on the best mattress he had ever seen, not like he had seen many, but still. His head melted in the pillow, like it was made for him. All the physical conditions were reunited for the best night of his life and yet sleep didn’t come quickly. Now that he was safe, he had time to worry about others. He hoped that his mom would have been rescued and that the villagers managed to make it to Waedor, so he could meet them all in the coming days. And when slumber finally came, there was a lonely tear making its way on the boy’s cheek.