Original story: Halloween releated maybe somehow?
Monday, October 1st, 2012 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsaikoOMG, story! It's not much because I'm going to try writing a little bit each day throughout October. I was hoping for something Halloween related, but I'll take what I can get at this point. Not really edited so be warned.
Korva was not happy with how things were going.
He stood in the middle of a road that was little more than a dirt track carved from the earth by the innumerable passing of wagon wheels. Before him stood Hendar Merchant, Hendar’s wagon, and the dark colored mule that pulled Hendar’s wagon.
“What do you mean you don’t have them?” he asked. Surely he had heard incorrectly. The gods couldn’t hate him so much that they would direct him out into the forsaken mountains on a wild goose chase. Korva pulled his cloak tighter around him, grateful for the warmth the oiled wool provided. It had kept him mostly dry earlier, when the low hanging cloud had blocked the rising sun and rain had come down in short, sporadic bursts.
“I don’t have them,” the Hendar repeated. He scratched at his right cheek, hidden beneath his thick, black beard. The merchant looked up, squinting at the new cleared sky as if it held the secret to his memories. “Traded them last market day for a cask of apple cider. That would have been... oh... three days ago? Something like that. Wasn’t going to hang onto them that long anyway. What’s a man like me going to do with a pair of earrings that fancy anyway?”
“Who did you trade them to?” Korva asked. He held his temper in check by the barest of threads. His shirt stuck damply to his skin wherever rain water had managed to sneak in through his cloak, leaving patches of chill against his skin that the wind seemed to find with unerring accuracy. Korva’s socks were damp in his boots. Mud splattered the back of his pants, making the cloth stiffer than it should have been.
He should have never left his tower.
“Don’t rightly know. Never seen the man before. This close to the border wall, we get all sorts,” Hendar said with a shrug. “He said he was heading west as soon as he’d unloaded his stock. Name of Tsjagin or some other such name.”
Of course the merchant wouldn’t recognize who he traded the earrings to, and of course, the person was heading west afterwards. As an added bonus, they had some impossible to pronounce western name. Lovely. Korva reluctantly pulled out a bronze coin from his pouch and pressed it into Hendar’s palm.
“Thank you for the information. May the gods look favorably on your trades and may the bargains always be in your favor,” Korva said in as polite a tone as he could muster. It wasn’t all that polite, but it was the best he could do.
Hendar took the coin. “May the gods guide you to what you seek. If it’s any comfort, had I known you were looking for them, I would have kept them for you.”
And you would have charged me double what you traded the earrings for too. “You couldn’t have known.” Korva stepped out of the road, ignoring the way the damp grass soaked his pants. “I’ll head back to town to see if anyone knows where the man you traded with was going. Sorry for delaying you so long.”
“No problem. The longer you keep me, the longer I can stay away from my shrew of a wife.” Hendar laughed uproariously like he had made the best joke ever. A flock of crows rose up from the field, cawing their displeasure. Korva forced a polite smile to his face as Hendar clicked his tongue. Hendar’s mule started forward along the road.
Korva waited until Hendar’s cart was long past before turning to head back towards Saltoun. It wasn’t long before he came to where the path wandered into the edge of a forest. The hickory and chestnuts were shading to golden yellow, while the oaks were decked out in shades of brown. He paused beneath the dappled shade, closed his eyes, and forced the tension in his shoulders to ease.
He had no intention of returning to town. Doing so would lose him too much time. Korva needed to find the foreigner that Hendar had traded with before he crossed the border wall.
The earrings weren’t large. Korva brought an image of the pair to mind. They were little more than studs really: two orange sapphires identical in color and roughly carved into spheres the size of his pinky nail and banded by silver. He supposed they would be fancy to a merchant from this backwater area. At court they would be simple, almost too plain to wear anywhere but the most informal of gatherings.
Then again, it wasn’t the earrings themselves that were important. It was the challenge of finding them. Korva kept his eyes closed and the mental image of the earrings firmly in his mind as he slowly turned in a circle. Heat suddenly flared in his mind. There. That was the direct the earrings where. He opened his eyes and oriented himself based on the afternoon sun.
West.
Why was he not surprised?
I was going for 500 words a night, but this is already over 800. I was going to try for 1,000, but of course, my laundry just got done drying and I have to go hang that up if I want to have pants to wear to work tomorrow.
