Hard Winters RPG

[littlemanpoet]

"I - I thought I overheard..."

She must have heard wrong, or, miscast in her thought what she had heard. He had no intention of leaving. Her shoulders were relaxing and her face, which had been taut with pained anger, softened. The knots in her stomach untied and she felt elated. Why does this man mean this much to me? She needed to have a care.

"Well. I misheard." She put a smile on her face. "It is my turn to apologize. I am sorry for misreading your ... your ... you." She wanted to ask him if he had come back because of her, but to ask such a question would put her heart in his hands, and that was more than she could dare. For now. Not until she knew more of his purpose. If even then.

She allowed a smirk. "That broom is not going to walk itself back into the kitchen."

[Galadriel55]

They walked a long time in silence. After a while, the lad spoke. "Might you be willing to tell a story? It would make the road go faster, I think, and the rain seem less dreary."

“Then I shall tell you a tale of a land as dry and hot as ours is filled with rain and chill of late,” Balan responded smoothly. He did not yet know how the story would end; he only had a seed, and he would let it grow.

And so he told his companion of the Wraith of the Desert, cursed to live in endless thirst. Once the guardian of a bounteous land, he was charged to stand watch over its people and treasures, and for that he was honoured. He was the warden of the land’s tall towers, and of its lush shady trees, and its round silver pearls, and of its colourful blossoms. Yet, as the time went by, he forgot his duty, and disobeyed his task. With little thought for his people, he cared mostly for his own affairs. He tried to gain new treasures and new power, and sought them where one ought not go. He was hopelessly lost in broken promises and trickery, until finally, when hoodwinked by a black wizard, he traded him all of the land’s treasures for the greatest knowledge that there was. But the wizard deceived him, and escaped with the riches, and hid them in the four corners of the world.

Gone were the pools filled with glittering pearls. Without the shade of the trees, the sun scorched the land. Its towers crumbled to dust, and its blossoming fields were replaced by colourless mounds. And a great wrath rose from the people of the land, and they cursed the wayward guardian with a curse of great power, for so great was their grief and rage; never shall he part from this land, and suffer always the loss that he brought on it. Any towers that he builds shall scatter like sand on the wind; any colour that he paints shall starve and fade beneath the blazing sun; no roof shall shield him from the burning rays; no wealth shall he have to trade for the meanest harvest. The spirit of the land, he shall be what the earth is, and feel what the earth feels, until a child of this land entrusts him once again with the treasures that he so irreverently relinquished. Cursing him thus, the people left, homeless, hopeless, and bitter, to seek a place where they could live. Some went east, to the far mountains; others went west, to the restless sea; yet others went south, where the wetlands rule; and some went north, to the hard hills and gnarled pines; and none of them came back to their land, and it became truly desolate. Men shunned the place, for only thing that awaited them there was death.

For many years the desert grew, ever drinking up any moisture, ever thirsting for more. No amount of water that rare travelers brought with them could quench its thirst. The desert swallowed them all – the travelers with the water. Thus this land became known as the Thirsty Desert.

And Balan told the boy of the fate of the exiles, how their numbers dwindled, and their rage abated, and their hate was replaced by sorrow. He spoke how the last of the descendants of these people came together, men and women, old and young, to find the lost treasures that the black wizard hid on the edges of the world. Long was their search, and many died along the way. Balan gave each a name and a fate, and spoke long of their toils and adventures. By the end, only five of them remained, sailing eastward on a ship with the lost treasures. But the wind was treacherous and the shore was hostile; a storm seized the ship, carrying it away from safe havens, and broke it against the rocky cliffs, and drowned the gathered treasures. Only a young lad survived the storm, carried onto the shore by a wooden splinter. For a day he searched up and down the coast, calling the names of his companions, but all he heard was the dull roar of the diminishing waves and the mocking cackles of the gulls. Yet, when he was about to lose hope, he heard the sound of a human voice. He ran towards it and found the eldest of their crew, washed up ashore. The boy was glad, but the old man stopped him: he did not drown, but he was the last to live, and his bones were smashed against the rocks on the coast, and he would not live until sunset. He bid the boy to remember their quest, and find the wasteland that was once their home without delay, and give it all that he has yet to give, for the treasures were lost and this boy was the last of their people. But the boy stayed until the old man passed beyond this life, and wept for him, and built a cairn over him as best as he could. And with a mad despair in his heart, he set out to the Thirsty Desert. Onwards he went, though his food pouch emptied and his water flask dried. He did not stop at the edge of the desert, but toiled onwards to the heart of the desert, sinking in its colourless sand and choking on its hot dust.

Balan watched his companion during the telling. Now, the lad was looking straight ahead, but his eyes were clearly seeing sand dunes instead of puddles.

“And when the boy could walk no more..." Suddenly, a new path for the story occurred to Balan. "...he took off the hat that shielded him from sun and rain alike, and long locks spilled onto her shoulders, for this was not a boy but a young maiden.”

