Quiet Mornings
Rosemary
It was the morning after the day Karra had left.
She spied Lepius sitting up in bed, and from her position above the treetops she could also see what he was looking at: a mess of squares and domes in every dull shade of grey.
The city, Terstein.
It was perhaps a thirty-minute walk from the forest boundary, and then another one and a half hours to the Grove Hospes. A trip of two hours in total. If she squinted, she would be able to make out the moving dots upon the walls and ramparts, and they were plenty. Humans. Behind those walls, smoke billowed from within the city.
It was a breathing, living, grey beast.
The sight of it all made her so tired. Her feet begged her back to her bed, to lie down and just look up at the ceiling, and do nothing else. She wanted that, too. But everything had slowed down since Karra had left yesterday, and now there were too many gaps in time where the memories could resurface and pull her down. She had to keep moving.
With a pitter patter of feet, she emerged with breakfast. “Awake, Lepius?”
He hummed and nodded, still staring outside. She set the tray down, and upon it were two servings of pounded berries, wild tubers boiled and cut, and leaves to wrap them all up in bite-sized pieces. Set to the side was a branch of dried thyme for seasoning.
“How are you feeling, my dear?”
“Hmm. Better. But…”
He didn’t need to say the rest. She pulled him up into her, and he hugged onto her torso for a little bit, accepting the mana that she poured into him. She hoped it was enough to warm him up a little.
“Now, will you get up, or will I have to force you up?”
“I’m still not feeling the best… but,” he tried a smile, “I’ll get up today.”
“Good. I want you picking berries. But now… breakfast!”
She presented the tray with a flourish, a meal for two.
It almost felt right to eat together in the mornings, to fill the void with the chatter once bursting for five. She pulled up a chair next to him. And after she sat down, she studied his face first, for on the tip of her lips was a question she wasn’t sure would be best spoken aloud.
What are you thinking about, my sapling?
She remembered yesterday, when she had tried to nag and prod him to get him up, and it went too far. Up until this point, he had never been pushed this far, away from his life, loves, their family… and the thought of being the one push him over the edge again made her stomach churn.
She had to prove herself now.
So she swallowed the question, smiled, and started making leaf wraps for him. The motion drew her focus away from his face and the things he found so fascinating outside, and that silly question that didn’t belong in the morning. When she finished one, she found herself moving with less lethargy. Pull apart the leaf, put in the toppings, wrap it up. Easy work.
She added a sprinkle of the dried herb, the way he liked it.
“Ah, thank you. There’s no need, Rose, I can make them too.”
He bit down on them, but gave none of his usual compliments as he did when he ate. He just chewed, like it was tasteless bark. She opened her mouth to ask what was wrong, to ask whether she had forgotten one of the ingredients, but it opened a little too wide, for before she knew it, it had happened.
The question had charged out of her.
Eldertrees curse me.
“What are you thinking about?”
For a moment Lepius knotted his eyebrows and his hands stopped picking out the ingredients. He had filled half his leaves with tubers, and his fingers had pressed them into a thick paste, along with the berries. Then, he bit his lower lip. Rosemary looked away, knowing that the worst thing would be that he would not answer at all, and the morning would continue its unbroken spell as they both put it behind them.
“Just… tired, I guess.”
That answer, so… quintessentially Lepius, but slightly marked over, made her laugh. The room brightened, and the tenseness of a one-sided conversation flew out of the window, towards the trees, and the city beyond it.
She had his undivided attention now, and he asked, “What are you so happy about?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired too, I suppose.”
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Bendeit
He stood tall facing the wind, back straight, smoothing his moustache as he listened to the commuters chatter.
The city was in riot.
“Did you see that two nights ago?”
“Aye, I did. Was shocked no one was talking ‘bout it. That’s not a normal tree, that one. Went swinging here and there like a mad willow. And nary a gust of wind that night!”
“Woke me up and got my babe in all a fright. What do you think the garrison is going to do about it?”
“Do they care? All they do is eat taxpayer money up anyways.”
From isolated whispers the day before, it had come far. The town’s attention was always in flux, but today it shifted to that topic: the news from two nights ago. And indeed, the case of the rampaging, wild tree witnessed by hundreds to have ‘swung down and up’ was very much new, and very much topical.
So it was that within a day and night, the Mayor’s daughter was talking about it to her father, and the tree went from countryside curiosity to a matter of state within days of its conception.
The Lesser House of Priests even brought it up in their Sessions.
They had asked for Terstein’s military expert, and there he was. Him, Sergeant Bendeit, was present as always, with his impressive moustache smoothened and standing front and centre.
He asked, “What have our scouts reported?”
A balding man said, “The scouts sent this morning have confirmed there is no active movement, nor aggression. However, they did not remain long. From the report issued, they concluded that ‘it’s just a big tree, and curvy.’”
Around a wooden table he saw dour faces shuffling papers and competing to see who could look the most serious. At the head of it all was the true victor, and pinned on his navy-blue robes was a gold fist enclosed within a circle: the insignia of the Mayor. The man was Mayor Feinman. Rows upon rows overlooking the first floor sat white-clad priests of the Deity, all with their eyes fixed on the man. The House awaited judgement.
