Standing at the edge of the forest, Wulfstan stared out at the once familiar landscape with furrowed brows. Raising his hand to protect his still overly sensitive eyes from the bright rays of the early afternoon sun, he observed what was now before him.
It left him completely awestruck, the change incomprehensible to his worldview.
A sprawling town, far bigger than the small village he'd once lived in dozens of miles away. One that had not been there when he'd last come out of the woods. Looking down at it from the atop the slight hill the woods ended on, Wulfstan could smell the thick, pungent stench of humanity and its animals. It stretched out, touching the horizon, but his dizzy head and aching heart could have been distorting the reality of what he was seeing. All-consuming, it boggled the mind to bear witness to the loss of the rolling hills.
He'd never thought that humanity would expand so much further, progress so far.
Approaching footsteps, rustling through the low brush, snapped Wulfstan back into reality, the source of them still hidden from his view. It took everything in him to not flee, terrified that he would lose his control upon seeing people again – he had not forgotten what he had done last time he had been in the company of humans. Of what they had done to cause it. His nerves thickened the atmosphere around him, eyes fixed in the direction of the noise.
Regardless of the circumstances, that blood had been the only substance he could keep down and keep the gnawing in his stomach at bay. It had come back a long time ago, that constant dull ache, and Wulfstan was petrified he really was more of a beast than a man.
Doing his best to keep himself in place, Wulfstan waited for the approaching people to get to the top of the hill. He needed to get his bearings. It'd be good to know what year it was.
At least he could tell it was summer.
Three men crested the hill and were startled stiff by the shadow shrouded figure staring at them from the treeline. Their bows, slung over their shoulders, ready for their hunting excursion, quickly made their way into their hands. Notching an arrow, A man at the front aimed it at Wulfstan, with the practiced ease of a seasoned archer, before asking, "Who are you?"
Raising his hands in an act of surrender, to show he wasn't going to be a threat, Wulfstan stepped forward, bearing his face to the sunlight. His features were no longer obscured and the three hunters looked at him with curiosity dipped in apprehension. With his voice as hushed and gentle as ever, sharp teeth glinting in the light, Wulfstan did what he could to settle the situation. "Just a traveller – my name is Wulfstan."
One of the men, his bow lowered to the ground, sniggered. "Wulfstan? Are your parent's traditionalists?" He looked hard at Wulfstan, a smile dancing across his lips, though it was still anxious. It was clear the one speaking was still very young, more boy than man, his curly brown hair framing his still-rounded face. Bright, playful brown eyes didn't stray from Wulfstan's figure.
Wulfstan furrowed his brow. "Trad…itionalists? What… what's wrong with it?" He hadn't even begun to consider that names would go in and out of favour. That his name was potentially out of fashion. He hadn't even considered that the language would change the way it already had. While they seemed to be speaking the same language, the accent in which the men spoke was already wildly different from what it had been before. Words they used were unfamiliar.
The man with the raised bow spoke again. His face was becoming lined with age, clearly hardened from many years of labour. The lustre of his brown eyes were lost but Wulfstan could see the similarities in his face with the boy who had laughed – perhaps father and son. Regardless, the man just grunted at the question, choosing not to answer. All of the hunters seemed to have relaxed slightly though the arrow in the man speaking's bow remained in place, seemingly anxious that the stranger would do something. "You have an accent I've not heard before. Not local. Where are you from?"
"Nowhere. I wander wherever my feet deign to take me." Wulfstan didn't like to lie, but it seemed to be the best choice. He had no idea if the village he'd once lived in was still there and he did not know the name of any other human settlements to be able to claim them as home. Especially not the ones that had sprung up or been destroyed in the two hundred years he'd been gone. It was unfeasible to say that he was from a cave in the woods. "I'm… passing through." There was a tug around his heart, as if telling him that he didn't have to go far before he saw the man that… he had come back as.