Korva was not happy with how things were going.
He stood in the middle of a road that was little more than a dirt track carved from the earth by the innumerable passing of wagon wheels. Before him stood Hendar Merchant, Hendar’s wagon, and the dark colored mule that pulled Hendar’s wagon.
“What do you mean you don’t have them?” he asked. Surely he had heard incorrectly. The gods couldn’t hate him so much that they would direct him out into the forsaken mountains on a wild goose chase. Korva pulled his cloak tighter around him, grateful for the warmth the oiled wool provided. It had kept him mostly dry earlier, when the low hanging cloud had blocked the rising sun and rain had come down in short, sporadic bursts.
“I don’t have them,” the Hendar repeated. He scratched at his right cheek, hidden beneath his thick, black beard. The merchant looked up, squinting at the new cleared sky as if it held the secret to his memories. “Traded them last market day for a cask of apple cider. That would have been... oh... three days ago? Something like that. Wasn’t going to hang onto them that long anyway. What’s a man like me going to do with a pair of earrings that fancy anyway?”
“Who did you trade them to?” Korva asked. He held his temper in check by the barest of threads. His shirt stuck damply to his skin wherever rain water had managed to sneak in through his cloak, leaving patches of chill against his skin that the wind seemed to find with unerring accuracy. Korva’s socks were damp in his boots. Mud splattered the back of his pants, making the cloth stiffer than it should have been.
He should have never left his tower.
“Don’t rightly know. Never seen the man before. This close to the border wall, we get all sorts,” Hendar said with a shrug. “He said he was heading west as soon as he’d unloaded his stock. Name of Tsjagin or some other such name.”
Of course the merchant wouldn’t recognize who he traded the earrings to, and of course, the person was heading west afterwards. As an added bonus, they had some impossible to pronounce western name. Lovely. Korva reluctantly pulled out a bronze coin from his pouch and pressed it into Hendar’s palm.
“Thank you for the information. May the gods look favorably on your trades and may the bargains always be in your favor,” Korva said in as polite a tone as he could muster. It wasn’t all that polite, but it was the best he could do.
Hendar took the coin. “May the gods guide you to what you seek. If it’s any comfort, had I known you were looking for them, I would have kept them for you.”
And you would have charged me double what you traded the earrings for too. “You couldn’t have known.” Korva stepped out of the road, ignoring the way the damp grass soaked his pants. “I’ll head back to town to see if anyone knows where the man you traded with was going. Sorry for delaying you so long.”
“No problem. The longer you keep me, the longer I can stay away from my shrew of a wife.” Hendar laughed uproariously like he had made the best joke ever. A flock of crows rose up from the field, cawing their displeasure. Korva forced a polite smile to his face as Hendar clicked his tongue. Hendar’s mule started forward along the road.
Korva waited until Hendar’s cart was long past before turning to head back towards Saltoun. It wasn’t long before he came to where the path wandered into the edge of a forest. The hickory and chestnuts were shading to golden yellow, while the oaks were decked out in shades of brown. He paused beneath the dappled shade, closed his eyes, and forced the tension in his shoulders to ease.
He had no intention of returning to town. Doing so would lose him too much time. Korva needed to find the foreigner that Hendar had traded with before he crossed the border wall.
The earrings weren’t large. Korva brought an image of the pair to mind. They were little more than studs really: two orange sapphires identical in color and roughly carved into spheres the size of his pinky nail and banded by silver. He supposed they would be fancy to a merchant from this backwater area. At court they would be simple, almost too plain to wear anywhere but the most informal of gatherings.
Then again, it wasn’t the earrings themselves that were important. It was the challenge of finding them. Korva kept his eyes closed and the mental image of the earrings firmly in his mind as he slowly turned in a circle. Heat suddenly flared in his mind. There. That was the direct the earrings where. He opened his eyes and oriented himself based on the afternoon sun.
West.
Why was he not surprised?
I was going for 500 words a night, but this is already over 800. I was going to try for 1,000, but of course, my laundry just got done drying and I have to go hang that up if I want to have pants to wear to work tomorrow.
(no subject)
Date: 10/2/12 03:15 am (UTC)As far as Halloween connection... the orange sapphires? Tiny jack-o-lanterns, perhaps. ^_^