Private Tales Far From the Tree

[Vilen Blackhart]

A track road in the Allir Reach, sometime in the past...

Along the edge of the wagon-rutted road, on the other side of a half-rotted fence, stood a gnarled old apple tree. It was one of the few landmarks of note, in a countryside otherwise dominated by thickets and barley fields. Small, yellow apples hung in unkempt bunches between waxy green leaves. These were no Ruby Rachdales - the apples on this tree were sour and dry, leaving a chalky taste behind in the mouth.

Even so, a few of the tree's branches shook suspiciously as a figure half-obscured by the shade of the leaves plucked the less wormy fruits and stuffed them into a satchel at their side.

It wasn't a very stealthy operation, and soon enough the owner of the apple tree was coming down along the road with his dog to see what kind of animal needed scaring off. Standing at the base of the tree, the old farmer tipped the brim of his sunhat up to look at the culprit. A scrawny young thing, the thief's face was obscured by branches.

"Quit it now, those apple don't belong to you," he called up. His dog, a spotty hound, barked out punctuation.

"C'mon old man," whined the thief. "Look how many apples you've let fall onto the ground. Surely you don't need all of them."

"Aye, I need 'em all - them's for the pigs," The man grumbled back.

The branches stopped rustling. Shady red eyes peered down at the dog panting by its owner's side. A thought seemed to flash there: Can I outrun it? The dog was paunchy, and its muzzle grey. And its tail wagged as it barked, trained to only sound alarm instead of bite.

"Call me a pig, then!" Sharp teeth bit down on one last plucked apple. Vilen sprung out of the tree, and landed soft-kneed in the tall grass. Behind him, the old man sputtered out his surprise at the demon leapt from his tree.

Vilen skidded up the ditch, and took down the road at a reckless pace. Apples dropped out of the sack at his side, and bruised against packed dirt. With each one, the dog giving chase behind him got distracted, stopping to snap after the round, yellow things.

Yffry

 

[Yffry]

Yffrey was meandering along the road, enjoying the afternoon sun. The nights had been cold recently. He did not enjoy them.

For a short while he had hidden in the hay barns of a village south of the road. One of the children had brought him some chunks of bread in the evening.

Then the boy had brought his sister. Older than him and more self-aware. She had screamed and run for help. Yffrey had learned the hard way what would follow. He had been on a hill above the village when the scythes and pitchforks had been carried towards the barn.

Yffrey turned his head, hearing a bark behind him. His hand fell to one of the two swords at his waist.

Even if he couldn't remember how he had come to own them, his hands knew those weapons. It frightened him, how natural they felt in his hands.

A dog was slowly down. Waddling after a loose apple. Yffrey's gaze focused on the grey skinned woman running up the road towards him.

 

[Vilen Blackhart]

For a triumphant moment, it seemed like Vilen was in the clear. Then he came upon a traveler on the road. One who looked much nastier than the old man he'd just left behind.

"Whoa there!" Pulling his momentum back, Vilen scrambled to a stop in front of the stranger. A nervous smile stretched across jagged teeth, and his gaze didn't leave the swords at the big guy's side. Or the hand that gripped one hilt.

"Is that warm welcome for me or the hound?" Both palms came up in a pleading gesture. "I promise, you won't need it for either of us."

Vilen didn't have anything to defend himself with, save for a knife tied to his belt. He was wearing what was typical for commoners in this part of the Reach. If it weren't for the horns and everything, he would have looked ordinary.

Not that ordinary people couldn't be a nuisance. The old farmer shouted from down the road, dogged in his pursuit. The dog itself had turned around and bounded back to its master. The undisciplined thing had already forgotten its original purpose.

"Thief!" The old man called out, just barely out of view around the bend. "Stop that thief!"

Yffry

 

[Yffry]

Far from intimidating, his expression was one of panic. Yffry didn't know what he was supposed to do now.

