<html> <head> <style></style></head> <body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'> “Is this going to cause us trouble later on?” the mage asked. Lying or padding the truth momentarily seemed like the thing to do, but one thing Zynaid had discovered over the past three years, much to his surprise, was that the tubby mage could handle ugly truths far better than most[i]. Perhaps it’s no small part owed to the chaotic and oft ugly family environment he grew up in[/i], he thought with a smirk. “Likely,” he said without varnish. Marilyth won’t be open to us for a long time to come; I have enemies there now.” There wasn’t any one wrong thing he did; it was just all the little thing that had gone wrong. If he had been a little more careful, he thought with grinding teeth; it all could have been barred from going sour if he had just taken more preventative measures. First and foremost he should from now on make sure that hidden documents at his place of residence remained [i]hidden[/i], even after a rip-up-the-floorboards search. He could just hear Lorian’s exasperated sigh and scolding eyes that admonished him from beyond the grave. The old goat also wouldn’t have encouraged him to waste time, though, regretting and pouting over what went wrong; he would have wanted him to learn from it. Zynaid let out a deep sigh. The old man had been a hard teacher, but he had been a good one. Parnsus stared out across the rough surface of the Galean Sea, blown to sizable white caps by the winds. The body of water had a reputation for fierceness and storminess, a reputation it seemed more than happy to keep up. “They... won’t come after us, will they?” Zynaid considered the possibility, though he had already considered it several times and came to the same conclusion. “We pissed them off,” he said at last, “but we didn’t infuriate them, at least not to the point of generational grudges. I expect they’ll only develop homicidal tendencies if we dare show our faces again on their turf. There’s no pressing reason to waste any gold on hunting us down.” “Not even a bounty? Couldn’t they just put one up on us?” “Unlikely,” the commoner replied. “No one even knows who you are aside from a very select few trusted individuals, and I’m nobody of lasting consequence.” [i]Not yet anyway... and hoping that I’m able to get more a reputation built up that can cover this fiasco[/i]. Depression, worry, whatever Parnsus was feeling at the moment, it caused him to sigh as he took a swig of water from his canteen, which seemed rather reluctant to provide him with hydration as he pulled it back and stared as an exuberant boy expecting fun would stare at a day long Mass. “Water’s beginning to run low,” he stated flatly, as if it were just one more inconvenience on top of what already bogged him down. “Wasn’t there a village just off to the north?” he asked, poking his head in that direction, just over a few hills. “No,” Zynaid snapped, quicker and more forcefully than he would have liked. “Well, it’s...” the mage stuttered a bit, “just that you said you grew up in this area, so you’d adequately know where to find water around here sufficiently.” Instead of replying, Zynaid pointed east at the Galean Sea (even though it was more accurate to call it a lake). “Oh look right over there. Oh my gosh, it’s a great big pile of water,” he said with faux amazement, “and it’s fresh! Look at all that water!” Some might have scowled, some might have shrunk away, some might have argued. Parnsus, however, was none of those people. “Oh... yeah,” he said scratching his head and letting a small smile come to his face. “I sort of forgot about that,” he said with what was more or less normal self-deprecation. Said large body of water was less than a mile off, putting it within casual reach. Down the coast to the south a small party of fishermen got to work casting themselves off from shore, once more throwing themselves into their daily grind of casting nets and hauling fish. It was one daily grind Zynaid just couldn’t picture himself doing; indeed, he [i]never[/i] had from his earliest days. Throughout his field of vision there were several people moving distantly like ants across the shore for this reason or that. One in particular hunched over by the water’s edge as they approached, rinsing and scrubbing a pot. “How much water should we gather?” Parnsus asked as he hopped his wobbly form down from his horse. “As full as we can go,” Zynaid responded somewhat annoyed at having to voice a point that should have been obvious. “No point in not taking all we can.” The mage paused, then nodded abashedly, then proceeded to grab the canteens. Watching him, Zynaid almost didn’t notice the man who had been hunched over himself just a moment ago approach and stare. His face was somewhat underwhelmingly masculine, with not a single hair, rugged or otherwise, blemishing his smooth face. His form was short but gangly, as if he were a grown man who had not entered puberty. He stared at Zynaid warily, and ... was there concern in his eyes? “Can I help you?” he asked the stranger his low, gravely voice. The man’s eyes bulged as shock animated his face as though a ghost had just crossed his path. Words tried to spill from his mouth as he fumbled. Great what now? Was there some kind of trap that had just been set for the Scolastins and himself or something equally ridiculous? “Zyn?” the man asked in a high pitched voice. [i]...Oh by the pagan hells...