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 Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:12 pm
With winter hanging over the land, it had been a few weeks since Andie last left the farm and traveled up the road to Palisade. There wasn't much in the way of goods to sell, not when it was too cold and harsh for anything to grow. The supplies she and her family had stockpiled at the beginning of the season had begun to run low, however, and it was time to gather more in the city. It was especially poignant with the gossip that had recently floated into their tiny village, whispers of more disappearances from nearby areas. Unfortunately, money was always scarce where her family was concerned, and they certainly didn't have enough to relocate to Palisade, or even simply further from the wood, for a time.
Her father suggested taking and filling the cart full so they 'd be able to hunker down in their home until the hauntings passed and things were back to a quiet normal. When the weather finally permitted, Andie set out with cart and guardian—their old mule had passed in the fall and hadn't yet been replaced—towards the city.
On the way, as they moved to let a larger caravan pass, they hit a pothole hidden by snow and the cart, even older than the elderly mule had been, finally cracked and broke along the wheel. Luckily they hadn't been too far off and arrived in town without much struggle. Too bad they wouldn't be able to buy as much in the way of supplies now that repairs to the cart had to be made.
Rather than finding somewhere inside to settle as she waited, Andie instead was huddled against the wall of a building at the edge of the market. Cold didn't bother her too much normally, she just drew her shaw and her guardian deer closer when needed, but the longer they waited, the more apparent it became that they'd need something else to distract them from the way their breath puffed visibly in the winter air.
"Like this," she instructed, ducked down at Gambol's hooves. "Flip it." She snapped a pebble with her finger. The buck let out a loud snort and pawed at the ground, tumbling another stone around, but not quite flipping it up the same way. He looked surprisingly concentrated, though he snorted again and gnashed his teeth in irritation when his chosen decided it was okay to laugh at him. The teasing humor was easy to sense in her and he certainly wasn't having that. In retaliation, he mouthed at her hair, but she ducked away and only chuckled more.
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Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:26 pm
"But... m'lord, you should not be here! Not in the cold, not alone!"
Edgar heard the footman's protests out patiently. This was one of his father's men, loyal to Lord Edwin and cautious to a fault. He had caught sight of Edgar just as he was set to slip out of the manor and into the stable to change into more common clothes, and had no doubt found it strange that the young lord was poised to leave the estate on his own, in the middle of the day.
The story would have made its way back to Lord Edwin no matter what, and no matter what the story was, the lord would not have cared. Nor would he have done anything to correct his heir's behavior, but Edgar knew full well that stories of him slipping off the grounds dressed as a commoner to mingle with the peasants would only serve to heighten Lord Edwin's barely disguised disdain for him. And Edgar was not about to give his so-called father more reasons to despise him.
So he had wound up dressed as a lord, mounted on his gallant guardian and striding the streets of Palisade's marketplace. The buck hardly gave the bustling crowd a second glance as he cut a path through the throngs of milling shoppers, but the horse the footman had brought in pursuit of his lord was spooking at every noise and foreign smell, and it paced the cobbled path with anxious, crabbed steps and nostrils flaring.
"Fear not, Thomas, I will survive, I promise you." His words came with an air of practiced authority that came both from years of living as a man of privilege and from the timeless tutelage of books from across the ages. Much as he felt disjointed and alienated from the other members of his class, Edgar prided himself on being able to mask it in the appropriate situations.
Much like his Chosen, Dardanos walked the streets of Palisade with an air of practiced apathy. It stemmed not from disdain or a desire not to care, but rather from the knowledge that everyone or everything worth his attention would be drawn to him, would make themselves apparent of their own accord. Whenever they did, he responded without fail.
"Here," Edgar said suddenly, no longer paying attention to the footman trailing behind. He drew Dardanos to a halt beside an old and run-down cart, but it was not the cart that interested him so much as the deer and the girl beside it. A Guardian, he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt. Another one.
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