The Call of Nys #5 (Waverly Stump and The 7 Realms)

9 - J U D S O N

One speight at a time was not enough to alarm any traveler; two in fact - a male and female woodpecker - was considered good luck in several cultures, but Judson had spotted six altogether, perching around a magnificent elm - a terrible sign. It was bad enough to admit to himself that he was lost. Sighting the birds had only infuriated as well as driven him up a wall of point blank frustration.

He halted, glaring with intense anger at the foraging birds until they got the message and flapped away.

Almost immediately, a sad sigh escaped him. He did not really mean to chase them. Not only was he lost now, but utterly lonely too.

He lumbered to the tree and sat at its foot, squeezing his forehead. It still hurt from a little recent faceplanting hours ago with thistles atop a stone rock. Walking whilst half asleep, he failed to notice when the ground went from stream to pebbles. The impact had chased away sleep from his eyes with a large shovel and a firebrand, baring angry teeth.

If he were in a better situation, Judson would have laughed at his accident, but he could barely remember breaking a smile at all in the past week, or the entire season.

As a matter of fact, humor hardly got to him irrespective of the form it took. One glance and anyone could tell that he was grim and testy - the outcomes of wandering for ages without good results, and wandering with a broken heart at that.

His head lowered as he fished out HalfHyde's little red book. If, at the time when he was first gifted with it he had opened it, he would have known that everything was written in Elvish. Still and all, he appreciated the gift. It helped him revive a somewhat dead desire to learn the Alp tongue. And for the past few years, he could safely say he had learned enough to hold a conversation with an Elf for roughly four minutes before he got confused and appeared foolish.

He flipped through the pages and realized with a faint jolt that he had come to the last few. Just three, in fact. The idea made his chest swell, but not with pride - misery. The book had been something of an indulgence throughout his lonely travels. Countless times he almost lost it; once to the furious teeth of an agitated Roc and twice to angry sea waves.

The book had been authored by HalfHyde himself and was slightly reflective of the kind of things he once taught Waverly during lessons in the past. It contained information on travel, including common shortcuts, secret roads and the dangers that could spring from them should an unsuspecting traveler pass through.

In short, the book directed Judson more times than Bergor's map had.

Of course, he had lost the map and many other belongings given his ever changing location status. The only surviving items were the red book and hunting cloak, which was safely draped so that it always faced one side of his body. He never took it off and soon came to understand why Waverly hardly did either. It was surprisingly comfortable.

A loud ruffling from above abruptly snipped his string of thoughts and made him glance up. A little monkey was in the tree, nibbling away on a large fruit. Given his ability to sense how animals felt, he ignorantly threw his gaze from the starving creature, unable to focus on it or anything other than the fact that he was stuck worse than a fly in spiderweb.

He was utterly and completely lost, and could neither go further nor turn back.

The disappointment of it all weakened him that he felt drawn to tears.

Three years wasted and nothing to show for it.

Was there anywhere he had not gone yet? Anything he had not tried?

At least, the perilous journey to Hammiton to find Resli's friend had proved successful. But Pyralia had only schooled him on the history and dangers of The Chasma, which was the same thing the Gnomes had told him when he visited them. They had been kind enough, at least, to bless him a parting gift - a thin silver band with two gems in a floret style at the head. A Gnome had caught him gaping at it even though, in truth, he had been gaping at everything else.