A Story from Brom the Wise

Nightfall · May 09, 2010 11:48 AM

I am posting this on behalf of Brom the Wise. THIS IS NOT MY WORK! All credit goes to Brom.

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The sun was just setting over the snowy peaks in the distance. A sharp, cool evening breeze swept through the long grass, bending them and forcing them to bow. A red hue was smattered over the calm scene, giving it the same amount of personality every other sunrise gave the sleepy little vally. It was the time of the day when all the animals were either waking up to continue striving to survive, or start resting so they could continue to survive in the evening. Rabbits went to their holes as fish started to splash, Foxes layed down as the owls rose, and bugs came crawling out as snakes rested there hides. To say the least, it was just another plain evening in the tiny valley, apart from a pair of visitors who had entered, more along the lines of stumbled, into its darkening recesses.

One of the visitors was a tad shorter the 6 ft, had dark black hair that went to his neck, dark blue eyes, and a hood that hid most of his features. The garments he dawned were worn think, patched, filled with holes, and painfully grimy from long days of travel without so much as a bath in sight. He carried a pack upon his back that was no better off than his apparel, but still held his items secure. The belt around his waist was the only piece of cloth on him that wasn’t frayed, singed, ripped, or mauled. This was most likely because he needed it to hold everything that didn’t fit in his pack or weren’t useful to him in a pack. These items being things like daggers, short swords, a small bag of pebbles, a sling, and such other stored tools of self protection (as he called it).

The other intruder to the sanctity of the valley stood only about 3 foot tall, unless he pushed himself upon his lags, then he was 4 foot and 1/2 roughly (tail included he was about 6 foot). He had deep green eyes, a long nose with the nostrils at the tip of the snout. He pitter-pattered on 4 paws, sometimes 3 when he managed to ram a splinter into one of his paws.

The taller of the 2 stoped his slow walk through the valley, turned to his companion.

“It appears we’re quite lost.” The taller one stated, as if no-one but he could have come to such a conclusion.

“It appears so”, replied, the shortest of the pair, holding the annoyance from his voice as he let his tail lashed at the air to squelch his riseing temper.

“Perhaps we should ask one of these little guys,” said the taller of the duo, indicating toward a perched owl,”for some directions."

"Perhaps," mimmiced the smaller one, "but haven't you learned not to trust animals yet?"

"Present company included?" teased the taller, robed man.

"Cram it Colum, you know what I mean." was the turse reply.

"What makes you think that? It's not like being a dragon makes you able to read my mind."

The dragon in question stopped for a moment, as if pondering his travleing partner's statement. He rose to his hind legs and craned his green neck, looking about him, taking in the smells, sights, sounds and, I dare say, the very soul of the small vally he was occuping at this tiny moment in the endless flow of time.

The dragon could smell the flowers that were in their repective prime, mere days before the chill would snuff out there fragrence. He could see the many scuttling, scurring, and scampering creatures of the forest as they went about the minor day to day tasks of either snagging a meal, or avoiding becomming a meal themselvs (makeing to doubly difficult for those who had the task of doing both). He heard the wind try and rip the last stiff, multicolored leaves from the trees, the water bubbling and gurgling in the nearby stream, fish splashing in the same stream, the chirp of birds rushing to either build a nest to protect themselvs from winter or to excape the impending freeze of what was brewing to be a miserable winter. Lastly, the dragon felt a soul in the vally. The same soul he had ever felt, the one of the human whom he had spent the vast majority of his natural life with. The soul who was, to say the least (and probally kindest) a mixed blessing at best.

Comming down from his hounches, he felt the thought of said human muttering to him, "What ya stoppin' for Illadin?"

"I have the feeling we're going to want to pick up the pace." replyed Illadin, breaking into a slow jog, pulling himself in front of his dark-eyed partner.

Colum hasened to Illadin's flank, thinking, "What's got you ancy? We got a tail or somethin'?"

"If I knew, I'd tell you," was the dragons reply as he cast a wary eye about, not trusting the once scerene setting, "but I just got a bad vibe about this place." finished Illadin, checking the swiftly darking shadows as they passes them.

"Think you could get a bird's eye view? Might calm you down some." inquired Colum, as he hurltled over a fallen timber who so rudely had taken lodgeing in the middle of the pathway, "that is, if we can even trust a bird's eye in this day-n-age."

Illadin igored the bad joke Colum had made and broke off the pathway, looking for a clearing large enough to function as an improvised runway. The attempt was a mistake, as he crashed, horns first, into a large rose bush. This cause the poor little dragon to make a sound almost identical to the sound an injured rabbit makes, a sharp, high pictched, horride noise that caught Colum's attenction.

"See something?" was the worried question that Colum stent to Illadin

"I see that stopping to smell the roses isn't all that grand." was the cheeky reply that Colum recived, with a mental image of a rosebush with small roses and comiclly oversized thorns.

To this, Colum let out relived and humored sigh, and put Illadin's predicament out of his mind. It was a wise move for him, as he had now broken into a paced sprint, and moving at that speed with very limited light wile avoiding the natural pitfalls of the seldom used backwater roads proved to be something that one had to give almost the entirety of there focus to.

