Baolyn sat crouched over the small but dense patch of loweberries. She wanted to prepare Kaole, her ailing, elderly neighbor, a loweberry diasc, one of her very favorite desserts. Her apron was folded and tucked so that she could use it as a pouch to carry the berries home in, since her hands would be filled with fare she had just bought at the market, which they held once a week in the castle’s lower bailey. Her small hand carte was piled high with everything from powdered wheat, to candles, to two bolts of cloth. She was going to make herself a new winter dress. Her old one was too worn to make it through another winter. She would use the old one for dusting rags from now on, she smiled to herself.
She had saved a little coin every week, for the last two years, just so she could buy it. One bolt was a beautiful royal blue velvet with which she would make a cloak. She was going to line it with some mix-matched pelts the neighbor boys brought to her. She gave them eggs, from her coup, for the small furs. The second bolt was a much more pale, blue velvet material. She needed a new chemise, petticoats, and stockings, and her slippers were down right threadbare… but she wanted a new dress. So, she may have went a little crazy, spent more than she had told herself she would, but it wasn’t very often she did something for herself. She would just work extra days at the dairy to afford the winter boots she was soon going to need.
Baolyn heard a snapping noise from somewhere near, behind her. She stood and turned in the direction of the noise and saw Lemure Raoske, Lemure Johansa’s oldest boy, a distance away. He and his brother’s brought her the pelts in trade for eggs for their mother. She smiled brightly at you young man, and was about to wave when she realized something was off. He stood there grimly. His young usually jovial face, contorted in a fevered frown. Her heart sank. Something must be wrong with his mother.
She left her hand carte, forgotten, beside the patch of loweberries, and ran towards Raoske, the loweberries spilling from her apron as she ran. The closer she came to him, the more his face twisted. She could see tears spill, and slowed her pace. She was confused. Baolyn felt it like icy spring water rushing through her insides... Something was, indeed, very wrong. The woods seemed to transform around her. A sunny summer’s day grew dim. The forest stood dark, in shadows, foreboding and malevolent, as the air grew pasty and heavy. The trees themselves began to loom over her, their once majestic limbs that extended out, towards the sun, became gnarled claws reaching for her eerily.
“Raoske…” She whispered. It was more a plea than a query. He turned away from her.
Baolyn did not have time to react when something heavy hit her from behind. She was instantly pinned to the ground, her chest crushed by the weight. Whatever it was, it pressed sharply into her back, between her shoulder blades, she couldn’t move. She lifted her head in time to see Sergeant Graethos walk towards Raoske. Graethos was a vile man. She had known him all her life.
She remembered once coming upon him and his friends when she was about 11, they had caught a field slink somehow and were torturing it. They were sweet timid little creatures, that lived off of roots and bugs. It broke Baolyn’s heart to see them holding it up by it’s tail, jabbing it with sticks. Baolyn had picked up a handful of creek rocks and began pelting the boys with them, all ran away save one, Graethos. He dropped the field slink and gave it a swift kick to get it running before he turned his attention to Baolyn. He was not much older than she, 13 back then. He would have given her a sound beating had her father not come upon them right then. A week later though he found her alone with her father far away and chased her, throwing rocks all the way.
She never did tell her parents how she had sliced her head open that day. The torture did not stop there either, every time he saw her after that he tripped her, or threw something at her, or just glared at her. He would ruin her new dresses when her mother made one for her, or crush her bonnet when she placed it beside her seat. It seemed she had made an enemy for life. The real torture came though when she was 17, and he 19, and she laughed when he asked her to the Harvest Festival dance. She had never heard the rumors, just felt the repercussions of them, when no one would sit next to her, or talk to her. Yes, she lost her friends, but somehow she made a life without them.