[/i] Finished unpacking the canteens, Parnsus did a quick double take at the mention of the pet version of Zynaid’s name. The stranger... no, in fact by the look of him, and by his less than masculine features... Eansoet. It had to be. Apparently, despite long since having grown a thick black beard that covered much of his face like a coat, Zynaid’s face was still somewhat recognizable. But his voice, that he could never disguise; his bass gravely throat had set in when he was fifteen and had never left him. “By His wounds... it can’t be...,” Eansoet said with astonishment. Zynaid sighed; it was going to be a longer day than he thought. “No, Eansoet, I’m not dead. I didn’t drown in some gutter or get gobbled up by a dragon.” Well, maybe almost, but he still emerged to this day in one piece, no thanks to giant man-eating horseshoe crab things. His half-lame right legged ached as if in response. The look of bewilderment was slow to remove itself from Eansoet’s face like putrid body odor lingering after a day of long labor. Zynaid might as well have been presumed dead in his eyes, especially after twelve years with absolutely no contact. Spotting Parnsus move to his right Eansoet stared, then darted his eyes between the two travelers. “You didn’t... Are you here for your family?” he asked as if he were clawing blindfolded at the air. “It was already a month ago.” “Family?” both travelers asked for two entirely different reasons. Eansoet darted his eyes between the two of them, somewhat overwhelmed by the situation. “Ranshod,” he uttered. “Your grandfather, he passed away from sickness late last month.” He might have expected a reaction from Zynaid to be immediately forthcoming. Indeed, Zynaid himself thought he was going to react. In reality... he continued his blank stare at Eansoet. This proved to be the limit of what the lost acquaintance was willing to deal with. “I... uh, I’ve gotta bring this back to the village,” he hoisted his sloshing bucket of water and without another word hustled off, his back slouched over either from the weight of the water and pans he was carrying or from intimidation, Zynaid couldn’t say for certain. “Um...” Parnsus punctured the resulting silence. “Ok... I think I missed something.” Zynaid sight end felt like rolling his eyes all the way into the back of his head. “You remember that village over the hills to the north you asked about a few minutes ago?” Blinking, Parnsus replied, “Yeah, you said there wasn’t one.” Another sigh escaped Zynaid’s lips. “But you just said there isn’t one,” the mage protested redundantly. “That village is called Gemesaret, and it’s there.” “Why did you say it wasn’t there before?” Parnsus blurted out before he could finish. Zynaid fixed him with a serious stare. “Because I was born there and lived the first sixteen years of my life there.” At last the concept pierced the mage’s skull. “...Oh...” he said with genuine empathy. “So... that Eansoet person is your brother?” Parnsus asked out of the blue. This time it was Zynaid’s turn to blink. “What? Wha... [i]No[/i].” His bizarre leap of logic having run into a brick wall, the mage stumbled back and stuttered. “Oh... uh, I just... it seemed... he was... Well, he called you ‘Zyn’ and you haven’t let anyone else call you that for the past three years...” he trailed off. He had a tendency to jump off the deep end in speculation sometimes. “[i]No[/i],” Zynaid said emphatically to stop Parnsus before he hurt both their brains. “Eansoet is... someone I used to know when I lived here.” He said no more than that. Part of him wished the mage would babble on. He had never had any intention of going back, not ever, and when he had learned that the Scolastin brothers had chosen this area to rendezvous at he had almost launched himself into a tirade of curses. If he and that village never set eyes upon each other again he would have been happy. But all of that was likely screwed over by now; that fool Eansoet had spotted him and was likely to blab to the whole village that Zynaid had returned after all these twelve years. Under normal circumstances he would have simply bolted as fast as his horse could carry him before any of the faces from his childhood could catch up. But... if Ranshod was truly dead, and only a month gone... Scowling, Zynaid balled his fists. “Aren’t you going to attend to your family?” Parnsus suddenly blurted out from behind him. [i]What family?[/i] the Galean wanted to say, but ... it existed. He scowled again. He hated this. “By the pagan hells,” he muttered and guided his horse to the north with Parnsus following up quickly. Across the shore they went, their horses clopping along through the sand until the small hills to their west slid past, revealing a deeply worn dirt road that climbed from the Galean shore until it met a collection of buildings shaped from tanned mudbrick. “Gemesaret,” Zynaid mumbled. It looked litter different after twelve years. How much the people had changed... well, Zynaid bet that they wouldn’t have changed much either, even though he could hear his mentor’s voice chiding him at the back of his mind, admonishing him not to prejudge before seeing the fact for himself. Villages, however, had a strange way of preserving themselves through the tumultuous passage of the centuries. They weren’t like cities with their cosmopolitan flow of cultures and ideas; Gemesaret, like villages across the world, was made to endure the rugged pace of time, passing to the next generation the hardened life that its inhabitants believed as unshakable as the mountains. Zynaid snorted. History, when viewed on the whole, was kind to very few of man’s achievements in the long run, and it was