Colum mantled over log dead logs, ducked low hanging branches, lepted small puddles and holes, evaded stumps, and sidespteped the truncks of trees precarisly close to the winedy dirt path before him. He kept himself aware of his surrounding outside of his chosen obsticle corse. Trying to find any potential foe in hideing, behind a tree, in the bushes, tucked away in the dying braches of an old oak perhaps. When he was honest to himself for that brief moment of enlightlment, he knew he had no clue where any ambusher would decyde to pop out of, but that moment of honesty was short livved as he told himself, "This is just Illadin getting scared of his mishapen shadow, and even if someone is here, they have no idea who they're chaceing. Probally some stupid group of bandits who thought we would make easy pickings."

"Keep telling yourself that," said Illadin's voice inside of Colum's head, "but if it is bandits, why would that attack someone with a dragon? Have they ever seen a dragon before, as many never have. And, before you say it, I know something is out of place, I feel it... and you feel it too."

Colum made an ugly grimmise out of mixed anger and annoyance,
anger at the fact that he had never figured out how to make his thoughts his oun and keep Illadin from hearing them, and annoyance that Illadin could probally read him like a pop-up book without reading his mind.

Fed up with what he viewed as senceless fleeing from an unseen (and as far as he was concerned, fictional) foe, Colum slowed his place to a soft trot, then to a fast walk, then to a cwraling shuffle.

"It could be just a curious ewe after us." persuaded Colum, leaning against a tree.

"That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard you say," retorted Illadin, scaning the ground,"and I've heard you say alot of stupid things."

"Oh, so now your the expert on stupid things?" asked an annoyed Coulm, slumping to the ground in exaperation.

The dragon sniffed, but did not answer his human compatriot. Instead he resumed scowering the ground below him, looking for... something, he wasn't shure what he was looking for. Then he found it, a berry bush off to his left gave a mighty jolt as if struck with something heavy moving at an alarming rate.

"Oy!", started Illadin, "You'r gonna want to see this, something is moving in th..."

"I saw.", stated Colum, as he shot to his feet.

"Were you looking through my eyes withou..."

"Yes I was, thanks for the heads up.", intrupted Colum, who was in dead sprint in the opposite direction of whatever the hell was moving towards him.

High above Colum's freshy found vigor flapped Illadin, stunned my Colum. He had always dispised how Colum could always get into his mind. No matter how high or how thick Illadin stood up defences to his ally's mental advances, Colum would easly slip past them with what seemed the greatest ease. Thankfully Colum had never caught onto how to erect these defenses, if he ever did, Illadin would have never figured out how to slip past them. Although Illadin rememberd that on very rare occasions Colum had blocked his mind from him, even if it did involve Colum becoming blinded by raw rage. Whenever Illadin had looked through his friend'd eyes on those few occasions, all that he would see what a bloody red mist maksing and bluring everything in sight...

"Whenever you'r done remising our past exploits, would you mind givving me some extra eyes?", inquired a slightly impatent voice as a mental picture poped before Illadin's eyes. The image showed a black night filled with dark shadows that oblitereated and chance of being able to have any visual forewarning of any obsticles lying in wait.

Two thoughts went through the dragon's head at that moment, one of him being impressed at how humans could manage to manuever at all with such pityful sight, and the other of pure hate towards a certain human who had bursted into his thought's again.

"Know what your problem is? You spend too much time thinking, GIVE ME ANOTHER PAIR OF EYES BEFORE I BREAK MY NECK!", screamed the thought's of a peeved human, breaking into Illadin's mind again.

Colum was looking at himself as he sprint through the dark forest. It was always a weird sensation to watch himself do something in third person, but he had a small fondness for the feeling, like watching a play that he had never seen before with him starring. The view was sharply changed to see a wave of foliage being pushed apart like a large sword cutting through yards and yards of salid. His view switched back to Colum. He could see himself sprinting faster, raceing away from the metaphoric "sword" after him, then switched again to show the sword was gaining on him, and quickly to boot.

Breaking away from Illadin's eyes, Colum kept his blazing pace as he evaded the hazards of the forest, at least, for a few more moments.

Illadin dared a glance back at the thing chacing his mamal partner, seeing it was nearly on top of his human co-conspriter, he let out a warning. It was not the expected mental warning, it was a vocal yelp, a cry of fear and unrest. A cry that broke Colum's momentary attenction.

Colum suddenly felt himself stop moving, he felt a large pressure on his torso, his left knee, his right wrist, his left sholder, and the side of his skull. Colum then felt himself falling backwards, and hearing an odd crunching sound and he felt pressure being applyed to his right thigh, right arm, and back of his skull. A few moments later, a blurry thought came to him, "I hit something... diddn't I?". To this there was no reply from his winged friend, only the dullest, faintest, so seemingly unreal sence of worry. "Illadin worrying again? That boy is going to kill himself with all that stress one of these days."

Colum managed to roll his head so that he faced up. His sight, although hindered by the blackness of night, he could make out a a few details of the creature standing over him. It had 4 legs with hooves, a swishing tail, an elongated nose, two large ears, stood not any higher then the small dragon he travled with, and it was licking him.

"Awwwwww," he crooed, "It's a baby horse... a calve... or something... like..."

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Feel free to leave feedback, but just be aware that Brom won't be able to reply directly since he's not a member of the fanfic forum. I'll alert Brom of any feedback you guys leave for him.

Jeez, this reminds me how much I need to get my *bleep* in gear and write more stuff... o_0

#1 May 09, 2010 11:48 AM

A Story from Brom the Wise

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