The Wandering Witch VOL. 1 - The Prelude Arc (COMPLETED)

3.1| A Thieving Crow

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N O C T

    Today was going to be a good one, he decided.

    As childish as it sounded, the young man named Noct would often guess how each day would turn out by observing the weather. Quite an odd one indeed, he had been doing this for the past years and surprisingly, most of the time his predictions had ended up correct. If the weather was fair or sunny, the scales of chance was tipped in his favor and his steals for the day would be enough to buy him a delicious meal in some tavern somewhere. If the weather was dreary, then it was the opposite. Chances were that his steals for the day would be close to nil and he'd either have a half-rotten fruit for dinner or even perhaps none at all.

    Such was the life of a thief like him.

    The kingdom of Uldard was not an easy place to live in, even with its merits for being a place of grand beginnings. In his opinion, that phrase was just a useless advertisement to entice the people. To someone who had been orphaned and penniless since childhood like Noct, surviving in the harsh conditions of the world he lived in was not an easy thing to do. So, naturally, he turned to the only thing that required neither money nor experience, and only tact. Thievery.

   Noct often liked to consider himself as not just any run-off-the-mill kind of average thief. In fact, he considered himself as a highly-accomplished one, and it simply wasn't because he had a huge ego or anything of the sort, which he did. The reason for it was simple. Noct's skill for thievery was undeniable. After all, he had been stealing and deceiving for as long as he could remember. It was his natural talent, so to say. His born ability. The one special trait of his that he had refined and cultivated after years and years of careful practice. To Noct, fooling unsuspecting citizens was as natural as him breathing in air. He had spent so much time hiding his real face behind an invisible mask for so long that he could pull of any kind of act without requiring a drop of sweat, and almost all of the people he met for the first time didn't know that right under his bright, friendly grin and helpful, cheery facade, he was, in fact, a cunning, cussing, and an impolite two-faced bastard.

   He was a master of deceit. That much was a well-known fact among his fellow thieves. However, there was more to that which made him a great one. Noct had also been blessed with a resourceful mind and a nimble body--the perfect kind of combination that any thief like him could ever hope for. Sometimes, some of the few people who knew him would even point out that if he only had put his mind to better use, perhaps Noct could have held a respectable job in a shop somewhere and earn his keep honestly instead of leading a life of crime.

    But where was the fun in that?

    Noct loved being a thief. The happiness at the prospect of a big steal filled his hunger and quenched his thirst more than food and water ever could. He loved the feel of the whistling wind as he sped atop the high roofs, the rush that came over him whenever he ran away from a steal or was being chased by the kingdom's sentries. Those short moments of when he jumped from a roof to another almost made him feel like a hovering bird in midair, ready to fly away into the sky to escape. He could go anywhere he wanted to and do anything he liked whenever he wanted. Although there was no luxury in being a thief, there was that blissful feeling of freedom in exchange. And that, he decided, was better than any feeling he could experience.

   "Oi, oi, Crow..." Pierre, Noct's fellow thief and partner, suddenly called out to him as they both sat on the red-tiled rooftop of a tall building erected beside one of Uldard's busiest and crowded market roads. They had happened to meet each other by coincidence. Both of them had been there for some time already, surveying the busy noontime crowd underneath their noses to look for potential victims.