provincial foolishness to delude oneself into believing otherwise. “So...” Parnsus punctured the quiet. “So... Zynaid repeated, echoing the manner the mage had spoken, “What?” “So,” the noble repeated, and then left it with an awkward silence in which his lips stumbled over themselves like drunken dancers. But before the commoner could dismiss or begin to ignore him, he got in a sheepish, “What made you leave?” Zynaid stared at his horse’s flickering ears absentmindedly before saying, “Simple version: I decked the village elder’s daughter.” “...What.” “I punched the village elder’s daughter in the face and knocked her out cold,” Zynaid responded, enunciating each word, spelling it out in the most blatant terms. “There wasn’t much keeping me here, and I had pretty much burnt my last bridges, so I left.” “Aaaaaaand you were [i]how[/i] old when this happened?” “Sixteen or so.” The mage stared and shook his head. Zynaid cocked his head to the side. “What? You ran away before you were twenty yourself.” “By about four months!” the mage said gesturing wildly with his hands, “And I had family friends I could ask for aid. And... strictly speaking I ran away from my [i]mother[/i], not my family.” “Well... I left what little family I had behind and everything else for that matter. And you know what?” he turned to challenge Parnsus directly in the eye. “I don’t regret it for one moment.” He turned his eyes back to the path in front of him, intent on traveling straight ahead. “They’re the pushiest, most obstinate, stubborn people on the face of the world and Heaven help you if you disagree with them. As soon as I could understand words I clashed with them. I had so many fights with these people I could be blessed with perfect memory and I still wouldn’t be able to recount them all. The worst part though was when they started moving like a herd; like a mindless stampeding horde of cattle they’d just run off with whatever crazy ideas they tried to stuff into their heads.” It was a matter of course that Parnsus would just sit there and politely not interrupt; he did just that and took Zynaid’s tirade as if it were a rainstorm that had to be tolerated. Though... not quite. He did listen; perhaps his shy soft spoken manner lent itself inherently to listening in absence of his own speech. In any case he seemed better at listening than anyone Zynaid had ever met, with the possible exception of Lorian, but even then it was close. The sound of screaming, yelling children fell down the path to the Galean Sea to wash over the two travelers on their horses, filling the air with the sounds of wild carefree play, occasionally interrupted by bellowing nagging from disgruntled adults. As they approached they saw a small horde of children swarming around a large wagon, filled to the brim with piles of grain, several fruits and even fish. This was a particularly expensive undertaking as such quantities of fish had to be extensively salted to preserve freshness. Villagers flocked in long lines, tolerating the swarming children while carrying forward various baskets of loaves and other foodstuff. One might expect a merchant to be present, to be purchasing the produce and goods from the villagers, but none were visible. Not one coin crossed hands among them. Overhead a flock of doves fluttered over the houses nearest the square. The birds were so common here that the village was sometimes nicknamed the Dove Village for this reason. Since many of the doves were white, many took them to be a good omen. From Zynaid’s perspective, they just pooped all over the place. A cacophony of blaring from the thronging children, as they chased, played tag and attempted a few times to tackle one another, but the appearance of the approaching travelers always excited the air with a tangible tinge of anticipation. But this time a mist of uncertainty clouded it. The children gawked like they would at any other stranger, but those who were older stared warily. In no time at all the adults in the lines spotted the disturbance; their stares were more of a revealing, stunned or shocked nature (and in not a few cases a guarded, wary one). Apparently Eansoet had already spread word. Further into the village some stopped what they were doing and beheld the prodigal as he strode back into his birthplace, other gave one glance and quickly turned back to their previous activity, attempting to pretend they were oblivious to the arrival. The former continued to stare, and Zynaid stared right back as he strode on. Finally, an older man stepped ahead of the small but gathering crowd. Wizened and gray, he nonetheless walked with a certain gusto, his tall wrinkled frame more taut, tough and gummy than thin and frail. His thick almost completely white beard was nearly as thick as the black one Zynaid now sported, his body not having thinned a speck in twelve years. The village, of course, had several elders who decided what was what, but as long as the younger man could remember Sivarth had been the community’s voice. “So,” the old man delivered in a somewhat high tenor raspy voice, “Does the Prodigal return?” And of course, he could not find it within himself to come up with a less predictable and more original phrase. Zynaid could have predicted such a sentence of greeting, and did, down nearly to the exact tone of voice. “You needn’t throw a bombastic party and sacrifice your choicest livestock in celebration, Elder,” Zynaid said, speaking Sivarth’s informal title as if it were less an honored appellation and more of a mundane description. </div></body> </html>