Aerie awoke to something tugging, pulling, her scalp feeling like it was on fire. Her own face taut and wincing, she found herself looking up into the long face of gray mare, munching away quite happily. “Ow, ow, ow, oww!” Aerie slid across the floor of the barn she was in, trying her best to ease herself free without startling the beast, gritting, “that isn’t hay, you stupid horse!”
She got loose, bouncing to her feet immediately; as a wake-up call it had been most effective. She shook her hair, patted down her sky blue tunic, then glared at the horse. It stared blankly back with its big brown eyes, still munching merrily, tail swishing contentedly… she just couldn’t be mad. “I’m sorry,” she sighed, “I shouldn’t have called you stupid. I was speaking out of hurt. You’re right; I should get it trimmed.”
Although first she needed to ascertain exactly where she’d ended up. She recognized the barn and the horse of course; she was still in the village, only able to hope she hadn’t done anything truly embarrassing.
It was early morning. A thin mist had descended, a warm diffuse yellow glow belying the chill of the air. The circus camped just outside the barn, just now waking up.
“Ahh,” Lucretious’ tent was closest, the ringmaster beaming through a mirror she held in one hand while painting her lips, “the wingless wonder rises. You know every adventurer I’ve known has been a deeply troubled soul, but most are far better at concealing it than you.”
Aerie went furtive; head bowed, one arm crossing behind her back to hold an elbow while one foot rose to scratch the other calf. “I’m sorry,” she said not knowing why, but assuming it was for something bad.
“Oh,” the mirror snapped shut, “no need to bother with Popper today,” Lucretious rooted through the paraphernalia in her tent. “While you were outside the tavern singing ‘Bhaal Bawls For His Very Small Balls’ at the top of your lungs you dropped this.” She tossed and Aerie caught the little pink owlbear necklace. “It seems important to you.”
It was. She should have been taking better care of it. She should have been taking better care of everything. She exhaled quietly, “thank you.”
“Are you okay, dear?” Lucretious regarded her pityingly. “You look a little… defeated.”
She supposed she was. She thought she could be tough, that she could keep things locked up inside and carry on like she didn’t care. But she was losing that fight as well. Still she said, “I’ll be fine.”
“I am not at all convinced, but I’ve invested too much to give up now. You should go get yourself something to eat. I believe the chef is preparing his Kobold Surprise!”
“What’s the surprise?”
“It’s a vegetarian dish.”
Aerie still didn’t know what Lucretious was really after but resigned herself to just going with it, so after finishing some slop with a slurp she started looking around for anyone that needed a hand with anything.
“I need to post some things,” Ervir said, “would you mind watching him?”
Thyn’s wavy blue hair flopped to one side as he peered up, studying her. “All right,” she nodded.
Ervir bowed saying thank you then quickly disappeared, leaving Aerie alone with the child who then blurted, “why are you always so sad?”
Really not a straightforward question to answer. Well, there was one simple, and true, answer; trauma. But it would lead to a multitude of other questions with answers ranging from being a minority of one to corpse littered battlefields and other things she had locked away and just a hodge-podge of so much stuff, some of which she thought she’d already figured out. “Honestly?” Aerie sighed, “I don’t know.”
Despite his young age he perhaps understood that feelings could be complicated and hard to talk about - after all, he had lost a mother - as he didn’t push her further on it. Instead he nodded and asked, “do you want to look at the rabbits?”
Aerie wasn’t sure she was ready to handle that much excitement, but nevertheless went along. One of the houses in the village had hutches outside, Thyneus drawn to one that had an entirely black bunny hopping about inside. “Come on,” he cooed and rapped on the mesh, trying to entice the rabbit forward with a bit of carrot, “I’ve got a treat. You want it, yeah?” But with his shadow looming over it the little animal just retreated further inside, balling up, nose twitching nervously. The little boy was heartbroken. “Awww… come on! Doesn’t he want to come out?”
Aerie knelt, explaining, “we’re big and scary to him. He feels safe in his cage.”
His face scrunched as he considered, then he reminded her, “you didn’t feel safe in yours, did you?”
“You know about that?” She wasn’t really surprised; there were few secrets in a place like this. She was sure everyone knew her history by now.
“Dad says it’s why you don’t like the circus.”
Ervir wasn’t wrong. She supposed there were moments when she’d been glad of the bars, like when slobbery old men leered threateningly at her. Of course if her keepers weren’t happy for any reason, then she was in there trapped… she winced, saying, “it was a long time ago.”
“Were you in there all the time? Like, did they let you out to pooh?”
One of the constants of the universe it seemed; children fascinated by poop. “I had a bucket.”
“Gross,” Thyn hopped to his feet, turning to face, eyes glittering as if Oghma had struck him with inspiration. “Hey, when you were little,” he snorted, whatever it was obviously just too brilliant to contain, “did… did you have to learn the elf-abet?”
Aerie arched a brow, her mouth curling just slightly as she blinked very slowly. “That… that was awful.”
“I’m sorry. Was that rude? Let’s make up and shake hands.” He held out his. She had a strong suspicion of what was coming, but fine - she reached out, only for him to snap his hand away, planting the thumb under his nose as he wriggled his fingers and stuck out his tongue. “Your face!”
