Roughly twenty five years from the day that the first Henosyrian soldier stepped onto the golden sands of the Great Desert, where the Krazhnori Tribes lived amongst their lush oases, the regions of the West and South of Hynos were filled with the last of those born under the desert Sun. Ari was one such refugee. Born into a family that decided to fight and die to protect their way of life, Ari was found by a distraught conscript of the Hynos Army and raised by him from the ages of two to three. In his fifteenth year, the war finally ended and the conscripts were called home. The conscript, a man named Jarod, was freed from his service and awarded freedom from his time as a prisoner in exchange for the time he spent as a soldier. Jarod decided to take the boy home with him, but without the support of his small squad of ne’er-do-wells supporting Ari was difficult.

Jarod worked hard to make an honest living, but by Ari’s tenth birthday Jarod was hung from the neck for robbing travelers along one of the byways leading out from the southern trading town he made his home. Ari, now truly alone, spent a year at an orphanage he would often find food and shelter on days when Jarod was gone and unable to provide for him. He tried to find ways to obtain the means to support himself, but hatred for the Krazhnori was still strong enough that no amount of diligence could sway most honest employers. Eventually Ari was hired as an assistant dockworker by a foreign trading company that was run by men and women that didn’t hold the same prejudices of the Henosyrian southerners.

Ari continued to work on the docks, loading and unloading the trading vessels that arrived from the various foreign nations of the continent. With the death of land trade in this region, the seaports began to boom as ways to ensure more dangerous or perishable goods were discovered. At the age of thirteen, while working to ferry food from a larger ship to the port, he came across a woman holding a ceramic urn. She approached him and asked him a question in High Henos, a language he had yet to grasp well enough to converse in. When Ari explained he only spoke the low tongue she nodded and began to explain anew.

“Young man, I request access to your vessel to be brought out to sea in order to lay my husband to rest.” She held up the ceramic urn as she continued, “I would like to pay for the service, and offer you a meal as thanks.”

The woman was in her late twenties and could tell from how she spoke that she seemed to be a lady of high enough standing to rent an actual charter on one of the ships and ferries that docked here. He didn’t want to turn away pay, so he stopped himself from being suspicious and simply unloaded the small boat before allowing her to sit down. Her clothing was a decent attempt at blending in with the more common folk of the docks, but the hints of embroidered blue silk that were occasionally revealed underneath her heavy brown hooded robe gave away her true standing.

Kicking the boat away from the docks, Ari began to row in a contemplative silence. The sounds of the various languages of trade mingled with the caws of gulls and beat of cargo onto ships or wagons. Ari couldn’t help but consider what was happening, he had only a few times spoken with someone who used the High Tongue primarily. Each time was with wealthy traders seeking information on where to find one of the leading representatives of the trading company he worked for. But their way of speaking seemed different from the way the woman did. She spoke with a sort of flowing grace that made her questions seem more like lyrics than words spoken to a boy working the docks.

“You look a bit like him.” Ari looked up to her face and saw that her cheeks were somewhat puffy and red as she continued, using a hand to push some of her golden hair back under her hood. “I suppose that makes sense though, his father was Krazhnori and he always looked more like him than his mother. It is still shocking to see, as I hadn’t laid eyes on any of his fathers kin until I made my way to the town.” She shakily sucked in a breath before beginning once more “My family never supported the marriage. His sister was originally supposed to marry my older brother and come to us. Their relationship seemed to be untenable and an alliance was looking more unfeasible until the night we met.”

Ari slowed down his rowing as they reached the outer regions of the bay, far enough to not hear the speaking but close enough to swim safely to land in an emergency. “How did you meet him?” Ari surprised the woman, but also himself. He never usually got involved with people or spoke unless someone directly told him to. A bittersweet smile graced her face, and she caressed the urn in her arms as the words poured from her mouth.

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“He was arriving to challenge my brother to a duel. Isn’t that ridiculous? Dueling had been outlawed for years, but he said that he had dishonored her too heavily to go unpunished. As he made his announcement to the entire family, he locked eyes on me and stopped suddenly. He approached me and got on one knee and said he would win the duel in my honor, and went to grab my hand to kiss.” Her voice took on a heartfelt tone as she recalled the event to Ari.

“What did you do?” He asked curiously, only hearing of circumstances like this when the wives of the traders would discuss the happenings in their novellas.

“I punched him in the face, and nearly broke my hand.” She laughed joyously, before it transitioned into soft cries and then sobs. Ari just looked at the woman dumbfounded. Having little experience with adult women, much less adult women of higher birth, he assumed that they were either all like this or that the woman was crazy. ‘How did this lead to a marriage?’ he thought to himself while trying to not stare too hard at the sobbing woman. He reached into jacket pocket and went to hand her his handkerchief, he had received it as a birthday present from Jarod, but then realized it wasn’t clean enough to offer up to her so he went to put it away.

She reached out and took it anyway, and dabbed her eyes and cheeks with a sad smile on her face. “What a gentleman, to offer a crying woman a token such as this. Unfortunately for you my departed is still too strongly in my affections for the consideration, young man” Ari, unaware of whatever customs or traditions he had just accidentally performed, sputtered a bit trying to explain himself before she broke out into laughter again.

“It is fine. It is fine. I knew you were only trying to be considerate to me. I appreciate it-” she looked down at the embroidery on the handkerchief “-Ari.” As she finished dabbing away her tears, she handed the ‘token’ back to him which he returned to his pocket. She instructed him to go a bit farther from port, and then had him stop at the point she determined character. She stood up abruptly, almost falling out of the boat before Ari reached out to stabilize her.

Once she was sure of her footing, she slowly opened up the urn and began to sprinkle ashes into the sea while whisper-singing a song that shattered his peace as it ignited memories he didn’t know he held. It was in Krazhnori, specifically it was a lullaby his mother would always sing to him before he went to bed each night. As she slowly sang the words, Ari just gaped at her with tears coming to his eyes. When she was done with her ritual, she noticed the boy's expression and reached out to take him into a deep hug. She intuited his reasoning for being so upset, and whispered calming words into his ear as he began to shake and slowly cry himself. When they both were back to their sides of the boat, both thoroughly exhausted from the emotional strain of the past hour, she asked Ari a question.

“Were you born there?”

“Yes- I think so I mean.” He sighed as he uttered the words.

“I guess you have some memories of what it was like there then.”

“Well, a few but most of it was after I already lost my parents. Back then I was living with Jarod-”

“Who might Jarod be?” She asked with a tilt to her head as he explained the circumstances that lead him to this point.

He talked for almost another hour about living with the occupying army, slowly learning how to speak Henos and having to learn the customs of the strange people that took him in. He told her very little of the few memories he had before Jarod took them in, only shaking his head silently when she asked questions about what life was like for him then. She wasn’t sure if he remembered much, or if he simply didn’t want to speak of those times, so she would quickly move on. He continued to talk about his life in the city as he rowed her back to shore, and when they finally reached the dock she grabbed him and looked into his eyes before asking a question that had the potential to upend his entire world.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Her voice’s volume and fervor seemed to increase after the first sentence. “My family owns a lot of land in the East and we could get you some sheep and have you learned to be a shepard-landworker while we get you established?” When he just stared with raised eyebrows at her she asked another question seeming to be confused at his lack of a response and shocked state.

“Do you not like sheep?” She innocently inquired.

“Like sheep?” He spluttered.