Starborn

Chapter 4 (Part 2)

THE NEXT MORNING...

I had the first full night since I've been alive, but it went by too fast. We've been heading eastbound since morning. I've been silently watching the sky as Ameline listens to Charlotte read her book. As we pass through the countryside, the daylight protects us from the Fiends, but come nightfall, they will return.

"We'll need to cross the bridge known as the Peddler's Reach," Duncan says while looking at his map. "The bridge will lead us to the Akhran region, then we'll head north to Theoton. We'll be passing a few small villages on the way."

Ameline has been shaking with excitement ever since she woke up. Duncan had filled her head with images of the city before she fell asleep the previous night. He described Theoton as a luxurious place filled with entertainment and good food, with layers of beautiful architecture. Ameline seemed most interested in Theoton's 'famous' library of infinite wisdom, where supposedly every book ever written is waiting on tall shelves to be read. Duncan's stories were enough to make even me giddy, but ever since reading that letter, everything mentioned feels much more drab and menacing now that I imagine the city filled with Shadowhearts.

"Yuck," Charlotte says. "My hair is damaged from the long journey. I could really use a good wash."

"Me too," Ameline squeaks.

"Whoo... I agree. You smell rancid," I say with a smile.

"Well, you need a dozen baths!" Ameline snarks.

Charlotte spends a bit of time using her comb to wring out Ameline's long, blue mane. However, when she touches the girl's braid, Ameline almost instantly jerks her head back and shouts 'DON'T TOUCH!' so loud that it causes the horses to whinny in fright. Neither of us question her. By the look on her face, I can tell how important that braid is to her.

Charlotte speaks with enough courtesy not to be graphic for Ameline's sake but also without vagueness for me. She tells us of her childhood in a bustling village called Galeia, resting at the foot of one of the great mountains to the north. She describes it as a mining town, with its only resources related to rocks or crystals burrowed within the mountains, which were hand-carved and bleeded dry of every ore it contained. Some crystals were useless as material, but they sparkled and made people's eyes melt with desire. Some crystals were special, like the Echo Shard, the same little gem that she and Duncan used to speak at long distances. Even their food was grown near a mountain, like turnips and potatoes, and a vegetable called a Dendrite, which Charlotte describes the taste as 'a badly rotten carrot even when they were ripe'.

Charlotte was born the only daughter to a large family of seven sons that all grew into ale-spewing degenerates, only living to mine and drink through the day, then sleep through the night. Just like her father. Constantly drunk, but never a man she couldn't call her father, the man worked daily since childhood to provide for his family, and even harder once he was married to Charlotte's mother, a simple milk maid. Things were heavenly for Charlotte as a child. She got everything her heart desired, from the smallest trinket to the largest of keepsakes, which did not sit well with her brothers. Even now, she couldn't even remember all their names from how much she was ostracized.

Suddenly, Duncan calls back. "We're approaching the bridge!"

The chariot slowly rolls to a stop, and I peer out the window to see down the path. A whole caravan of merchants are parked before us, all leading to the side of a small booth and a large gate blocking the entrance of a long, foggy bridge. The carriages roll forward as soon as the gates swing open, then stop immediately when the gate slams shut again.

"What is this?" Charlotte asks. "Some kind of checkpoint?"

Duncan follows the line to the booth for what seemed like an eternity. The whole time, I hear a gruff voice repeating the same questions and receiving the same answers, followed by squeaking gates opening and closing again. It's monotonous, like hearing the coo of a morning dove.