Prologue 2 — The Farmer

PROLOGUE II -- THE FARMER

 

As the new Wolf's moon looked down across the isles of Cloudsea -- a round silhouette of darkness -- hints of the coming dawn break began to spread over the sleepy isle of Windswept. From a lonely farmstead on the outskirts of Windswept Port Town, one Caitlyn MacCready leaned with crossed arms against a fence post under her favorite apple tree. From her perch, she looked up at the sky and watched the comings of cloud vessels, in the forms of various airships following steady paths south in the direction of the port town as they sailed across the night sky.

 

Brushing a loose lock of fearsome red bangs behind her ear, Caitlyn moments later cupped her mouth with the same hand, hiding an errant yawn from imagined onlookers.

 

"Wolf above," she drawled through her breath while returning her arm to its stoop on the fence post. "Always so blasted lethargic at the end of a tendays night," she then mumbled to herself. Plucking an apple from the wicker basket hanging on the crook of her elbow, she took a bite of the waxy red thing in hopes of staving off the desire to nap under that old tree.

 

Like all the known Cloudsea, save for the Horns that lived in Always Dark, Caitlyn's circadian rhythms were routinely disrupted during the final tendays of each lunar cycle. After every thirty cycles of day and night, the lengthy tendays of night always followed. Whence the Hawk's star no longer circled the Wolf's moon, instead hiding behind the Wolf where it would then be eclipsed wholly for ten days. This was the pattern by which Caitlyn MacCready frequently found herself in an inconvenient if not expectant state lethargy. And that particular night was almost no different.

 

Watching the various makes of airships conduct their slow journeys to port, Caitlyn took note of the handfuls of vessel, either elven, or gnomish in make. She strained her eyes against the starlit sky at the occasional dim auras of some few angelic winged denizens of the Cloudsea joining the transit from other isles north. It was not yet noon, and so still a long ways off from next dawn break, however, the sky was before long blotted with an enormous number of flying ship and traveler.

 

Caitlyn pushed herself off of the fence post, and stretched, before brushing off dust from her woolen blouse and pleated longskirt. Twirling on her feet, and turning her attention instead to the farmhouse a hundred and so paces behind her perch, she took one step forward before having her attention caught a final time by the happenings of the restless long night sky.

 

A sound like heavy flapping then craned her neck up in curiosity, and she spotted a low flying creature of generally human shape -- aside for their impressive wings. The creature flew only some twenty or thirty feet above her; it was hard to tell scale exactly, with the dimness of starlight and distant lanterns from the farm being the only light sources. Nevertheless as the creature flapped overhead it mumbled and squawked as if a bird, clearly enough for her to recognize its speech to be in an avian tongue which she wasn't familiar with. As the creature passed directly overhead, her neck tilted to extreme lengths to follow the never before seen -- least not by her -- creature.

 

Her attention was then broken, by a peculiar and unremarkable glint of caught light on something falling from the winged-creature's person as it passed overhead. An item of no significant weight, it tumbled end over as it weaved its way to the ground, falling a few paces before Caitlyn's feet.

 

Caitlyn stepped closer and spoke aloud to herself, "An envelope." She bent her knees to pick up the the lost item, inspecting the already broken wax seal before pulling the contents out. She unraveled the folded letter inside, reading it while she remained crouched. After several long moments, she finally folded it back up and stood, tucking the note into her basket as she did so.

 

"Mother 'n father'll be wantin' to know about this," her curled bangs fell forward once more as she spoke, but she quickly brushed them back behind her ears. "An invitation. To adventurers. What in the Sparrow's Nest is this all about." She then trotted off toward the farm, all the while continuing the courseless monologue as she went. Once half the breadth to the farmhouse had been crossed, she took caution of the now visible donkey cart being rolled out from the barn, and slightly turned her direction in order to meet it.