Chapter 7: First Morning of Spring
Personal System Calendar: Year 00014, Day 1-28, Month II: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6858, 1st to 28th day of the 2nd Month
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Hope for Tomorrow
Refugees were experiencing their first spring near one of the Great Forests. It was something most of them never thought would happen in their lifetimes.
Gin Rabia was one of those refugees, along with his unstable wife Bessi. He was currently sitting outside the camp, soaking up the cool morning breeze and the sunshine they hadn't properly seen in days.
The wind was still cool but it had lost its bite. He made no attempt to shake it off from him. He felt it instead, the cold air on his skin, and the warmth on his face from the sun. His heart was just as cold as the winter snow had been. He didn't feel like he was alive but he kept going anyway, if only just to get through another day.
He still had Bessi. That was the thing he held onto. She hated him now, or at least she acted like it. She blamed him for not being able to save their daughter and he had accepted that. He wasn't going to argue with her about it. He was just going to be there for as long as she needed him to be and hope that was enough. Maybe it wouldn't be. But it was what he had.
Around him the camp was coming to life in the same slow way he was pulled into it. People crawled out of the underground bunkers one by one, blinking in the morning light. The snow had fallen off the trees and melted into the ground, leaving everything wet and dark and slightly muddy. People stood around looking at it. Some of them smiled. Most of them just looked and appreciated it in silence.
It was their first spring near a Great Forest. Most of them had never expected to see such a thing in their entire life.
While they were doing that, those in charge of the camp along with a few refugee volunteers had put themselves into a management role. It was good for their sanity as much as anything else. Some people just knew how to manage their grief even at their lowest. Grief sat quieter when your hands were busy.
One of those people was Terrence.
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Terrence
He was a man in his thirties who had lost people on the road. He hadn't cried about it, at least not where anyone could see. He hadn't dwelled on it either. He just kept moving, which was the only thing he knew how to do with his pain. Some of the support staff had quietly wondered whether he was actually okay or if he was just performing to seem okay. He told them that he was fine and they took him at his word, though a few kept an eye on him anyway.
What Terrence was doing this morning was helping start the fire for their first outdoor meal this spring. He had positioned himself next to the guards handling it and started helping without being asked. That was how he operated. Once he sees something that needed to be done and he would do it without being told.
He had been like that his whole life and it had never really worked out for him back home. His father, the one who adopted him, had called him useless for as long as he could remember. His stepbrother had made a habit of taking credit for anything Terrence managed to do well. The family called him the smiling weed or the weirdo of the family, partly because he always seemed to find a way to come back up no matter what they did to him, and partly because they found his presence irritating in the way that something you can't get rid of becomes irritating over time.
He had never managed to hate them for it. Not once. He had tried to understand why they were like that and never found a good enough answer. Eventually he stopped looking for one and just accepted that some people were how they were.
He had even shed tears when they died in the rebellion. The family he had spent his whole life trying to please had actually been part of starting all of this. After their deaths someone had grabbed his arm in the chaos and pulled him away from his old home. He never saw clearly who it was. By the time everything seemed to have settled within him he was already on the road north with the others, moving along the path without even the thought of it, his body just moved on his own.
And now he was here, crouching by a fire in the early morning of spring, being thanked by a stranger for helping them with preparing the community's breakfast.
He hadn't expected that. He hadn't expected any of this.
He smiled the way he always smiled. Wide and without thinking about it.
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Merchants Arrival
About an hour into the morning the first signs of trade appeared on the road.
One caravan came into view first, then a second behind it, then more after that. The merchants had apparently been waiting somewhere nearby for the worst of winter to pass before making their move. They hadn't expected the cold to last as long as it did this year, but now that it had broken they were moving fast to make up for lost time.
The refugees who were outside saw this and started talking among themselves. What kind of place was this Maya Village? Winter had barely ended and people were already heading toward it without hesitation. Even merchants, who by nature only moved when there was something to profit off, were willing to head into a Great Forest without appearing to think twice about it.
A few caravans stopped by the camp to confirm that they were indeed heading the right direction. The guards answered and some of them walked the merchants toward the forest entrance, which was visible from camp, as it was only about five hundred meters off. The merchants thanked them and kept going. They didn't linger and they too eventually disappeared from view, swallowed by the forest in front of them.
Terrence watched all of this from his spot by the fire.
Around him the forest itself seemed to be waking up alongside the season. The trees nearest the camp were pushing out new leaves, small and bright, catching the morning dew so that they glittered slightly in the early light. Somewhere past the tree line came the sound of water moving, probably a stream running off the mountain ice that had finally started melting. Birds that hadn't been heard all winter were back, calling back and forth in the canopies above them. And underneath all of it, every now and then, the heavier sound of something much larger moving through the undergrowth far enough away could be felt moving more than being heard.
The forest was alive again. Even from out here you could tell.
He thought about the field guide the guards had handed out a few days prior. He had read his copy twice already. Drawings and written descriptions of the creatures and plants inside the forest, what to look for, what was dangerous, how to survive an encounter if you were unlucky enough to have one. Whoever had written it had clearly spent real time inside that forest paying attention. It wasn't the kind of writing that came from hearsay only, it was detailed and descriptive.
He thought about who had written it. Then he thought about what it would mean to write the next one. A proper version, bigger, covering more ground, written with the kind of detail that could actually keep someone alive when they were alone in there and had no one to ask. If that job existed somewhere in that village he would find it. If it didn't exist yet then he would make it exist.
