Downward spiral
So at first things were just fine, apart from the crushing depression and grief.
Yeah things were just fine.....
Jandori who'd help mom around the kitchen was now making our meals. I'd wander out to the field to handle the live stock and tend the crops, much like I had when I'd helped my father.
Unfortunatly an elf who'd just reached puberty, and a prepubecent one, weren't really upto the task of managing and running a successful household, despite both having lived longer than the oldest human in the hamlet.
And while I'm sure given my father's aid, and even life, given in defense of the town could have earned us a helping hand from the survivors. I was too proud, or I like to think that was the reason. More than likely it was the nagging fear that someone would out me for killing my bully tormentor. Granted it was self defense, but the laws of Evendar are blind, or more to the point, jaded by whomever the enforcer of the law is.
Did I forget to mention that the Bully was the eldest son of the Hamlet's mayor?
So my sister and I kept to ourselves, and in some ways we prospered, but in the ways that mattered we failed.
I couldn't manage both the fields of crops and all the herding of the livestock.
My sister wasn't the greatest of cooks, and wasn't skilled at preserving.
We got by, but barely.
I just let one of the fields go, especially after wolves took half the flock of sheep. Fortunatly potatoes and corn grow themselves for the most part.
My sister got palatable at cooking, yet excelled at sewing and taking in our mothers and fathers clothes.
Winters were the worst, that first one was the hardest, we only survived because of the staples and preserves our mother had put away, we wern't as fortunate the following winter, yet after that first we atleast had dried corn and half moldy potatoes to live on as well as the occasional sheep.
Four years passed I started to grow into my fathers clothes, my sister into our mothers.
Yet there was a catch.
About this time the lockbox, I'd found of our parents, was running dry.... and while we were self sufficent, the crown needs it's due. Every year the tax man came, and every year the box got more empty, it wasn't like we were doing anything other than surviving.
So after a fairly heated discussion with my sister, I slipped on my fathers leathers, picked up my shortsword, and hitched the mule to the cart. I was taking a few sacks of wool, and baskets of potatoes and corn, hoping to make some coin. Or failing that find work, I personally had dreams of becomming a mercenary, and earning money to support my sister.
Granted nothing had prepared me for what I was to find in a city. As a hero/adventurer it's just a place to have a drink and find information, but for pesants, traders, and especially young elves, It's a warren of crime filth, and darkness.
Yeah things were just fine.....
Jandori who'd help mom around the kitchen was now making our meals. I'd wander out to the field to handle the live stock and tend the crops, much like I had when I'd helped my father.
Unfortunatly an elf who'd just reached puberty, and a prepubecent one, weren't really upto the task of managing and running a successful household, despite both having lived longer than the oldest human in the hamlet.
And while I'm sure given my father's aid, and even life, given in defense of the town could have earned us a helping hand from the survivors. I was too proud, or I like to think that was the reason. More than likely it was the nagging fear that someone would out me for killing my bully tormentor. Granted it was self defense, but the laws of Evendar are blind, or more to the point, jaded by whomever the enforcer of the law is.
Did I forget to mention that the Bully was the eldest son of the Hamlet's mayor?
So my sister and I kept to ourselves, and in some ways we prospered, but in the ways that mattered we failed.
I couldn't manage both the fields of crops and all the herding of the livestock.
My sister wasn't the greatest of cooks, and wasn't skilled at preserving.
We got by, but barely.
I just let one of the fields go, especially after wolves took half the flock of sheep. Fortunatly potatoes and corn grow themselves for the most part.
My sister got palatable at cooking, yet excelled at sewing and taking in our mothers and fathers clothes.
Winters were the worst, that first one was the hardest, we only survived because of the staples and preserves our mother had put away, we wern't as fortunate the following winter, yet after that first we atleast had dried corn and half moldy potatoes to live on as well as the occasional sheep.
Four years passed I started to grow into my fathers clothes, my sister into our mothers.
Yet there was a catch.
About this time the lockbox, I'd found of our parents, was running dry.... and while we were self sufficent, the crown needs it's due. Every year the tax man came, and every year the box got more empty, it wasn't like we were doing anything other than surviving.
So after a fairly heated discussion with my sister, I slipped on my fathers leathers, picked up my shortsword, and hitched the mule to the cart. I was taking a few sacks of wool, and baskets of potatoes and corn, hoping to make some coin. Or failing that find work, I personally had dreams of becomming a mercenary, and earning money to support my sister.
Granted nothing had prepared me for what I was to find in a city. As a hero/adventurer it's just a place to have a drink and find information, but for pesants, traders, and especially young elves, It's a warren of crime filth, and darkness.