Somewhere Only We Know ✨

P3- Satsuma Rat

"She's sending you down to the Foragers?"

White sheets were pinned over windows to weaken the heat of midday sunlight; the table and chair sat cozily away from even the gentle suggestion of the sun's rays. Penny was lazily pouring more ale into her glass, drinking it in slowly with an incredulous expression on her face.

Hammy, who sat on the closer end to the window, chewed greedily at a plump juniper cake- the soft sponge stuffed full with the sharp sweetness of the berries lulling him into satiated bliss. It was on the house, that's what Penny told him whilst she placed a generous amount of coins into his satchel for the ale she was now drinking. Grabby hands pulled another slice, and he nodded quietly.

"Be careful Hammy, I tell you. The ground is dodgy at the Moors- easy to trip over. And the people are odd; I hear those Foragers keep strange hours- sleeping in all morning, early afternoon too, and then work late into the night. Just like rodents, I'm sure." She reached over to ruffle his hair, "You're lucky you didn't end up down there. As a Forager, or maybe a if it were few years earlier down at that orphanage." Hammy's lip twitched slightly at that. "But you didn't I suppose. Stella's good like that."

Humming dismissively, he heartily swallowed the last piece of cake, "We've known eachother since we were little." He shook his head of her hand, trying to shake away that last topic too. "Am I really so old to be called 'Uncle Ham'?"

With a gentle titter, she passed him the remaining ale in the glass, "For the journey. And yes, you're twenty, that's old enough. Although you're still like a little baby to me."

She ignored Hammy's retorts between laughs and made her way to a small wooden chair by the window, piled up with fabrics. Along the legs of it was old chalk drawings, of warriors and demonic figures, fading by each year. As her hand tested the heat that passed through the window, she picked out a deep bronze coloured cloth, left behind from a delivery ship, although that was such long while ago now.

She wrapped it around Hammy's head as a bandana, steadily and softly. "Keep the sun off the top of your head, little dandelion- it's getting hotter these days. You must get going, if the gossip is right then those Foragers will be waking up around about this time. Off you go now."

Only coyly smiling in response, Hammy took a swig of the last of the ale, and planted a kiss on Penny's cheek. She sent him on his way and he walked backwards to face the house, waving an arm to and fro in the air, shouting grandiose goodbyes.

With the shut of her door, he swung himself around to face that old flagpole, knocking on it loudly in an attempt to wake it up, almost waiting for it to rise up from it's sad position and ask what his buisiness was. It only seemed to creak under the force. So ever so quietly, he leaned in towards it, and whispered gleefully to it,
"I'm going to see the Foragers!"

His arms swung in the air as he walked down the overgrown path, and he could've sworn he was flying. Flying above, and ignorant of the various ants and woodlice and spiders that scattered around his dancing feet. They must have sworn, too, that on that day there was a giant so heavy that his feet were anchored to the ground.

Step by step, the scenery around him began to change. The ground slowly became more uneven, and yet Hammy continued naively on. Air became so humid that grass became dampened and heavy, under the scent of the Moors. Leaves of shy flowers leant down to the floor under the weight of complacent and jaded snails.

A piece of bracken reached up and snagged at his leg- as he tripped his breath caught itself in tense apprehension, and he tried to push away the way that his excitement began to bubble into anxiety. Like acid in his stomach, it babbled away and threatened to rush up into his chest and throat, eating away at any previous childish curiosity. There was a reason- he thought- that everyone kept to their usual routines away from new and unknown things in this town.

His arm twitched towards the satchel as worse parts of him told him that stolen gin would alievate the dense heat and feelings of suffocation, when some sort of dreary structure entered his eye-line.

It almost radiated misery- some sort of long building that stretched across the untrustworthy ground, moulded out of clay and sticks. He could have sworn it resembled that lumpy, gooey porridge he'd been eating all of this year... it was the kind of stuff that stuck to your throat.

And there it was, right in the middle, a wooden sign post that read "Orphanage."  That same lumpy feeling in his throat, when the food wouldn't go down- he got it just by looking at that sign. He was about to walk away, just by discomfort, when something cold and clammy poked at his shoulder.

He yelped.

"Are you a new arrival? You look a bit too old for the Orphanage. Foraging?"

Spinning around, he came to face a pale young woman- who stared back at him with eyes that seemed stuck wide open, like a dead fish. Black paint outlined those strange blue eyes, as if they needed any attention being brought to them, and white hairs poked out of her scalp, just like peach fuzz.

"I'm called Heather. My father, Ozzie, is the lead Forager- if you're looking for him you'll find him deep in the Moors- good luck." With that, she began to turn away.

Subconsciously, he pinched himself. And as his mind woke back up again after the shock, a flood of emotions barricaded into his head; rustled up and perturbed, they jostled around, screaming at him to do something- run away, go after her- to understand this strange place, the place that could have been his home, or to get as far away as possible whilst he still could. Internally, he screamed. Taking a deep breath, he tried to say anything at all.

"I'm here to deliver the... acohol."
"We never asked for acohol."
"Stella wanted to deliver it, as a thank you for the bilberries."
She raised her eyebrows quietly; uncomfortably.
"My name is Hammy, I help out at the Inn. It's free, by the way- the alcohol."

Finally, the strained silence seemed to end, as her eyes trailed off into the distance, becoming glassy with memory and thought.
"We were supposed to have a Hammy come here years ago."
She didn't notice the tense flinch in his hands and in his legs.
He cleared his throat, and whilst his voice felt hoarse and nervous, he desperately tugged at his mind to change the topic.
"Who runs the Orphanage?"
"I run the Orphanage, sometimes. Most of the time it runs itself. I'm mainly busy foraging. Well... either way there's not much to run. It's quite a calm life... rhymetic."
"Are the kids happy there?" He ignored the feeling of his heart beating agaisnt his chest.
"It's not paradise, if that's what you're asking. Food is getting harder to get a hold of, I'm sure it is for you too, uptown, and the heat is getting stronger. Everyone's stressed, you know."
And there, he felt it seething up, his smile, his pride and a quiet snort.
"I'm not stressed."
And there they were again, eyes, looking at him not as empty, round shells, but pools. He saw ice cold pools of water looking into him, and showing him a fabled reflection in the rocky deep. Staring into the syrupy eyes of a charmer- facing him with the unknown.

"Are you running from it?"

Hammy tried to ignore how fake his laugh sounded after that.

She sighed deeply after that, seemingly out of boredom, and wrung her hands together in some sort of weary restlessness. Following another tired sigh, she gestured non-commitedly to the deeper parts of the Moors, with the few clay houses leading up to it, it eventually seemed to become one great big soup of mud.
"Would you like to come see how things work around here, as a Forager?"

A grin broke onto his face, and clumsily he put himself back together.

"If it isn't too much trouble."

At least this time, as he fumbled along to follow her, tripping over his feet, any uncertainty in that constant ringing of his laugh could be hidden by the anxiety that seemed to preside over the land. It wasn't anything abnormal- only the chattering of the mouse backed into a corner by a cat, left only to laugh under a shadow of its fatality.