Project: TheirWorld - Chapter 030 - Part 2

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Ties

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TheirWorld

“Servant…” Guin muttered. Could it be? “Your grandmother wouldn’t be Alta Noin, would she?”

Dawl looked at her in considerable shock. “H-How…?”

Smiling fondly, Guin sat down on the grass, “Pastor Jormund asked me to visit her. She’s told me stories of your grandfather.”

“D-Did he?” he stuttered, but then the silence returned.

“Did he often visit your grandparents? Jormund?” Guin asked.

“He did - though, back then I didn’t know why. Every time I saw them together, Jormund would look nervous, then angry, often lashing out at me or my grandfather. Grandfather himself would treat Jormund with a strange, uncharacteristic coldness. I know now - though it does little to undo the pain that we went through then. With each passing day I grew more hateful toward him - and Jormund let me. Time passed, and rather than enemies, we merely became strangers.

“Eventually, Jormund married Melora, my grandmother’s disciple. Melora was well suited for for Jormund; a devout servant of the lady - and she was well in love with the noble, pious Jormund.”

Guin stared at him. “...If you are about to go into some woeful tale of a woman who chose him over you of her own volition, I will have lost all the respect I have for you,” she said before he could continue, but Dawl just chuckled.

“No, no,” he waved his hand in the air. “Melora was a lovely young woman, but to me she was only a sister. At that time, I had had the misfortune of falling in love with a garuli trader who wanted nothing to do with me.” Guin smirked a bit as she imagined this man with Bahena. But rather than being upset about his spurned love, he seemed quite content and continued his story. “Soon after they had wed, Melora conceived a child,” he said, his voice turning sad. “Everything started when she lost it.” With a sharp pain in her heart, Guin looked away. “It’s not an uncommon thing, but Melora… did not handle it well. Not wanting to be alone, she would visit with my grandparents everyday, busying herself by taking care of them. She had no family of her own, you see, and my grandparents were quite fond of her. For a while, everything was alright - or so we thought. Melora had listened well to the stories of my grandfather, but there was one she most longed to hear - the story of the Che-bound spirits.”

Guin furrowed her brow, “The Che-bound? What about them?”

Dawl hesitated, but apparently decided to tell her what she wanted to know. “The Che-bound are rare, powerful creatures. The stories tell of them wielding the powers of the great beasts themselves, even in our mortal realm. One such story that Grandfather often told was how he had captured a Che-bound spirit and forced it to grant him a wish in exchange for his freedom.”

“A wish…” Guin’s heart began to sink as she predicted the next parts of the story.

“Melora believed it all, and believed that she had found a Che-bound Spirit Stag in the woods.” Dawl’s voice grew tight. “When she did not return, he came to me and asked if I had seen her. Together, we went to my grandparents house where my grandfather was preparing to leave. He had sensed corruption in the woods.”

“Melora caused the corruption by trapping it?” Guin asked in surprise.

Dawl shook his head. “No. While she had managed to trap it, she did not anticipate that the hunters in the wood would have also found it - and her. By the time we got there, it was already too late. We found her with the stag, both covered in blood. How she was still conscious at that moment... I can only imagine that that it was the spirits’ will. It was then, as I shook in fear in anger while Jormund stood, an image of calm serenity, that I realized the part of him that I had always overlooked.”

“What was that?”

“That is not my secret to tell,” he told her. “And I can tell you know more. I could not see what happened in the forest that night. I could only sense the powers as they ebbed and flowed. Grandfather told us of the Corruption, and in order to cleanse the spirit, who had since turned malevolent, Grandfather summoned his master and plead with him. In the end, my grandfather gave his own life in exchange for the forest.”

Heart jumping to her throat, Guin exclaimed, “What!” Did that mean that even if she got the pelt of the fox spirit, nothing could be done? “What about Melora?”

Shifting uncomfortably, Dawl stroked his beard. “She died. According to Jormund, she had died long before we got there. It was a hunter’s arrow, through her stomach. It was the power of the spirit that had kept her… in the half living state she was in.” The man looked considerably older in that moment, as he looked out over the woods. “They… They loved this forest. We loved this forest…” Dawl hunched over, and entered a silent contemplation. “I wish… I wish I, too, could see the world my grandfather knew. Perhaps then I could… I could have taken some of the burden back then, rather than just have… stood there.”

Thinking about them, Guin felt a deep regret. Among those still living, they all blamed themselves more than they blamed each other - even Alta Noin.

“Ah,” went Dawl with a soft laugh. “Listen to me, going on - the sun is already starting to set. How foolish of me, telling a child such a tale..”

Shaking her head, Guin told him, “No. I really appreciate it. After all, I am the one that is now fighting that corruption.”

“You shouldn’t be,” he said.

“Who else if not me?” she asked happily.

Dawl cleared his throat, “Haven’t you got someplace better to be then hanging out with old men like me?”

“Well,” she said, standing and stretching. “I do have a few more errands to run before the day is finished. You can find me around town if you hear anything about the pelt. I’d like to avoid what happened to your grandfather. If there's a chance, we should resolve the situation before anyone else dies.”

He nodded absently as she turned and left him.

When she was a good few feet away, Liorax appeared on her shoulder with an unhappy smile on his face.

“Well?” she asked the cat.

“The pelt belongs to our dear Master Hunter - but you already knew that, didn’t you?” he said in his sly, bemused tone. “Should we retrieve it?”

Guin paused and looked at Dawl, still sitting at his table, his face holding a lost expression that reminded her of his grandmother. After everything he had told her, after everything that she had heard and seen, the one thing she wanted to admit to herself was that she wanted to believe in him. In his heart. In the love he had for his friends and family. For the forest.

But how far could she really trust him?

She pat Liorax on the head as he purred. “Give him till tomorrow,” she said. “If he fails, then.... Guess I have no choice but to be a thief. Ahh. Totally not my style. Tch. Stupid game.”

Liorax gave her an amused look, then disappeared into a buff. For now, it should be a proper time to meet with Jormund. The pastor had quite a lot to answer for now, in her book. Just what was he hiding?

There was only one thing left for her to do: Ask him herself.