He shed a few tears just thinking about it, which surprised him. He didn't usually cry at good things. Only at the bad ones, apparently, and at the idea that something good might actually be possible for him.
He wiped his face and went back to tending the fire.
---
The Three Days of Briefing
In the days that followed, as spring settled in properly and the trees around the camp began pushing out new growth, the guards ran the briefing they had been preparing since the camp was first established.
The camp had grown to close to a thousand people by this point. Of those, less than half converged to listen when the guards called the meeting. Terrence estimated around five hundred, maybe a few more or fewer. Some faces he recognised from the early days of the camp. A few were newer arrivals who had come in late during winter. All of them sat and paid attention.
The guards covered what to do and what not to do when entering the forest. Don't leave the road. Don't separate from the group. Don't touch plants you don't recognise. The field guide copies were passed around again and people asked questions about specific entries. Larger drawings were also circulated through the crowd showing specific creatures and plants, with notes on traits, dangers, and what to do if you encountered them. It was the kind of information that made the forest feel real in a way it hadn't before. Real and alive and very much paying attention to whatever came into it.
Then Captain Alphonse stood in front of them and gave his closing advice in the way that only a man who had been doing this long enough could.
"Survival starts with you. You are responsible for your own safety. Remember these things and there is a thirty to fifty percent chance that you won't die."
Nobody laughed. A few people looked at each other. Most just nodded, which was probably the correct response.
In three days they would depart for the village. Those who had decided to go with the guards had three days to prepare. Those who decided on leaving had three days to figure out where they were heading next.
Gin Rabia had already decided. He had dead eyes but his mind was made up. Whatever was waiting past those trees was better than what was behind him. He didn't have anywhere to go back to. Bessi was with him, quieter than she had been in the worst weeks but present. He kept moving and she followed. For now that was enough.
---
August
On the morning of their supposed departure a strong wind came to greet them.
It came from above, a sudden gust that bent the grass flat and made everyone look up. What came down out of the sky was enormous. It dropped toward an open patch of ground away from the crowd and landed with a weight that shook the earth slightly, folding its two massive wings against its body as it settled.
On its back was a young man.
He was visibly younger than most of the people standing in that camp. But something about the way he stepped off that creature, unhurried, without any apparent concern for the scale of what he had just arrived on, made the camp go quiet before anyone had decided to go quiet.
Then their fears arrived. Delayed by a second or two, and when it came it came all at once.
Those who had been through the Beast Dominion Wars recognised the shape of the bird immediately. Those who hadn't read the field guide. Terrence, who had read the field guide twice, recognized it from one of the drawn beast images. The name came out of him even before he made the decision to say it.
"Mighty Peregrine Eagle."
Those three words, when said out loud in the silence. Caused a panic, it spread outward from him like a drop hitting still water, from person to person, voices rising, some people dropping to the ground, others pressing backward into each other.
The guards on the other hand went into attention.
That was what stopped the mass hysteria from going out of control. Not the screaming, not the eagle sitting perfectly still, but the sight of the guards standing straight and saluting the young man who had just stepped off its back. People followed the guards' eyes. They looked at him instead of the bird.
He was wearing a green cloak on top of his armor with an emblem on it, it had the same general style as the guards but it was clearly better made. He had golden hair and looked impossibly young to be the person the guards were saluting like that.
"Commander."
August dismissed it quickly, the way someone dismisses something they've never quite gotten used to despite it happening often enough.
"Alphonse. How is it here?"
"All is well sir. We are preparing to depart."
"Headcount?"
"Around 486 sir. The rest are leaving."
"Alright. Separate them. Those going to the village on one side, those leaving on the other. I want to say something to those who are leaving before they go."
It happened fast. The guards sorted the two groups without much fuss and August stood in front of both.
"My name is August Finn, I am a representative of Maya Village. I hope our hospitality wasn't too harsh on you." He said it plainly, without ceremony. "For those of you who are leaving, the village has prepared something for you for the road ahead."
He reached into a small pouch at his side. What came out of it was not small. Bag after bag appeared from something that clearly held far more than its size should allow, and people who had been scared of him thirty seconds ago were now watching his hands with their mouths agape. He didn't seem to notice the look that the crowd gave him. He just kept going until he was done, then handed everything to the guards for distribution.
"Use it wisely. Save it for emergencies if you still have funds of your own, or use it to start fresh somewhere. Good luck to all of you and farewell."
He spoke with Alphonse for a few minutes after that, he mentioned that some of the village's earth element users would come out the next day to handle the camp site, then climbed back onto the eagle and lifted off as simply as he had arrived.
The camp stood there for a while after he left.
The ones who were leaving opened their bags. Each family received two local gold coins, ten local silver coins, and one hundred local bronze coins. Those travelling alone received one local gold coin and five local silver coins. In total the village had given out approximately four hundred local gold coins worth of aid between everyone.
To put it plainly: two local gold coins covered a month of basic lodging and food in most northern towns. Ten silver coins was roughly a week's wages for a labourer. One hundred bronze coins handled the small day to day things, food on the road, a night under a proper roof, basic supplies to replace what had been lost. For people who had walked out of a war with nothing, it was enough to land somewhere and find footing before everything ran out.
The earlier panic at the sight of that eagle had faded into something quieter. Confusion mostly. And for some of them, sitting underneath the confusion, something that felt a little like hope.
The two groups went their separate ways. One headed further north. One walked toward the tree line.
Terrence was in the second group. He had his field guide copy folded inside his coat.
He was already thinking about the pages he was going to add to it.