The pale person was smiling at him, but down the road was an old man calling out. They had a good amount of time, Yffry decided. The dog wasn't rushing towards them. He let his hand fall from the sword.

"What did you steal?" Yffry asked. The question came with a curious tone, rather than sounding like an accusation.

 

[Vilen Blackhart]

The guy took his hand off his sword. Vilen mirrored the movement, lowering his own empty palms back to his side.

In the moment of stillness that followed, he got a better look at the traveler. The man in front of him was clearly a dangerous sort. Big, red, with glowing eyes and fighting gear that looked like it had seen some use.

"What did you steal?"

"Nothin' that's worth all this trouble," Vilen responded. He looked down and away, pouting, or perhaps resigned to his fate. "Just a handful of mouldering apples on the side of the road." It was more than a handful. There were about two dozen shoved into the confines of his bag.

Vilen raised his head once more, a misplaced indignation burning there in his red eyes. "That old man back there, I bet he can't even tell you what kind of apples I took. They're an Elderblue-Malus hybrid, if you care. And they taste like sawdust!"

One of the dropped apples was still on the ground nearby. Turning his back to the big man, Vilen bent down to pick the little yellow fruit up. His tail flared out behind him, to counter the shift in weight.

"Miserable looking tree. Hadn't been pruned in years," Vilen kept muttering, having riled himself up. He brushed the dusty apple off on his tunic, and placed it back into the satchel with the others. "What's the point of owning something if you're not even going to take care of it..."

Yffry

 

[Yffry]

"I do not like the sound of an apple that tastes like sawdust," Yffry replied.

The small grey one looked like a woman and sounded like a man. They were not human either. Were they an outsider, like Yffry? Forced to steal to survive as they lived around the periphery or human towns.

Yffry looked over their shoulder - and head - and looked back at the man and his dog. It would have been easy to pick the little grey one up and carry them back to the owner of the tree.

Would it have accomplished anything?

"You are a gardener?" Yffry asked. "I do not have time to stop and deal with apples. But I am hungry," he hinted.

Yffry turned back to the road and stepped aside. A wave of one large hand for the thief to continue along their way, but with Yffry beside them.

 

[Vilen Blackhart]

The big guy was so calm. He spoke in even cantor, not moving one way or the other. It made Vilen antsy. He turned round to face the guy again, but couldn't stay still. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, wondering how many questions he could really afford to answer before the farmer and his dog caught up to them.

Then again, maybe making his escape alone wasn't the right call. Alone, Vilen was nothing but a layabout and a vagrant. But two vagrants together were practically a band, and nobody bothered roving bands.

"I used to be a gardener," Vilen admitted when the question came. "But I accidentally burnt the neighbor's barn down and then this priest guy--" Too much, too fast, his own thought interrupted him. Vilen clamped his mouth shut before he could rattle off his whole life story. Rolled his shoulders, and started over. "You know what, its a long story. I'll tell you over supper?"

A step aside, a hand waving him forward. Just like that, his path was clear. It took Vilen one long stare before he realized what the big guy was offering. He blinked. It seemed in his best interest to oblige, and so he started down the path again.

"Got something nicer than crabapples planned, don't worry," he continued on. "Plus, there's a bit of wine back at my hiding spot, which you are welcome to, if we make it there unbothered."

One glance behind his shoulder revealed nothing of the old man or the dog. Surely, they'd given up their chase, minor as the theft was.

Yffry

 

[Yffry]

Before Yffry could ask if supper was just an overripe apple, the little grey one had already offered something more appealing. Despite the amicable resolution to the situation, Yffry still felt a pang of regret.

He walked along a road with a temporary travelling companion. Rather than any form of acceptance, he was walking with another outcast. He hadn't found acceptance, just another soul who happened to be walking in the same direction and avoiding the same people.

As naïve as ever, Yffry did not even consider that the offer could have been a trap.

"I do not know what I used to be," Yffry replied. His voice was deeper, he spoke slowly. He provided information, even revealed his ignorance without thinking about it.

