Prologue
The water of the river was cold. The wooden bucket dripped precious drops of the water on the ground. My arms strained from the effort of holding on to the weight, my inwards feeling about the lack of a village well doing nothing to aid me in the task ahead of me. The bucket creaked slightly, the hinges holding fast against the wood, the metal circlets holding the nails and the planks together slightly rusted.
The metal handle dug in my palms, in my skin, and as I stepped carefully on the dirt road trying to avoid loose rocks, I glanced at the thatch roof of the house I shared with a few others.
The villagers of that house were like my family, but not really my family. I had been found under the shade of a tree near the village's brook. The nearby villagers didn't have the heart to throw me in the wilds, and so I had been taken in by a family lacking a son.
One extra pair of strong arms would do them good; and so I had been taken in.
I brought the bucket inside the house, finding it empty. Even my foster parents were elsewhere. The house, during the day, was no different than a brick oven. The stifling heat of the Summertide month would soon leave the place to a higher degree of heat in the month of Highsun, but I had to look forward to the Midsummer festivity. The village was too small to hold any grand festival or party of the likes, but there would be a bard coming in from outside, singing a few songs through the night near the brook.
There would be some candles lit in the brook, and the young couple of Berna of the Hayflowers and Javerick of the Wheats would be bound together in what passed as a marriage. A priest was going to come over to celebrate their marriage in the name of Chauntea.
I left the bucket near the fire pit, and then walked out, gasping for air.
There was a hoe propped against the back of the house, and as I grabbed it, I hoisted it over my shoulder. Next came a simple wicker hat, and looking as professional as a nine year-old farmer could ever be, I began to walk towards the fields. There was the hay to be cut, and I'd find my foster-father busy there.
He saw me arrive over the beaten path, trudging through the already cut parts of the field. "I've brought the water inside the house," I said, lifting a hand in greeting.
"Well done, son," my foster-father answered, taking a brief break to wipe the sweat off his brow. He had a piece of cloth wrapped around his head. Earlier in the morning it had been wet, but now it was utterly dry. "Cut the hay while I go freshen up by the brook," he added, passing me the scythe he had been using until then. "The wicker to tie the bundles is over there," he pointed at a spot nearby, and then was off.
I watched him go as I grabbed the scythe, and began to dutifully cut the hay without a question. The swinging of the scythe needed to be done with enough strength to cut, otherwise the grass would just bend down and a second passage would have to be done.
It wasn't that the scythe was the sharpest scythe in the whole world, but it was kept well enough to work. The blacksmith of the village was a surly half-orc, but he did good work. The noise of hooves on the dirt caught my attention. Horses were a lot of things, but they weren't silent at all. I turned my head in the direction of the noise, a group of horsemen heading along the path towards the village.
They had bright, shiny colors on their horses, and I recognized the priest of Chauntea among the horsemen. Good old Berya, a cranky half-elf with a permanent scowl etched on her face and kicks capable of sending any would-be prankster or youngster to eat dirt. She normally wouldn't come with an escort, but if she did, then something was afoot. I didn't know anything about any recent troubles, so I quietly resumed my scything of the fields.
After half an hour, my foster-father returned. He looked at the work I had done, said nothing, and took to tightening the hay bundles together. "Berya came with an escort," I said, huffing as my breath was labored from the work.
"Aye," my father said, adding nothing else. He was a man of few words, unless he got angry or drunk. Then he'd have a lot of words to say. Funnily enough, he never got angry and drunk at the same time, and there wasn't much beer to be drank in the village anyway, or wine, so the few times it happened was during happy festivities. It wasn't a bad way of life, a simple one perhaps, but not bad.
"Why?" I asked.
"Dunno," he said. "Doesn't matter."
"What if it's brigands?" I asked warily.
"Nah," he said, and the conversation ended there.
I scythed until I could no longer hold the scythe with my arms, and then quietly looked at my father's imperturbable expression. "I...How much should I cut for the day?"
My father looked at me, and then at the patch of the field that still needed cutting. He was making a quick count in his head, though it wasn't one made with numbers, but with other tools of comparison. A field in one day, then another day to sow it back up, till the ground, water the plants, take care of the beasts since it was our turn to handle the village's cows and so forth.
He pondered over it as my arms burned and shook, since I kept scything while waiting for an answer.
"Take a rest," he said in the end, standing up and taking the scythe from me. "Go tell your mother to start working on dinner. Come back afterwards."
I smiled in relief, and ran off with a skip to my step.
It was a sunny day.
It was a happy day.
-
My eyes opened to the morning noises. My from the awkward sleeping position of the night before. It had been a pleasant dream from my second childhood. My legs felt numb, crossed as they were. I had been deep in meditation, so deep that I had fallen asleep even though the ground was cold, and the temperature in the room chilly at best. There was warmth, but it came from within my chest.
My breath released a thin cloud of haze, my eyes focused on the sole source of light in the room, a flickering candle that had slowly burned throughout the entire night. I looked past the candle, and towards the window. The morning sky was a vibrant teal, not a cloud visible over the horizon. The chill of the wind's bite did little to assuage the pain in my cramped muscles, but as I stood up and stretched, I turned my gaze towards the armor stand, and the clothes upon it.
The symbol of Helm, God of Protectors, stood emblazoned on the left hand's gauntlet. After being lost for so long, I had found my path.
I was Shade of Shallowbrook...
...soon to be sworn Paladin of Helm.
AN: I won't be rewriting these; so expect different, yet similar, stuff.