Finally, the Mayor sighed and massaged his temple.
“Can we have the Scoutmaster subpoenaed?”
A hand came crashing down, rattling the papers, “This is obviously a declaration of war from Carrhan, to be so bold as to just waddle up to our borders and place an aggressive watchtower like so.”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Then a voice responded, one from above in the overlooking rows, “Carrhan holds no specialist in nature mana, buffoon! Do you think there are trees in the glaciers up there?”
Scattered arguments followed. “How do we even know if the townspeople saw what they saw? It is indeed big, but big trees exist.”
“How do you-”
“Enough.”
There was some more muttering, but when the Mayor stood, he silenced even the most persistent. He cleared his throat, and said, “This tree, or watchtower, or beast from the depths… it doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that it stands at that point. The centre of the Carralan Forest. Where our borders meet the Noshad Plains and the Kingdom of Carrhan. A triple border point. This could be a potential diplomatic disaster if not treated delicately.”
Everyone checked their maps and looked out of the windows in the room. One could make out the highest branches of the tree-thing from here, and the windows were high.
The balding man spoke again, and his voice drew eyes back. He punctuated every syllable, like a man sharpening his sword for war, “It must’ve been a great strategist, to have chosen the spot so perfectly. It is unbelievable, but it is true that it is on the very junction of all three borders. Down to the square meter. I shudder to think of the designs in plan. We must prepare for a confrontation.”
It took another hour to finally come to an agreement, and it appeased no one. They sent a reprimand to the scouts. They deployed half the Garrison in Terstein, the elite Sergeant Bendeit commanding them, to the anomalous tree in the distance, and ordered for a retreat if necessary.
As they marched out, the whispers grew louder, and the gossip more adventurous.
“Perhaps it’s a dungeon lord,” some said. “Perhaps it’s home to great flesh-eating monsters.”
Bendeit strode forward, ears open but resolved in his duty. Behind him thundered the command the Lesser House gave him, half the garrison, numbering to five hundred Swordsworn. They all received a brief report on the tree-monster.
The Terstein Adventurer’s Branch likewise received the report.
The Terstein Magehouse didn’t have enough mages for a mana-memo over such distance, so a messenger departed for the capital city of the Feidsten Deity, Lyndeira.
In his satchel was a sealed letter calling for reinforcements.
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Lepius
He had just managed to claw his way out of bed.
By himself.
The same anchors still dragged him down, but Rosemary’s voice buoyed him up, and with it he found he had more energy. Just a little, enough to get to his feet. Then, Rosemary, as per his instructions yesterday, strode about like a duchess and barked out commands, and so he found himself in the forest, given a task to pick berries.
He dug his feet into the soil with every step, hunched over. For a while, he just walked, not really putting focus into anything but the next step in front, then the next.
But then Rosemary’s warning rang in his ears.
“If you don’t come back with a full basket, you’re getting whooped!”
And so when he spotted a clump of bushes, he dove further into the forest. The berries he picked and dropped into a basket. Then, repeat. He went from bush to bush, further away with every step, and as he did, he felt less warmth from Rosemary’s mana radiating from the Hospes.
When he leant down to pick up a handful from a low-hanging vine, he realized the wind bit him more than it normally did. He shivered. It was cold now, without Rosemary’s mana.
And the thoughts he tried pushing away as best he could saw him, shivering and naked.
They pounced on him.
He thought about Karra, about the crazy bovine girl two nights ago, and wondered if he would ever see her again. She had mentioned a mother, and a whole herd of bovines. Perhaps she would never return to him, and after that thought crossed his mind, the weights chained to his limbs sunk further down.
He fell to his knees and slumped over, the darkness opening its mouth again, ready to feed on him.
It told him what it did yesterday.
“The world is empty. Everyone will leave you, even Rosemary. You thought Andura would stay with you forever, and Karra, and look – they’ve already left.”
His hands dug into the soil as he clenched his jaw. Yesterday, he had thrown up, fell asleep, drowned in his Imagos realm… and he thought he had gotten stronger, that he would be able to resist the darkness.
But it was here, and it was too powerful. Nothing could hold it back. It was stupid, really, to imagine he could beat it back with one talk with Rosemary.
The Voice seized on the chance.
“Oh, how weak and pathetic you are. The world is empty and cruel, you idiot. Now, come. I can make you stronger, if you just follow what I say.”
He tried to fight it back, but he couldn’t bring himself to his words. They never even appeared in his mind.
Please… I just need a word, to fight back… why can’t I even think of one…
And then his angel arrived.
Rosemary came barrelling though the shrubbery. She launched herself at him, and they were both bowled to the ground.
“You silly … ugh! I couldn’t find you anywhere nearby, I got so worried! You went so far out!”
Her entrance threw his mind into a swirl. For a moment, he laid there, still and unable to move his limbs in any direction, but then his mind connected the dots: Rosemary is here. His arms locked around her.