“No; I-I knew you would do that,” Aerie insisted, “I had a friend who did that to me all the time.” She wistfully sighed, rolling her eyes until she saw Thyn was waiting expectantly; seemed it was her turn. “All right; do you know what my favorite thing to learn was?”
“What?”
“Spelling.”
His mouth squashed as he shook his head, not impressed. “What do you get if you cross a vampire with a yeti?”
“Frostbite?” He frowned, not happy that she’d guessed. Aerie thought, recalling every dumb thing ever said to cheer her up. “How do you know if a vampire has a cold?”
“He starts coffin!” Thyn spat out triumphantly, evening the score. “What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?”
“I don’t know,” Aerie pretended, “what?”
“Ha! A carrot!”
“Okay… why is a bee’s hair sticky?”
“Why?”
“They use honey combs.”
That nearly cracked him, but not quite. It became a contest that lasted the rest of the morning. Aerie’s over a century of experience being sad and lonely gave her an advantage, but she did her best to make it seem competitive. And, for the first time in a long time, there was no beating inside her mind or little torturer’s voice chiding her. To say she was happy might have been a stretch, but for a while she was content.
The game ended when bells started to be rung around the village, and Aerie was compelled by her nature to investigate. Perhaps a fire, she thought, but she couldn’t see or smell any smoke. There were people running toward the one small church in the village dedicated to Ilmater. She bumped into Ervir running the other way, taking Thyn.
“What’s happened?” She asked.
“Some kind of battle,” was all he knew.
Aerie pushed on to the church, seeing about a dozen bent and haggard men and women limping inside, their blue gambesons stained red, one missing an eye, a few being carried on makeshift stretchers. She paused, placing one hand on her stomach, the other touching her breast where her symbol of Baervan Wildwanderer lay beneath her tunic, taking a deep breath before following them inside.
The church hall echoed with harrowing moans as the wounded cried and begged for the priests. There were only two resident here, one of them a novice who just stood by the entrance wide-eyed and paralyzed. “Father,” she blinked, “what do we do?”
The senior priest paced, hands clasped close to his heart, knuckles white as he stammered, “I-I don’t… I don’t know…”
“Father! There are wounded!”
“So… so many. How do we do it? How do we choose which ones to help?”
Aerie pitied the priests - they’d obviously not had an emergency like this in the village before - but those people couldn’t afford to wait for them to pull themselves together. She took another deep breath, needing it to sound as commanding as a five-foot elf could as she stepped forward. She went through life fretting about anything and everything, but the moment there was a crisis it was as if some instinct took over and she knew what to do. Not so good at knowing what to do after, but now, “check the quiet ones first,” she said, “if they’re strong enough to cry out, they’re strong enough to wait.”
The novice at least was glad someone else had taken charge and immediately began to follow Aerie’s instructions, the elder priest only joining them after most of the work had been done. None of the wounded were lost, the credit for which really belonged to Aerie, but credit wasn’t what she was interested in. What did interest her was a pin she found when examining one of the men.
“You’re Harpers,” she muttered, her wide blue eyes impossibly becoming wider. She hadn’t asked what Jaheira had been doing in Waterdeep since she hadn’t expected a real answer. Obviously she knew they hadn’t traveled there just for her and must have had some Harper business, but now she needed to know, running around checking the faces of everyone she hadn’t treated herself. Jaheira’s wasn’t among them, but that was no relief.
“He just came out of nowhere,” a young man wept, “no warning; he just started attacking and cutting us all down like we were children.”
Aerie knelt, gently yet urgently clasping his hand. “Who?”
He looked up glassily at her, only saying, “we were just pests to him - that’s probably why we’re alive. He was only interested in Jaheira.”
“Jaheira!” Aerie’s heart jumped, her fears confirmed, “where is she?!”
An elder man winced as he pushed himself up, “she was leading him to some ruins to the northeast. Boy’s right; she was the only one of us he cared about. You must be Aerie - she mentioned you.”
In other circumstances it might have pleased her to know Jaheira spoke of her at all, but right now her head was buzzing and she needed more answers. “Who was it that attacked you?”
“Vortigan. Afraid we honestly don’t know much about him. He’s a warrior, mercenary of sorts, but really seems to only care about finding more and more powerful foes to slay. There’s a small retinue that travels with him, but he always fights alone.”
Was it the same man that had killed the werewolves? The one she’d just let walk away, and now he’d gone after her family. Aerie bit her lip, breathing to cool and steady herself. If Jaheira were here, she’d tell her it was pointless to dwell on such things. What mattered was what she did now. “How far northeast?”
“Seven or eight miles; it would take a couple of hours on foot.”
“I won’t be going on foot,” Aerie stood, sweeping around and heading toward the church doors.
“Wait!” The old Harper, although obviously still in pain, pushed himself the rest of the way to his feet. “Thanks to your efforts, most of us are ready to fight. We can still help.”
She was doubtful; even though their wounds were healed they still needed rest. But she understood their need to be useful as well. “Then catch up as quickly as you can,” she said, rising into the air the moment she stepped outside.
