"I am grateful," the boy—Nicos, his name was Nicos—said to his rescuer. He felt immensely fortunate that the Common Tongue was exactly as described. He would be feeling even more wary had he no means to communicate with the people around him.

The strangers had brought him to the heart of their village, carried by stretcher across the unforgiving sands. He sat now in the shade of a makeshift gazebo, held up by four worn, wooden poles and several stitched-together leather hides. Surrounding him was a small, but lively tribe of humans, who had clearly made their home in this inhospitable place. One sat before him, a grizzled elder, with dark skin and as many wrinkles as there were grains of sand. Another, younger and stronger, lingered at the edge of the gazebo. A bodyguard. Half a dozen more faces, children, filled with curiosity, peeked from around the corners of the many huts surrounding the village center.

Their huts were sturdily built, but collapsible. Nicos could see the heavy indents in the leather canvas around him, where the material was folded and transported. The villager's clothes were primitive, but effective. Heavy cloaks protected them from the sun, but beneath they wore simple breeches and shirts that flapped in the breeze. The elder's bodyguard carried a bone-white spear, carved from some enormous beast, but the boy saw few weapons otherwise.

His own sword rested comfortably against his hip.

"I am grateful," the boy repeated, "but I don't understand."

In his experience, nothing in life was free. People rarely helped each other without cause. Even his own teacher, a being who seemed almost entirely removed from mortal concerns, would not have paid him a second glance if not for her brief friendship with his father. Even then, he had been lucky to catch her interest, and even luckier that she had demanded only obedience in exchange for training.

The boy did not believe that he would be lucky twice. That was not how the world worked.

The elder's brow crinkled. His hair was nothing more than thin wisps, and the lines of wrinkles ran all the way up his scalp. His voice was like gravel, but soft in tone.

"Your condition was not unknown to us." the old man said. "It is a common ailment of our people. We call it the Wandering."

Nicos blinked at elder's misunderstanding. He spoke as if helping the boy had never been in question, merely the method that might need explanation.

Though he was still wary, curiosity drove him to ask, "The Wandering?"

The elder chuckled, though the sound was more like grinding rocks. "Yes, young friend. When your Self is lost in the Memory of something greater." The old man gestured around him. "The Great Desert can overwhelm even the mightiest of our scouts. Need demanded that we develop ways to guide lost minds back home. Your condition was similar enough that the technique worked."

The boy winced at the reminder of what he had done to himself. He bowed at the waist. "Thank you for helping me."

"Your thanks is not required," the elder replied gruffly, waving a dismissive hand. "My assistance merely accelerated the process. The technique does not work on those who could not eventually find themselves. You would have survived your trial, young man, though you'd likely be feeling much worse by the end of it."

"i see." Nicos shifted awkwardly. A question danced at the tip of his tongue, but he held still. He didn't wish to break this fragile truce that he'd somehow attained. The moment he began to question motives, was the moment that these strangers would demand their due.

Nearly a minute passed, with the elder smiling placidly at Nicos. The sounds of the village filled his ears. Laughing children, and moving bodies. Occasional shouts, orders and conversations. He had been brought to the center of this small civilization, and he did not know why.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

He had to know. Nicos licked his lips nervously, then asked, "Why did you save me?"

The elder cocked his head, letting bemused puzzlement seep into his tone. "I did not."

Before the boy could ask, the old man pointed towards his... bodyguard? "He did."

The young man, and he was young, now that Nicos was looking closely—maybe a season or two older than Nicos himself—straightened at the sudden attention. His eyes flitted between the elder and Nicos, and his fingers fidgeted on the haft of his spear.

The elder smiled warmly, but his voice was teasing. "Well, Urz, you heard the question. Why did you save him?"

"Elder," the young man, Urz, replied quickly, "I saved the stranger because—"

"Tell it to him," the elder commanded, flicking his finger at Nicos.

Urz pivoted smoothly, turning to face Nicos. "Death by the desert is the cruelest kind. I would barely wish such on my greatest of enemies, to say nothing of a stranger. I helped you because I wantd you to avoid that fate."

The boy's brow furrowed at the completely ridiculous explanation.

"You owed me nothing," he pointed out.

Urz seemed just as confused. "I bore you no malice."

This was going nowhere. "I could have been a threat to your people," Nicos insisted. "I am a threat, if a minor one, in that I'm using supplies that could go to others." He flailed an arm in exasperation, unsure of why he was arguing so hard against his own salvation. "I'm a direct competitor, in one of the most inhospitable places that I've ever heard of. Letting me die would be understandable. Expected, even! I assumed you would hunt me!"

His words seemed to only further confuse the tribesman.

"That is not our way," the young man replied, shaking his head.

Nicos tried, and failed, to suppress a frustrated groan. He might have found someone even more naive than he had been.

The elder interrupted, chuckling to himself. He raised his hand between them, and Urz immediately fell silent. The old man turned to the boy.

"From where do you hail, Nicos?"

The boy hesitated for but a moment. These strangers had saved him; out of the goodness of their hearts, even, if what Urz said was true (it wasn't; it couldn't be), and he owed them the truth.

"Farathun," Nicos replied. "From across the Gravel Sea."

The reaction this information provoked was... unremarkable. If the elder knew what the Gravel Sea was, if he understood the difficulty of crossing it, he offered no signs. He simply nodded mildly, and asked, "Do you hail from fertile lands?"

Fertile lands?

Nicos considered the Red Barrens. The massive stretches of bare stone and dry earth. The scattered oasis, carefully controlled. Half the wars his father fought in were over supplies.

"Not particularly," he admitted.

"Hm." The elder nodded to himself. "But you expected our people to abandon you to death? To hunt you down like an animal, despite having committed no crime against us?"

The boy winced at the blunt evaluation. "Not necessarily." If a mercenary from Farathun had passed Nicos by in the desert, the sell-sword would have likely tried to extort some kind of fee in exchange for saving the boy's life. And subsequently abandoned him once it was clear that Nicos was broke. It wasn't exactly the moral high ground, but life rarely allowed such a thing.

Despite his denial, the elder seemed to see right through him. The old man smiled sadly.

"The desert is an unforgiving place," he explained. "Trust is needed, even between strangers."

"My home is no paradise," the boy replied. It was something he would have struggled to admit, even to himself, less than a turn ago. "But we make war on strangers. We don't trust them."

The elder placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. "If your people can afford to kill each other, rather than help each other, then perhaps it was a paradise, once. "

Nicos had no counter to that.

"Kindness is its own strength, here," the wrinkled man continued. "Generosity can leave an impact in Memory every bit as strong as blood, or battle."

The boy frowned in consideration. The Keeper's words echoed in his ears. To know his place in the world, and make peace with it. He might be dead, if not for these strangers. If not for their... kindness, and generosity. Perhaps there was something he could learn from them.

His lips ticked upwards. Had this been their plan? His teachers must know of this tribe's existence. Had they assumed he would meet with them? Be helped by them? Nicos wondered just how much of this had been planned by his teacher, and how much was pure chance. Even Eurya must have her limits.

He repeated that statement to himself again, just for reassurance.

Then, he turned to the elder, and bowed.

"Will you tell me about your people?" he asked. "I would like to learn."

The old man smiled.