Points of View

Gold dappled across gold as the fading sunlight slowly dripped away among Bathen's fields of ripened wheat, tracing the outline of a house freshly thatched, a firewood pile ready for the oncoming winter and a barn, doors open, waiting for last week's harvest. Beside the door stood a hand-cart, empty save for a few vestiges of wheat cuttings, a short-handled sickle, and a man. A man who sat on a solitary bale of hay, watching the day away.

Waiting.

He watched the gold slip away into a fiery orange, watched further as the sky took on the colour of violet dragonflame before the day's due was done, as the gradual shift towards inky blackness was complete. By the light of the moon, the man finally moved. Standing up and hitching the hand-cart with practised grace, the man pulled it into the barn.

It was dark inside, but the man knew his way around, insofar as there was anything for the man to know his way around. Depositing the cart next to a paltry few piles of unthreshed grain, the man shut the door to the barn and walked the short distance back home to continue his vigil.

The sickle he left out.

The others would talk, he knew. Soon, it would be too late for him to finish the harvest with Hertha. It was already too late for him to finish the harvest alone. The townspeople wouldn't wait for Hertha to come back; while they were not struggling to make ends meet, having a homestead, even a small one, fail to bring in a harvest would result in much higher taxes for the rest of them. Whispers had already started circling like vultures over dying prey. Already he had been visited thrice; he no longer sought the bar for a place to drown himself. Teura—bless her heart—had been most insistent, the widow having come twice out of the three visits. Perhaps the fact that they both had something in common was driving her? He didn't blame her, but he would only continue the harvest if Hertha returned.

When she returned.

A cold dinner at a table with three chairs (but set for two). No fire in the house, no heat from the fireplace. No wheat in the barn, an emptiness inside growing every day as the days grew colder, waned shorter and the snow started to fall. More questions every day. Two days spent tracking a trail that ended in a grove, blackened with dragonflame, trees rent with claws the side of his arm, the near unidentifiable bodies of several wolves. One day spent searching the area, a fruitless endeavour except for several small dragon scales (which were worth a small fortune themselves) and days old splashes of blood. One string, blood red. More questions, but fewer answers. He had left the dragon scales behind. He did not like dragons. Yes, they had claimed an uneasy truce with the 3 kingdoms, but one heard stories from the others and from the few travellers that dared brave the journey all the way out here. They were devious, untrustworthy, and their magic was...visceral in nature. An eternity in bed, chasing sleep so slippery, suffering in silence. Stretching onwards, slowly until --

A rustling.

The man sat up, wide alert. Surely the others wouldn't stoop to stealing his crop under the darkness of night? It was not theirs to take! He stumped out of his room, slammed open the door to his house and snatched his woodchopping axe in both hands as his quick strides took him in the direction of the source of the noise. The anger was good, a brief distraction from the terrors lurking behind the next day. The moonlight shone bright, yet he still couldn't see the intruder. More curious now than angry, he made his way to the barn to see if anyone had broken in.

The sickle was gone.

The sickle was gone.

"THIIIEEEEFFFF!" He roared. "That was not yours to TAKE!" Axe at the ready, he rounded the back of the barn, only to be greeted with rows of small wheat bundles, all neatly tied up, just the way Hertha would arrange them.