The Will [on hold]

5000s - Episode 3

5000

The village of Doroth was a charming place. Its quaint, homely charm was straight out of a Zoll Zoran storybook. Much like the neighboring city of Daerion, its streets were filled with smiling faces and devoid of crime. The small coastal village possessed all the beauty of Daerion, but none of its splendor: in the place of shimmering spires and marble villas, there were wooden huts with low thatched roofs. These sat in humble rows along the cobbled roads and earthen paths that took the place of Daerion’s wide paved avenues.

One cabin did not line the streets of Doroth. Set quite apart from the town center, it stood atop a shallow knoll, at the eastern foot of which the verdant grass grew sparser, bleeding into rocky sand. This hillock and the house upon it overlooked the pebbled beach of Doroth.

At the hillock’s western foot, there was a square stone tablet jutting from the loamy earth. It had been placed there just that morning, at the head of a pile of soil that evidently had been shoveled up and packed back into place. There had been a gentle rain that morning, and those fresh drops on the soil were mixed with the salt of warm tears.

Lincia wiped the back of her frail hand against her eyes as she took up her basket, descending the knoll and heading toward town. The rain had since abated. If the gray clouds overhead could hold their tears, she thought, then so should she. She did not want the people at market to ask. She could bear this grief alone; there was no need to burden anybody else with it.

It would be one loaf this morning instead of the usual two. Half as much of everything: only three damsons, two disks of cheese. The basket was half its usual weight today, but it felt heavier in her trembling hands today than ever.

“Lincia, dearest!” the lettuce vendor called, waving and smiling as Lincia passed quietly by.

Lincia approached the stall to return the kindly woman’s greeting with a hollow smile of her own. “Good day.”

She pretended to look at the lettuces.

The vendor asked how she had been, remarking that she hadn’t seen Lincia at market in the past several days. “And your father?” she inquired. “I hope he is well, that his health is improving?”

Lincia winced inside, though one would never know it from her steady face. “He passed. Last night,” she stated levelly.

The lettuce vendor’s face exploded with empathy. Lincia knew that it would, and she was sad to see it; she hated to cause anybody pain, even if it was only vicarious.

The vendor expressed her warmest, sincerest condolences, which Lincia took with thanks.

“We could take you in, you know,” she offered, handing the poor girl a bushel of lettuce, each crisp leaf a token of her sympathy. “Brontus has always been fond of you.”

“You’re too kind. I would not impose that burden,” Lincia declined; she was all too aware that the vendor’s son fancied her. “I like the cabin, besides. It’s always been my home.”

“Oh, a lovely thing like you would be no burden to us,” the woman insisted. “And Brontus just adores you, he’d be thrilled to have you! And at any rate, you would get awful lonesome out there, all on your own. If you won’t live with us, we’ll have to come and live with you!”

Lincia smiled halfheartedly, at what she knew was really not half a joke. All this love and kindness and compassion—it was altogether lovely, but too often quite a burden in itself.

“I think I’d like to be alone,” she professed. “For just a while, at least.”

The kind woman’s lips pursed into a frown, but she finally acceded. She was decent enough to know when to give up. “Of course,” she acquiesced, crushing Lincia in a close embrace before she let her leave. “Let us know, then, if you need anything.”