One fateful day in the magical land Before Cities, a mysterious man falls from the sky. He awakens with no knowledge of his past, and quickly learns that he is far from ordinary. Granted otherworldly powers and seemingly cursed by The Brand that ado...
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"Ron, you sure signed up for much more than you bargained for." The farmer mutters to himself as beads of sweat trickle down his brow.
"It's bad enough that harvest is in a week, but now I have to take care of..." He stops for a moment and looks out to his home past the fields he is working. " ...Another mouth to feed". His calloused hands grasp the rim of his straw hat and fan himself with it. "This heat is what's bothering me. I'm sweating like a stuck pig"! he groans. " I doubt my house guest is doing any better. It is high time I pay him a visit since the sun ain't going nowhere". He picks up an old bucket set to his side and heads to the well beside his field.
He ties the worn rope hanging from the top of the well to the bucket's handle, which then falls to the bottom with a satisfying splash. As Ron turns the crank to retrieve the water, he glances at his cottage. On his windowsill is the mincemeat pie he had set out earlier to cool; its delicious scent wafts through the air leaving him drooling at the thought. The bucket reaches the top, and Ron returns with his package. He casually pushes the front door open and sits the pail beside the door, and some water spills over the side, causing him to grunt and curse under his breath.
"I'm back from chorin', thought I'd bring you some water to help ease the heat"! It took a moment before he realized he was standing in a vacant and messy room. Somebody had broken all his handmade furniture and scattered it around where it shouldn't be. His bed had a broken post, chairs missing legs, wooden plates and bowls turned to piles of splinters, and his various cutlery seemingly stuck in the panels on the floor. Even the spoons had been forced tightly into the boards. Despite that, what caught his attention was that the house guest he had brought in and nursed to health had left without warning or thanks.
He had always opened his home to those in need; that's what his father would tell him. Never in his days of living in this place had he ever met someone who had insulted his hospitality like this. Well, at least this is where his mind was taking him. He had then begun to think that maybe his guest had not left because, after all, wouldn't he have seen him make his escape while he was outside? Or at least he would have heard something, anything, right? Or perhaps his guest had awoken from his supposed life-threatening condition and was still in the house somewhere? "Shit."
Upon further investigation, he found the large cotton quilt once covering the unconscious man lying before the same windowsill he had used to air out the pie he was craving. A noise from his cellar makes him jolt in surprise, and his suspicions seem correct. He was still here. Ron grabs at a rack of farming equipment without taking his eyes off the trap door that he and his dad had fixed in the corner of their family home so many years ago. In his old age, he wasn't as keen to care for the cellar as his father once had him do. Or better yet, his father had made him do it since there was no arguing with him once his father wanted something done. He remembers how he would threaten to take away his supper unless he went down the ladder to the dark, dank depths. "The field mice find their way down there and nibble on my damn books"! He'd always say. "I need you to go down there and frighten them off."