Did he like wine? Yffry did not know.

"How long have you been hiding?" he asked.

 

[Vilen Blackhart]

Vilen hummed sympathetically when the big guy admitted to not remembering who he'd been. "What about a name?" He asked, blasé as he led the way down the road, not banking on an answer. "Mine's Vilen."

He knew some stuff about illness and healing. The things that caused a person to lose their past were always bad, really bad. Curses from gods and violent hits to the head. A prickle of instinct made the back of Vilen's neck shiver. Dangerous, it warned.

"How long have you been hiding?"

Tail swishing from side to side, Vilen thought about the question. He kept his pace, not letting any of that fear surface. "Hm, here? Just a couple of days. In general...? I don't know, depends on what counts as hiding."

Vilen was not the sort to weigh his words carefully. Taking them further down the path, he continued to chatter away, whether his newfound companion kept up or not. He sounded like someone who hadn't, in a long while, been invited inside for a proper visit.

"That's a shrine to Amion," he said at one point, nodding at a wooden construction along the side of the road. It was a simple shed without a door, barely big enough for one man to kneel inside. Its walls were plastered white and its roof thatched with sunny golden hay. "Folks here in barley country are a godly sort." He waved his hand a long and vague ways off. "Just over those hills, in olive country, nobody bothers to put things like that up. And along the coast, no one prays even in their own houses. And across the ocean, everyone's necromancers."

Vilen would drop a topic as soon as it became bothersome, moving on to the next thing with little regard. He also pointed out a cluster of tiny purple flowers growing in the ditch, that he couldn't quite remember the name of. He criticized a stretch of the road, that was cobbled together hastily and already falling apart. And when they slipped off the main road and down a narrow footpath, he talked about the kinds of vegetables people would be harvesting soon.

The footpath was a holloway that dug into a young thicket of trees, high walls of dirt rising around the pair. Spindly birches shaded them the rest of the way up, turning the sunlight a dappled yellow-green. The dust of the road didn't reach this place, and the beauty of it stilled Vilen.

He shut his mouth for a time, and let the birds sing.

Yffry

 

[Yffry]

"I am Yffry, he offered up without reservation.

"Amion," Yffry repeated.

It was a word he hadn't heard. The notion of gods and religions evoked feelings that he couldn't tie to any particular memories.

He didn't like organised religion. He thought those that ascribed to it, or even went to devote their lives to it were fools.

Yffry was happy to let the conversation wash over him. It was pleasant to have someone talk to him for so long without agenda. Vilen didn't ask any questions either. That too was a small blessing.

The silence stretched out for a while, but Yffry couldn't leave it forever.

"You haven't been right here for long...but you know these lands well?"

 

[Vilen Blackhart]

This guy was full of questions. Lucky for him then, that it was not in Vilen's nature to lie. He was no good at it, and so he had learned to avoid it all together.

"Sure I know, I was born here. Well, not here in this valley, but..." With a clawed finger, he pointed Northwest, through the high earthen berm that rolled along the side of the path. "...thataway about fifteen days. And if you've seen one farm village in the Reach, you've seen 'em all."

All of a sudden, Vilen stopped going down the path. Above them now was a maple tree, bigger and broader than the surrounding birches. Feet finding purchase in dirt and root, Vilen scrambled up the steep side of the hill. He crouched atop a thick root of the maple, and looked down at Yffry.

He reached out and offered a balancing hand, urging the big guy to climb as well.

"C'mon, up here. We're almost there."

Yffry

 

[Yffry]

"So you've always been here...but you had a nice life until the burned down barn," Yffrey said without a hint of tact.

"I have been walking from the east," he said simply. His long legs could carry him far, but he was not built for covering long distances.

"I will be fine," he said politely, turning down the offered hand. He didn't want to pull the little grey man back down the slope.

Yffrey wasn't particularly built for climbing either, but he dragged himself up the hill.

"You have to steal food now?"