Another Patreon release!!This is the commission from Elaina/Rhio! I hope all of you enjoy it, and if you do, tell her! Maybe she’ll commission the continuance of the story, though I think this is plenty readable as one standalone, too. 2.840 words.
She loved the world she lived in. She loved the way the sun and the wind made the wheat into a sea when it grew tall enough, the way it rolled and danced like an ocean made of sunshine. She loved to run the entire length of the island, to the edge where the water splashed up against the rocks and roared. She loved the crisp smell of the forest in winter, when the snow laid upon the branches and the birds were still.
She loved the stories the old folks told, about the things that lived on the island, the different peoples who lived mostly on in each other’s imaginations. The pixies that lived at the far garden fields to the south, and the bright and colorful world there, with parties you could see at night, if you looked, tiny dancing balls of colored light over the deep grass. The serpents of the high rocks, whose claws could crush a centaur without effort, who could breathe ice and fire and who sometimes soared over the island. And the mermaids, the mermaids were her favorite, dwelling in the deep unknown of the sea–she had been to the rocks, and she often went to the garden fields, but centaurs, as a rule, did not go to the sea, and it contained all the tales that thrilled and frightened the colts.
She even loved her little town, and her little job in it, working as an apprentice blacksmith, spending her nights going to the little bar where her friend Mina worked slinging ales and ciders, where her friend Mako would bring leftovers from her little bakery. All was small and all was perfect, and very rarely did Haruka ever feel that something was missing from her life. Even when she did, she could not have conjured what the answer to the riddle might have been, and would have simply taken another ale, and another honeycake, and thought no more on the matter.
But even the sun enters the sea, sometimes, they say, and Haruka did occasionally fall into melancholy as dramatically as a rock falls into the ocean, and just as difficult to reclaim.
It was on an occasion such as this that Mina found herself rapidly losing patience with her gangly golden friend.
morning rebagel?