Balan looked at his companion with a hint of a smile and a mischievous spark in his eyes, waiting to confirm his suspicions or put them to rest and continue on with the story.

[Firefoot]

"Indeed it will not," Scyld agreed, and turned from Rowenna for the second time to take the broom to the kitchen. He felt exasperated and amused, and still not wholly sure he understood her.

All of that anger, over something she’d only thought he’d said? Maybe he ought to be more annoyed than he was, but he was much more amused at the memory of her flustered. Even when he tried, it was difficult to catch her at a loss for words. He liked seeing her so, with her defenses stripped away, if even for a few moments. Even more, it pleased him what he saw in those moments: that she would have been upset at his leaving and was now glad of his staying.

His good mood was tempered though, by the knowledge that she did not yet know everything. Wait until she heard the rest.

[Firefoot]

Wrapped up in the story, Cerwyn forgot the drudgery of their trek, her irritation at her companion, and even her fear of being found out. So when it was revealed that the lad in the story was actually a maiden, she was caught completely off guard.

She stopped and whirled around to face the storyteller. He had (what seemed to her) a knowing smirk on his face. “But how – when –” she spluttered. Her heart was racing and her stance wary, but he seemed no more threatening than he had when he thought her a boy. “What gave me away?” she asked.

[Galadriel55]

Balan watched as his companion staggered in surprise. He waited for her to regain her composure before he spoke.

“What gave me away?” she uttered finally.

“It is hard to tell,” Balan told her. “A bit of this, a bit of that. The way you reacted to some of the characters and adventures of the tale. The way your face looked when you were eager or anxious for what was to happen next. But I was not certain until now.”

The woman did not say anything at first, so Balan gestured to her to start walking again. “I see you would rather be a lad than a lass on this road,” Balan told her, “and I do not see why you should not remain such to others. If you do not wish it, I will not reveal you to the first passing stranger that we meet – if anyone else has the bad luck or bad sense to be on the road this day. But beware that you do not overstep yourself – I will not lie to other men to get you out of trouble. This is hardly your deepest secret, but I would grant you silence, if you so wish, in return for your friendship. Do you accept my offer?”

[Firefoot]

“I have committed no crime,” she said, irritated at his implications. “My brother is estranged from my father, and I wish to find him. I believe him to be at Scarburg, so if we are as close as I think, it hardly matters whether my gender is known or not.”

She sighed. “Nevertheless, it seems I have no choice. I will accept your offer, as long as you will finish the story,” she said, smiling slightly. “My name is Cerwyn.”

[Galadriel55]

“And mine is Balan,” he replied. “But I fear you mistook me: I never thought you had committed any crime, but I feared you might do so in the future. When desperation is great enough to make such a small secret matter so much – think of the deeds done by desperate men. And seeing how loathe you were to let go of your secret, surely it is not as unimportant as you make it sound.” Balan sighed. “But I will leave that for you, and finish the tale I began.”

So Balan spoke of the maiden, the last of the people who once dwelt in the land of the Thirsty Desert. ”O Wraith of the Desert!” she called, “Guardian of the Land-That-Once-Was! Come forth and accept these gifts into your keeping!” Her hands burning, she built a round mound from the heated sand. “Wraith of the Desert, I bequeath to you our tall towers!” With her knife, she pricked her thumb and let the blood stain the sand. “Wraith of the Desert, I bequeath to you the colours of our fields in bloom!” She spread her arms, shielding the mound from the sun. “Wraith of the Desert, I bequeath to you the shade of our mighty trees!” A silver tear rolled down her cheek and sunk into the thirsty ground. “Wraith of the Desert, I bequeath to you our glittering pearls and flowing rivers!” And with those words her last strength left her, and she fell onto the mound. “O Land-That-Once-Was,” she whispered, “I bequeath to you our quest and my life.”

She never left that mound, but around it an oasis grew. The maiden’s gifts were not powerful enough to restore the land to its former glory, but they were enough to change the desert. The rare travelers who braved that country noticed an island of green at the heart of the yellow wasteland. Thick grasses carpeted the ground, and leafy trees threw out their branches high above. Scarlet flowers bloomed all around. A creek flowed over a bed of while pebbles, until it was sucked in by the dry sand of the desert. The creek flowed from a small round well at the heart of the island, rimmed with sandstone and filled with sweet water. No matter how much the Thirsty Desert drank, the well never emptied. But men who would drink from that well said that as they leaned over the rim, they would hear a girl’s voice whispering to them; and they would say that the maiden never died, but became the guardian of the Green Island. They say also that every day the Wraith of the Desert comes to drink from her well, and he hungers not anymore for the lives of wayfarers. At the Green Island he quenches his thirst, and day after day marvels at the great depths of selflessness.