The third man who'd yet to speak finally stepped forward. He bore no resemblance to the other two men, straight blond hair and pale grey-green eyes filled with suspicion peered from his tanned skin. He looked about the age Wulfstan probably appeared – not like he'd seen a reflection of his face in two centuries. Younger than the boy's father, but too old to be a peer of the boy himself. "Why don't you have anything on you, if you're travelling?"
That was an awkward question from an evidently perceptive individual. Wulfstan didn't like the suspicion in the man's eyes. It reminded him too much of people that had hurt him.
"Ah… uh, my camp was plundered ereyesterday." That left enough wiggle room to be able to explain away anything without having to give away too much about him. Wulfstan dropped his hands down now, relaxing as the arrows were no longer pointing at him. "Anunfortunate incident."
"You speak weird. Old name, old dialect. It's like you came from the past." The curly haired boy interjected, innocent curiosity in his voice and face. He smiled, glancing up at the man Wulfstan presumed to be the boy's father. "Is he not odd, Pa? Like the old man telling stories down the tavern."
The father glanced Wulfstan up and down, an unreadable emotion on his face. "Wulfstan, you say? Strong, old-fashioned name, did your parents give it to you? It's not common now. Giving you such a good name, why aren't you looking after them instead of wandering about like this?"
Sorrow flooded his chest, viscous and dense. Wulfstan sagged slightly at the question, his lips down turning further than they already rested. "…Yes, they did, but… They've been gone for many tiring years." It wasn't wrong, especially in the eyes of a human life but, considering Wulfstan's potential lifespan, those two hundred years were nothing. A blink of the eye. Human's lives were that of ants to him – but no, he couldn't be that callous, even if he wished he could be, to make it hurt less. He hadn't expected to have to think of them so soon after coming back into the civilisation. "I have nowhere to call home any longer."
That was not a lie either. While the cavern served as his resting place, he could not call it home. Any of the art within it held no emotional weight to him as it was drawn in a time he could not remember, rendering them as painful taunts of the life he missed out on enjoying, cursed with only misery. Nothing held him there enough to call it 'home'.
He'd lost his home the day he, Leofric, had died.
Perhaps he'd find his next home when he met his heart anew. The reincarnation was inevitable. His heart would live again. There was little chance they wouldn't meet, even if it was only briefly. Considering the insistence of the tugging about his heart, fate was determined to make them see each other. It would be nice, maybe, to see his soul's face once before getting himself killed. Fear clouded his heart – would the man… would the man still be Leofric, even if he looked different? Remembering the writings from the cave, that was likely not the case.
His heart as Leofric was long gone.
"I understand. I'm sorry for asking." The man looked about the age Donngall and Ita had been when Wulfstan had first been found – only a handful of years older than Wulfstan appeared. He smiled slightly, glad that the son would have his father around for a while longer. The father seemed to think for a moment, taking in Wulfstan's face, his dejected form. "If you're any good at hunting, we can give you a roof and bed for a while. You just need to pull your weight."
Wulfstan lit up, his eyes widening. He had not expected to meet someone generous nor had he expected to be offered a bed. "Indeed! I know how to hunt, I can shoot a doe through the heart from fifty yards out if you give me a bow." He shifted his weight on his feet, stepping closer to the men. Looking down at them, he reached his hand out to shake the oldest one's hand. "You're on a hunting trip now, correct? I can come with you now, to prove my mettle."
With a grunt and an accepting grin, the father grasped Wulfstan's hand and shook it. "Alright, boy. I'm John, this sprout is my boy, Richard. That one's Thomas – you two seem of the same age." One more glance up and down at Wulfstan, lingering on his face, John's eyes curious as he took in the towering, willowy man, before setting off into the woods.
Wulfstan followed behind the three men, quietly stuck in his own head. He could understand now why they had found his name so strange – the names of this century were much different than they had been last time he'd been around people. He wondered, for a moment, what kind of name his soul had had one hundred years ago, that time he'd ignored the call, before pushing it aside. It was useless to linger on regrets.
