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A Bedtime Story - Chapter Two

Started by solarscreen, May 28, 2014, 07:18:08 AM

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solarscreen

Chapter 2 - The Visitors

It began like any other day.  I arrived at the fishing dock ready for a full days work and happy it was so warm already. The fish would be biting early and we might get to have a nice lazy afternoon to idle at the well and share stories.  I say share but I really mean listen.  Some of the best stories came from idle time near the trade depot. Traders from near and far would bring their boats filled with food, supplies, and animals to trade for our wool and firewood.  They also brought with them stories from their lands. Sometimes fantastical stories that just couldn't be real but they insisted were.  The swirling winds that could snatch away whole villages was exceptionally frightening but how was that possible?  I don't know but Burcaris the seed merchant told us it had taken his family and trading was the only reason he did not wander to the ends of the land and look for the beast people would leave food for.  I felt bad for him. How would I live without my beloved? My son?

Nmid arrived shortly after I did and as usual had some poetic verse or three line deep thought to greet me. I never understood why he was banished.  He more than any of us understood things. He saw things as they really were with no childhood scripting of fantasy and fear playing out a trap to stop us from thinking, from imagining what we should not.  No, I did not understand why he was banished but I also did not know a lot about him either.  He gave you much to consider but held back more than we could ever know.  I saw him reading one day in the chestnut orchard far to the south one day. As I approached and he saw me, he put away the book in his hands but not before I caught brief sight of three letters on the back cover - AMJ - and then he was smiling and spouting verse and walking back with me asking me if I had left all our nets in the river. 

We made short work of casting our nets where the bubbles from schools of  hungry fish were churning the water surface and soon had a good haul to draw in and prepare for drying.  We worked in silence - worked as men often do, not prattling on about home or the village or the children. Get the task at hand done and soon there would be time for idling and conversation.

It was when we were washing up that they came from the north, silently, almost floating across the ground, in their long black clothing making no sound and moving in a long steady line towards us.  It was as if the world had gone silent. No animals, no wind, not even the sound of the river flowing past our dock could find my ears.  I looked quickly to Nmid to find him pale and trembling.  His mouth barely open managed to utter a sound I could finally hear.

"No! They cannot be real!"
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