She grabbed another small twig and stared intently at it. I turned away to check the rabbits, and as I caught one, I heard her squeal with glee. I chuckled as I turned and saw that the twig she grabbed was burning. I grabbed the rabbits and handed her one.
"Congratulations, your prize for being able to do it is this finely cooked rabbit." I chuckled, sitting down next to the fire. I bit into the rabbit, and the next thing I knew, there was nothing left but the bones.
"Oh, this is delicious. Thank you for cooking this." I heard her say, placing hers on the ground next to her. "I don't think rabbit has ever tasted this good." She chuckled.
"I don't even remember tasting it or the last time I actually ate something. I'm actually surprised my strength lasted this long. I was looking forward to breakfast at the Broken Clock, but we all know how that night turned out."
"Well, you would have eaten that morning if you didn't startle me with you healing yourself."
"You're not wrong. Either way, I've eaten something now, and hopefully tonight I get some decent rest without worrying about being woken up by some jerks."
"If you hadn't been such a tyrant to the land, you wouldn't be hunted in the first place."
"Don't start with that nonsense right now. We're doing so well without being at each other's throats. I was starting to believe you were going to be pleasant company." I rubbed my face and sighed. I was starting to feel the exhaustion set in from being on the move. It was only the first day, but the journey had started unexpectedly, and they ran for a while.
"I'll keep my moral reservations about your actions to myself for now, but they will come back. I can't keep them in for long."
"With that mouth of yours, I expect them to question everything I do when we get to Greenwater. It's full of thieves, villainy, and every single one of them has a smile on their face as they push the knife deeper into your back."
"Greenwater can't be that bad; you act like it's the worst place in the entire world. I've heard that it used to be a bustling trade town."
"Yeah, the town is connected to several major waterways, and there are often a lot of merchants that pass through the town, only stopping for supplies or to hire extra guards."
"How is that cause to mistrust everyone in that town?"
"You're missing the bigger picture. Why would a merchant need extra guards? Because half the town plans to attack them as soon as they leave. Then it becomes a select few, backstabbing each other to reach the merchant first. When the rest get burned, they prey on the travelers who are by themselves, often being naive enough that the person helping them towards somewhere safe."
"Not your friend though?"
"Especially my friend. I fully expect him to backstab us. I need to be on the lookout for when it'll happen. I suspect he'll sell me out for the sizable bounty on my head, if I'm being honest."
"When would he report you to Mathios's men?"
"Probably the first chance he gets. He's going to suggest getting a room and discuss our next move. He'll say something about how he needs to go to his hideout to grab something he really should have on his person. Then instead of him going there, he'll head to the courier service, and within a day, we'll be on the run. So, we'll need to find that book and be ready to leave before that happens."
"Well, how will we find the book without any information?"
"I have one clue to help us in our search. My grandfather's journals were sparse on details about what happened in town, but he mentioned one name a few times. Brimbleton, Forrest Brimbleton."
"Who's that? He sounds important."
"Legally, he owns the largest tavern, general store, and the biggest dock in the entire town. Illegally, he's the crime boss of the Water Reeds. The largest crime family in the town. There's nothing that goes on in that town that he doesn't know about."
"So he'll know you're in town as soon as you walk in?"
"Hopefully, my presence can go unnoticed until I get a meeting with him."
"Your grand plan is to get a meeting with the most important person in the entire town? How do you imagine this meeting going anyway?"
"Unexpectedly and with threats of violence. We sneak in, we find out why my grandfather knew him, and we probably fight our way out."
"This is a terrible plan, and will most likely end in our death."
"I doubt that, when we do fight our way out. My friend can't claim the bounty, and he won't backstab us."
"Your plan involves revealing where you are to the single man who wants you dead. This plan of yours keeps getting worse and worse."
"By the time he or his men even get to Greenwater, we should be well on our way to the next leg of the journey."
"You think that Brimbleton has the book, don't you?"
"Yeah, it makes sense. It's definitely something that Brimbleton or his men would have found, and it's too valuable to sell to any collector. So, either the old man gave it to him for safekeeping, to pay off a debt, or Forrest just stumbled upon it. I guess that, and I have a feeling my hunch is right. Though we'll find out when we cross that bridge."
"It's a plan, a terrible one, but it's still a plan, and it's still better than no plan."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lise. It'll work out, don't worry." I said, starting to settle down for the night.