It didn't feel right to change his name, but he wanted to fit in more and not bring on any questions about his identity. That was something to consider at a later date, if it did prove to be an actual issue. Now was not the time to think about it.
First, he had to hope his centuries of inactivity had not dulled his hunting ability. As he thought about it, replaying the lessons he'd once learnt over and over again, his head suddenly shot up, pupils widening in concentration. "Be silent now, there's a deer to the left. Not too far."
Voice hushed to a murmur, quieter than his voice was usually, it still spread to the three men walking a way in front of Wulfstan, shocking them to stillness. As if they were all the same person, they crouched down at once, eyes peering in the direction Wulfstan was focused on, like a bloodhound on the scent of some burrowing animal.
Try as they might, squinting their eyes and straining their ears, the weathered hunters couldn't detect the deer that Wulfstan claimed he could hear. Not even a whisp of its tail.
"Hurry, toss me your bow and quiver."
John, after a momentary hesitation, did as he was asked, tossing his trusty bow and whittled arrows to the soft-spoken, towering man. The elder watched with bated breath, willing his heart to slow so as not to scare off the elusive deer. His eyes, much like Richard and Thomas', followed every movement of the stranger, the man called Wulfstan.
There was something liquid smooth about the pallid redhead's motions, notching the arrow and pulling the string of the bow back in one slick movement that was completed in the blink of the eye. The arrowhead methodically scanned the treeline, the movements small and jumpy, but there was something to Wulfstan that reassured John that every motion was completely intentional.
A snap and a hiss.
None of the eyes watching could follow the arrow once it was loosed. A thud, silence, crunching foliage. That was the only proof that had anything had changed in the woods. Wulfstan stood, the bow that was far too small in his grasp hanging from his fingers, with a mild smile curling the corners of his felinely downturned lips.
"She should be a good one." There was an air of sorrow in those triumphant words, lost to the gentle breeze before the other men could even catch it. Wulfstan had closed his eyes the moment the arrow had flown from the bow, allowing himself to imagine the older man beside him was not a stranger. That the man his age was not someone he'd never laid his eyes on before.
For a moment it worked.
"Holy shit! How did you do that?!"
Until it didn't.
The strange accents the men spoke in made their words hard to decipher to Wulfstan's old ears for a moment. The illusion he'd weaved fell apart and he was filled with the desire to cry, as if he could. He had not fully anticipated how hard it would to be around people again after so long alone.
Opening his eyes with a smile, curving them into pleasant half-moons, Wulfstan pushed aside the sorrow within him. "Deers are loud, when you know what to listen for. And they're easy to spot, when you know to look in the shadows and between the trees." He knew that was unrepeatable for a normal human, but he didn't particularly care for the moment. "I just… have intuition on where to shoot. Let's hope she's dead."
The youngest, Richard, had already shot off in the direction the doe had been shot, vanishing into the brush before reappearing with a triumphant shout. Slung over his strong, but still developing shoulders, was a doe of a good weight, the arrow cleanly through her eye. Death would have been instant. "By the Lord, I'm glad Pa let you tag along – we've never bagged a deer so quick in all my years of the hunt."
Thomas scoffed. "All two of them, boy?" He took a few steps forward and met Richard where the boy stood, taking stock of the doe for a moment. Checking her legs, her torso and head, he let out a satisfied hum. "Well, you clearly have a skill for this. It'll be a benefit to have you on our trips now." There was a glint of something unspoken in those mossy eyes as he looked at Wulfstan.
"Right. We may as well head back home then – no need for us to toil in the forests for anything more. This doe will keep us fed for a while and the pelt will sell at a good price for everything else." John was pragmatic and knowledgeable, his years of being a huntsman and the patriarch of his family being evident in his every word. "I'm glad to have made your acquaintance."
" Thank you, kind
sir."