Sixfold Adventures: A Collection of One-Shots

Cyaegha!Choromatsu and Reader

Freihaustgarten.

My ancestral home for decades, and the only village that was insane enough to remain cradled in the foothills close to Mount Dunkelhugel.

The small village that I was being driven to by a small horse-drawn buggy, as the roads were too narrow for the more modern vehicles.

The clattering gravel underneath the metal horseshoes had become a droning noise that my brain drifted off to, leaving my head completely empty of the tumultuous thoughts that I carried when I received the letter from my family still living in Freihaustgarten.

They wrote with hasty script, the German barely recognizable through the apparent rushed writing as they begged me to return home and help with the failing farm that we owned. In fact, that's the only thing that was written on the letter besides the usual signatures of my mother and father.

"Frauline, I can go no further. The horse is spooked and refuses to move," The driver called out and snapped me from my trance, drawing my attention from the buggy onto the still scenery around us.

"Ah, thank you. Have a safe drive back," I climbed out of the horse-drawn buggy and hauled my luggage off of the rear rack, turning back towards the road to the village without bidding the driver farewell.

I was never this rude before...

My eyes moved upwards from the road to the barely lit village as the mountain cast its shadow over it, the sun dipping earthward quickly and allowing the warmer temperature to dive. The cool mountain air tugged at the sleeves of my sweatshirt, forcing my fingers to find somewhere with warmth as I adjusted to the early nighttime moments.

"Back home...never wanted to leave in the first place."

The walk to the family farm was the same as travelling down memory lane, seeing familiar sights and scenes play out in my head as I passed the old family heirloom tree with its broken swings, treading by the creek now swollen with the melting ice from the mountain as the seasons shifted into spring, silently walking past the torn down shed that had housed several of the needed tools to keep the farm running.

It was an odd comfort to see the gathering of artifacts from my childhood, each of them passed down from father to father as sons were born into our family.

I had been cut out of the family because I had broken tradition and moved to a different country, wanting to pursue a better life than farmwork. I didn't want to stay here, but the longer I looked around and saw the state of the thriving farmlands, the more I wanted to...not go away again.

It felt like an old comfort had wrapped itself around my mind and started begging me to stay here.

"Mama? Vati? I'm back," I called out to my parents as I pushed open the unlocked front door, dragging in the luggage and letting it rest against one of the walls near the entryway, "Anyone?"

Silence was my answer.

"Vati? Are you caught up in your woodworking again?"

My father didn't answer as I looked back towards his workshop near the kitchen, the long hallway seemingly stretching out further as the silence began to ring in my ears.

"Mama?" I quickly shifted my gaze towards where I remembered her favorite seat to knit, the rocking chair left empty with the yarn discarded onto the floor. I kicked off my shoes and dashed into the house, my mind oddly calm despite the fact that my parents weren't home.

"Leute, wo seid ihr?" My frantic thoughts fighting through the calm as panic began to take hold of my voice, the question repeating itself as I asked them where they were.