"You want to stop for the day?" She looked at me and snapped her fingers, cleaning her dress. "This spell is awesome. I can see why it's one of your favorites."
"Yeah, I'm beat, and while I wouldn't mind going farther, where we are and where we're going, it's not a big deal to rush there. So no need to be exhausted when we get there, and then we extend our stay for unnecessary reasons." I instinctively smiled at her glee. "It's certainly helped me when I was meeting with important people."
"So, you do smile; that's good to know." Lise teased me. A silence soon filled the air between us, broken by the birds and the flowing water next to us. I could feel myself being pulled into sleep as I let the sounds of the forest soothe me.
"Koga, I have a question about your grandmother. I know how you feel about your grandfather, but what about her? The woman he finally settled down with." I was almost asleep when she asked that. A small smile crossed my face as I remembered my days with her.
"My grandmother's name was Ellie. I suspect it was short for something, but I never found out what." I mused half asleep.
"You don't hate her then?"
"Of course not; she was the best thing to have ever happened to my grandfather. She didn't put up with any of his antics and didn't get star-eyed when they first met. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it. Amelia reminds me a lot of her."
"Wait, the Ice Queen reminds you of your grandmother?" I chuckled at Lise's nickname for her. It suited her quite well, actually, but I didn't think Amelia would appreciate it as I do.
"Yes, actually. Most people are obsessed with my grandfather. Not Amelia and certainly not my grandmother. Well, she was obsessed in another way. When my grandfather was out of the villa for some reason or another, my grandmother would call him on his Arcana. Every night, she'd call him, and every time he would answer. I sometimes overheard their conversations, and sometimes I would gag from them." I said, recalling the times I went to ask my grandmother something and would stumble across them talking.
"Arcana? I've never heard of such a device. It allows you to talk over vast distances, I'm guessing?"
"Yes, my grandfather grabbed them when he went to another reality and brought them back. A person's innate magical ability powers them. If I recall, there should be a few at the villa tucked away in his study. When my grandmother passed, he stopped taking one with him when he went."
"How did she die?"
"Peacefully in her sleep. My grandfather and I were up late studying about the disappearance of the nonhuman races in the land."
"You mean like Elves, Dwarves, and others like them?"
"Yeah, the other realities that my grandfather traveled to had an equal ratio of nonhumans to humans, but for some reason, my grandfather had only found Humans here. We theorized that several things could have happened. One theory is that the Elves interbred with humans to the point where they became indistinguishable and went extinct. Dwarves could have delved deeper and deeper into the mountains and closed themselves off to the rest of the world. Of course, I, being a young teenager, was more interested in the spells aspect of my training rather than the theory side of it."
"That's amazing, and throughout his travels, he didn't find anything substantial?"
"He found ruins, ancient mine shafts, abandoned villages, and a few other things related to the dwarves, pointing towards them going deeper underground, but he was never well-equipped enough to follow the road deeper. He could never find an old Elvish city or ruins. He suspected, like some of the other elves he had come across, that they built alongside the forests they lived in, and when they died off, nature reclaimed it. If he had found any nonhumans, he didn't write it down in his journals. The elves might be able to detect that he was a half-breed, and they distanced themselves from their kind."
"Thyme was a Half-Elf? I've heard that he had fairer skin and strange ears in some of the old-timers' stories of when he traveled through Refuge. I just thought it was just embellishment for the sake of a good story."
"He was, in fact, a half-breed. He told me he had lost track of his age long ago, but as he neared his death, he often said he was well past 100 years of age."
"Wait, he spent the last 60 years of his life here? He must have loved your grandmother deeply. Also, he was pretty spry for an older man to have fathered a couple of kids while he was here."
"As I said, the man was a serial womanizer, but he worshipped the ground Ellie walked on, and if it wasn't for her, I don't think he would have stayed here."
"It's so interesting that one woman was able to lock that man down to one reality out of many. It's also pretty romantic as well."
"Either way, I grow tired of talking about this. I'm turning in for the night. We'll follow the river, and we should reach the main road tomorrow." I said, yawning, rolling over, and facing away from her.
"Good night, Koga. I hope you sleep well." I heard her say as she made some noise behind me. I soon drifted off to sleep, letting the blackness envelop me.