“Did anything happen in your home yesterday?” I ask the parents.

I don’t want to go out aimlessly searching. I will extract as much information as I can, analyze it, then develop my hypothesis for his disappearance. If my hypothesis is wrong, I will test another one.

“Well… my husband and I fought at the end of the night.” the wife speaks up.

“...tell me about it.”

“Well, at the autumn’s end festival Berenger gave his fiance flowers on one knee in front of the entire village. When I got back I complained that he never does gestures like that for me anymore, after that it spiraled until we were insulting each other and shouting.”

“It really was a stupid fight… could he have run away because of that?”

Hm…

If children ran from home every time their parents fought, the amber alert system would fail within a day. There should be more to it, though I won’t completely dismiss the idea.

“Walk me through the entire day before this festival, and then tell me about the festival.”

“Well, it was a totally normal day. We had breakfast in the morning. My husband went to his shop to work on some bed frames that were ordered. I stayed behind to tend to the home. Toby and Suri went to play around the village. They returned together at noon and we went to the festival. We ate and drank the night away, before coming home and having our fight. Then, night fell, and Toby wasn’t there in the morning.”

“Hm… that’s all?”

“It is.”

Lost in thought, I forget to say farewells as I walk away. Seraphina does so for me, and the three of us walk away from the center of the village. Olivia stays behind and talks to some of the halfling women.

“Bohdi, do you know where I can find this ‘Suri’ girl?”

“You don’t suspect her to be some criminal do you?”

“No, but she may have more clues.”

“Hmph, I’ll lead you to her.”

What was that ‘hmph’ for?? Well, I suppose there are plenty of reasons to ‘hmph’ at me. Not that I like being ‘hmphed’ at.

“Say, Bohdi, what’s with this village?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s as if it was built as a shelter to hide from the rest of the world.”

“...human, do you not know of the lost races?”

“No?”

I haven’t heard of this before. He looks both exacerbated with my incompetence, and a little pained to talk about it. Still, he informs me of these ‘lost races’.

“Are you familiar with the Great Elven-Human War?”

“Yeah, it resulted in human domination of the continent, and the creation of the ‘Order of the Bear.’”

“That is right, Humans came to complete control of the continent, aside from the Elven Forests, and the Elves developed a method to protect themselves from the violent and aggressive humans. With this in mind, tell me, what do you think happened to the other races?”

“...”

I can picture it in my mind, but it’s hard to say it out loud. Especially to the descendants of those very people.

“Hunted down, driven to near extinction, all of them.” He finished his thought.

“Why did the humans do this?”

“Superstition. Crop failures, plagues, floods, and other acts of nature. When these happen, humans look to God, as well as those who might have angered him. It is quite easy to point towards other races who worship other Gods, and have them bear the blame.”

“Horrible things would happen to them, in response, they inflict pain upon others. Coming up with any flimsy excuse to do so.”

“Exactly, you humans claim to be creatures of peace and order, but when the dice is rolled in the favor of nature, you turn to barbarians and murderers, I have seen it with my own eyes.”

Gohdi touches his neck, where a large scar from a sword wound lay. I imagine such a wound would have left him on the verge of death. I don’t blame him for his contempt for humans, but that leaves me with a question.

“Why did you bring me here then? Into the heart of your village, where I, a human, can do great harm?”

“The life of a child is on the line.”

“I understand… come to think of it, I met a halfling back in the Aenes kingdom, he made… my friend a sword.”

“A halfling blacksmith… could it be Horace??”

“Yes, that was his name I believe.”

“Ah, so that moron is still alive. I thought he died long ago, after he ran away saying he would win glory in the human wars as a mercenary. At least he returned to his true craft in the end.”

“Will he be safe there?”

“I don’t know, but considering the extent to which our numbers have thinned, I doubt he will be the target for scapegoating anytime soon.” He finished speaking, and spoke up again shortly after, “We are here.”

It was another obscured home. In between two large trees, the branches grew on top of the roof. Bohdi knocks on the door and when she comes out, we have her sit down on a nearby log.

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Before I can start my questioning, the little girl bursts out into tears.

Huh?

What should I do?

I’ve never had to comfort a crying child before.

Uh…

“There there.” Seraphina steps up and strokes her hair while trying to calm her down. “Everything will be alright, I promise.”

“B-but Toby is gone!”

“We will find him, that’s why we are here.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.” She is now holding the girl against her chest, continuing to stroke her hair. “But we need your help. Can you answer a few questions for me?”

“Ok.”

With this, Seraphina turns her attention to me, signaling that it is my turn now. I owe her one, I doubt I would have been able to calm the child so quickly if I were on my own.

“Walk me through yesterday,” I tell her.

“We met after breakfast. We played behind my house until lunchtime. Just before we left, he told me he had something important to say, but after stalling for a while, he said ‘never mind’ and we continued. I was confused but decided to go on like normal. We went to the festival, and when it was over he said ‘I’m going to do something’ and left.”

“He left immediately after the festival? He didn’t go home with his family first?”

“No, he didn’t go home that night.”

Then he couldn’t have seen his parents fight. Not that I really suspected that of being the cause. Hm… perhaps.

