Capes and Crowns. (TomTord Royalty AU)

Chapter 12; You Make Everything Easy.

"Excuse me!" A tiny voice called, "Are you open?"

Tord hummed and peeled his tired body off of his work desk, looking towards the shop's entrance. "Depends what you're looking for," he called back, getting up from his seat and walking across the shop to get to the door, simply pulling it open. "-Are you here to buy or get something repaired?"

A little girl behind the door, maybe 10 years old, looked up at the young man with wide green eyes. She was covered in dirt and her clothes were in tatters, and behind her was a wagon carrying the broken pieces of a wooden kayak.

Tord frowned when he saw her. "I don't recognize you."

"I arrived today," she explained, "I came from Galdinnia."

"Oh," Tord sighed and helped her and her wagon through the shop, "More and more Galdinnians are finding this place, aren't they?"

"I'm not Galdinnian." She quickly said, "I'm Larzinnian."

Tord frowned deeper at her saying that. He looked back at her, taking out the broken pieces and laying them on his desk. "Where are your parents?"

"Gone. My daddy got captured and my mommy got Rock's Edge. You know what that is- don't you?"

Tord started figuring the pieces together. "A little more than I'd like to."

"Well- we all used to live in Larzinnia, you see. My daddy was a historian and my mommy was a baker." She sat down on the customer's chair, "And then when I was 3 the Rocksonians came. The queen was fighting all on her own after the princes disappeared, and then King Galdinniar came in to support her."

"Hmm.." Tord hummed along, matching the broken sections of the kayak, looking for good wood to substitute it with. He already knew the ending of this story.

"-They fought all over, you know? They tried to stop the boats from coming from Rocksonia but their boats were huge! And most of them caught Rock's edge!"

"-And the war is still going, right?" Tord asked, turning from the project to look back at her. "I already know, dear. I've heard all of the travelers' stories."

"But it's not!" She eagerly stood up from the chair. "It's over! The Rocksonians surrendered!"

Tord let out a rude laugh of disbelief, moving from his desk to the cupboards where he kept the nails and hammers. "Right. And how old are you?"

"I'm 8!"

"And you said your mommy died?"

"Yes- on that kayak. We crashed and she drowned- her lungs were too weak to keep breathing. My cousins and uncles buried her before we walked over here."

Tord walked back to his seat, beginning to nail together the pieces that could fit one another. "And she had Rock's Edge?"

"Yes! She couldn't get the antidote. She gave the rest of it to me."

Tord's eyes suspiciously tracked her for a moment.

These last few years haven't been kind to him, so it was hard for him to be kind back.

After running away from Larzinnia, Tom and Tord swam across an angry river and were forced to hide inside a cave. They spent the entire night crying- clinging onto one another and sobbing out every sorrow they possibly could.

It was safe to say they had lost everything.

Their home? being raided. Their families? Gone. Their personal belongings? Forget them.

All the food they could rely on was stuffed between the rest of their clothes inside a bag with arrows sticking out of it. Tord could barely patch Tom up the next morning.