When Robin lost his Hood

capitol ān; The Lucky Fly

A Decade Ago
Forthamshire, England

***

UPON THE SNARKY EXPRESSION was the brand of eternal mischief; of a past life's repressed pains; and a deathless youth yet to disappear.

In the young boy's eyes seemed yet to lurk a wave of an unruly dark ocean, manic and wild and searching for a solution to fill its endless hunger.

Hunger for what? The Merry Man, Faran, wasn't sure he wanted to know.

They'd heard about Gaderian Caen through a wayfarer in London. Just returned from that ghost town, Nottinghamshire, and ecstatic with the information he had received.

A heell of a fox, tat' lad. It wun't come to me surprise ef eavil Prince John ever hears uf his thievery! And listen to tis', lads- the women of Nottinghamshire have been gossiping aye? Been yapping that Caen ees the only one 'ho has daerd wunder in the Forest and lived! The wayfarer had boasted with a drunken slur. Ey ain never hurd anything like it, lads. The boye mest bee a daemon!

Nottingham was a small town located in the center of the vast woodlands of Sherwood Forest. Draped inside the forest like a small ring that provided no shine or beauty, it had been one of the last places the evil Prince John had ambushed and raided when he had come into power, and had therefore been the most severely injured.

Some said even the crops refused to grow now, children were gray-haired and mothers were barren of birthing any offsprings. Men were neither strong or held their faith in anything anymore, if else, they were only empty shells torn of anything good.

Not that Faran, the people of Nottingham's neighbouring town, Forthamshire, or the rest of England knew the accuracy of the horrid conditions there.

No, no one was foolish enough to enter the vastless woods of Sherwood willingly- but gossip had a way of slipping through the cracks of pavement and what the gossip said about Nottingham, people listened.

Gaderian Caen was the only one who had entered Sherwood Forest- and lived. If that didn't make the young boy special then, Faran thought, nothing in the world did.

In present time, though, they were sitting in a corner of the bar where light underwent darkness. Around them, a feast of sin was spread out- whores sitting on laps, laughing. Their hair placed high and their breasts barely hanging by their last ounce of modesty as they squeezed upwards into gleaming attention.

Young and old drunken men sat swaying and cursing and talking of rumors going about, hands on their knees- drinks spilling, torches wavering and the cheerful Huudeladi song enveloping everything in its embrace.

Just another pulsing night.

Inside of the crowd, the other four Merry Men sat tipsy and sweaty by the bar, equally as worn down by life as himself. Everyone here needed something to forget, whether it was a massacred family, a friend's grave they would have to dig tomorrow or the fact that their child had been taken by Prince John's soldiers to be thrown into his army.

Looking into Gaderian's eyes, Faran found himself lost for words for the first time in many years. Because in spite of the hovering dark cloud on everyone's heads, Gaderian Caen had entered The Lucky Fly smiling just minutes ago, almost amused... as if he knew something no one else did.

A thousand questions ran through his mind, from the fact that the boy didn't look as old as twelve years of age and to the horrified confusion as to who had given him the scar that ran through the side of his face in the form of a curved slope. Faran tilted his head for a moment, like the Grim Reapers scythe, he realized.