“Was he bright red in the face and fidgeting when he was trying to say ‘something important’?”

“Um… yes?”

“Thank you.”

I finish with that. There is one more person I want to talk to.

“Bohdi, bring me to this ‘Berenger’ fellow.”

“Why do you need to speak to him?”

“To test a hypothesis.”

Theoretically, if Toby really did leave the village alone for that reason, he would have needed someone to point him in that direction.

The walk toward Berenger’s home is a short one. He is just a minute or two away.

“You are looking for Toby… you don’t think I did anything do you?”

“Should I?”

“No! No! Of course not!”

“Tell me, did he ask you anything last night at the end of the festival?”

“Yes he did, but he only asked me where I found the flowers for my fiance.”

“I see, where are the flowers?”

“Outside of the north entrance and 2 kilometers to the east… you don’t think he went there did he?”

I don’t bother responding to him. How could he have not immediately thought to search there? Oh well, all we can do now is go and find him.

“Seraphina, you stay here in the village, Bohdi, I assume you are coming with me?”

“You’re right.” He responds.

“Sounds good.” Seraphina acknowledges my request.

Bohdi and I move out of the village and toward this flower field quickly. I don’t want to waste a single second. We both run at the same pace, I slow myself down a bit since I am following him. He knows this area much better.

It is snowing heavily now. Before we were shielded by the mountains on all sides, but now we are in the open. It has been a while since I’ve been this cold. The cold wind is nipping at my skin, and individual flakes crash into my eyes, making me flinch.

It is hard to breathe like this. Every inhale makes my chest tense up.

We run like this for 10 minutes until we reach where the flower field once was. It is completely covered in white. There were probably only a few flowers still alive at this time of year yesterday, now, all have withered.

Any tracks are long covered by now, I have to speculate. While I do this, Bohdi shouts out to the boy. I doubt anything can be heard over the violent wind, but it’s worth an effort.

While my eyes glance over the canvas at my feet, I see a hole in the ground. There is a steep slope leading up to it. That could be extremely easy to fall into, I should check in there.

“Bohdi! Over here!” I call out to him. We need to stick together at all times.

We descend into the hole together. Sure enough, at the bottom was a small halfling boy. He is pale, with freezing cold skin. While I am checking him for a pulse, he wakes up. His eyes are cloudy, and his movements are slow, but he is alive.

“I’m going to start a fire, we have to warm him up before we even think about moving him.”

“I’ll get wood.”

Bohdi climbs out of the hole, it's only a few meters deep. I start a magic fire close enough to warm him, but not close enough to burn him.

While he is warming up I check his leg, it is broken. If it weren’t for this, he likely could have gotten out of this hole.

Bohdi returns with the wood and I start a proper fire. From here, we only need to wait for him to recover.

“Hey, kid… thanks.” He tells me.

“There’s no need to thank me.” I’m just doing what I should.

“Don’t be silly. Where many humans have hunted us, you saved one of our children. I owe you.”

“Thank you.”

“Why are you thanking me?”

“It’s just… after hurting so many people and failing to save others. You gave me an opportunity to do something good. You trusted me, even though I’m… this. So thank you.”

“...staying lost in your past is a nasty trap, kid. I’ve seen many old men wither away, lost in the fantasies, or failures, of their youth, and do nothing with the time in the present. Move forward.”

“I’ll try.”

“What do you want to do? You are going to the magic academy, but I doubt you need the training.”

“...don’t laugh.”

“I won’t, at my age I don’t have the strength to laugh like I used to,”

“I want to be a better person… and then someday… I want to be a hero.”

“A hero eh?” he paused for a moment, “A fine endeavor.”

Ah, I’m glad he didn’t laugh.

“Is he warm enough?” he asks.

I check, and while he is not where I would want him to be, he is probably stable enough for transport. He doesn’t have any frostbite, or visual signs of permanent damage, but it doesn’t hurt to get him someone with more medical knowledge soon.

“Yeah, I’ll carry him, let's get him back at our top pace.”

“Alright.”

We run back to the village at the same pace we came at. This time the wind is to our back, making the run much easier.

We get to the home of the village elder, where both Seraphina and Olivia are staying. After dropping off the boy in a room with the elder for treatment, I return to the two of them.

“So he’s going to be ok?” Seraphina asks.

“Yeah, he’ll be alright.”

“That’s good to hear.”

I tell them about the run there, finding him, and bringing him back. They both praise me for saving him. I am kind of glad I look a little cool in front of them for once.

We eat dinner with the village chief, who offers to let us stay in her living room. We accept it’s snowing out, and we should spend as much time in shelters as we can.

Now the night has passed, and we must return to the trail. Olivia and Seraphina say their farewells to the friends they made in this village. There is only one man I need to talk to.

“How is the boy doing?” I ask him

“He is still sleeping, but he’ll be back to normal in no time.”

“That is good.”

There is a bit of a pause. He takes the initiative and tells me,

“In the future, tell me about your heroic tales, alright?”

“...I’ll do that.”

That's all we need to say to each other. With one final nod, we leave the village and return to the trail.