The other senses returned to him.
He was aware of a dampness on his shirt and Rosemary’s shaking body, so he rubbed the spot where the bark on her forehead met the leaves of her hair. They lay enveloped in the grass and the shade. The Voice faded away at the sight of her, all shining with mana and the Hospes, and as she blew a little air across him with every one of her breaths, he found himself with a bit more energy.
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about stuff. It hurt my brain, so I just kept walking. I’m sorry.”
She gave more of her sniffling as a response and smacked his arm.
Rosemary… and he remembered the conversation they had when they first built the Hospes.
With Rosemary looking so different than before, slender where she was once stout, tall where she was once short, she was… strange to him, and that thought itself was a stranger. Her face was too foggy in his mind. Right now, there were no walls of bark to separate them, no hastily composed face to stop him from speaking.
It was time.
He had insulted her yesterday, ordered her around like a maid, but she was more than that to him. More than what he simply remembered of her, the words and memories they shared.
There was nothing else in the world other than Rosemary.
If he didn’t do this, he might as well have returned to bed and fallen back into that spiral to the darkness – not wanting to do anything, yet so terribly bored, all the while listening to the Voice tell him how empty and dark the world was. And everything, so grey… so tasteless…
He almost threw up at that thought, and forced himself to speak.
“Rosemary… we need to talk.”
Her voice was quiet against his chest. “Hmm? About what?”
“Everything.”
And she was still for a while, but he marched onwards as to not let her respond, because he wanted to wipe off the fog on the glass and see through, to her, with nothing to blur her face. He wanted to see Rosemary beyond the shared jests. And where this urgency all came from he didn’t know, but he did feel a subtle touch of his mana.
Healing.
He extracted himself from that death grip and led her by hand to the stream nearby. It ran under the grove, which she had demanded of him, and it left in a torrent someplace else. There was a boulder for them to sit upon and swing their legs.
“Let’s start talking, I guess,” and then he cleared his throat, for that was an awkward start, “um… uh… how about… do you like fish?”
His question was so absurdly silly and out of nowhere, that she barked a laugh before clapping a hand over her mouth. Under his crinkling eyes, he could see the blush forming.
“I never knew you had such a set of lungs on you, Rose!”
She swatted him and dipped her feet in. “Ah, let me see. I like silverback trout and … turtles.”
“Turtles are not fish.”
She raised a hand, and he leaned away. This was good. He would pounce on moments like these, moments where she could not stand high and above him and be untouchable. And he’d learn the things she loved, the things she hated, and change the world so, because she was Rosemary, and she deserved it all.
They talked and basked in that running water.
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Bendeit
As the last of men lined up in front of the forest, Sergeant Bendeit stared across at the perfect uniformity in even rows.
His left eye was twitching as the five hundred strong battalion he had trained personally all managed to meet his very exacting standard: a straight back, armour perfectly strapped and shining, and not a single scabbard loose. Bless the Deity, his tear ducts were acting up again.
“Sergeant Bendeit, something wrong with your eyes, sir?”
Ah, of course. There was always that one jokester who thought he was funny.
“Swordsworn Deitfreid!” His boots rattled the earth as he made his way to the troublemaker, “what do you see wrong with my eyes, Swordsworn?”
The young lad was a smirking little thing, and he had an answer ready, “Sir, this Swordsworn was just admiring your pretty eyes, sir!”
Now there was giggling.
Swordsworn Deitfreid.
This idiot was too young, but he was a hard worker, and Bendeit respected that. And as he was young, Bendeit would often give him a little less work to do than the others, maybe one less lap or five less pushups. But now, as all children did, this child was mistaking his treatment of him for fondness, and how his head swelled up.
Not to worry, there was a cure for that. Time to bring it back down to size.
Swordsworn Deitfreid began to shrink under his silence, as if concluding that the seconds before they were to be deployed in a forest, against a potential Classless Monster, was maybe not to right time to make jokes.
“Sir, this-”
Bendeit slammed his forehead into his, and even though the kid was the one with a helmet, he collapsed like a burlap sack. Ah, that felt better. Already his mind was clearing, and some part of him wished he had not done so, staring at the groaning heap on the floor. He didn’t really mean any disrespect, after all.
But this was no playground, and he was no kindergarten teacher to be shoved over.
“Get up, and fall in line, Swordsworn.”
His impeccable moustache hadn’t even twitched a hair out of position.
Bendeit was a man of rules. He would carry out what needed to be done, squealing trainees or not, simply because the world revolved around what people did because they had to do. Guardsman had to patrol, priests had to administer law, commonfolk had to work, and the entire functioning of society depended on one thing: duty.
That mana swirled around him, grey as the walls of Terstein.
In no time his battalion was orderly as usual, no giggling, no witty comments. No one dared speak.
He turned to the forest and strode in with rigid posture. Awaiting somewhere deep inside was an unimaginable beast, and it was no guarantee he might survive this time and return to his wife and children the way he entered. Yet he forged onwards, for duty.
“March!”