Voice of Reason

Saddletown was a poor place to be, in every sense of things. No exports of consequence were sold from its farmers or craftsmen, and there was little cause for any large purse to travel there. Its singular road only penetrated its borders on one side, such that one could plainly see precisely where in town that wagons and carts of all sizes stopped bothering to extend their reach before turning southward again, opposite an open road that reached towards the outside world.

Seclusion was not the original purpose of the settlement's construction, but it was a welcome attribute among its occupants. The road out of town led to a junction after most of a day's ride that split into three other opposing roads whose relevance all usurped their own to any merchants or other less desirable riders who reached its sign. The sign had once bore four directionally pointed spokes which read each path's eventual destination. But Saddletown's section suspiciously was mostly torn away, such that only the last two letters were remaining. In an effort by either a disgruntled member of its populace or by the force of rot itself, to discourage anyone of curious eye who was not already familiar with its location and name to venture there.

Little grew within its ground, preventing its population from multiplying far beyond a hundred. Thus forcing most adolescents to eventually seek subsistence in places of greater warmth and broader opportunity. All the town's founders were too dead to question their reasoning for such a location, and their remaining grandchildren were too old to care about the nature of its origins. They knew only that their cabins had been built strong, sealed well, and possessed an attribute the people who were born in them could take pride in sharing: sturdiness. From drought, to hail, to a spreading sickness of their livestock, there was no force of inconvenience or disaster that could bring so much as a private glare against the sky out of any man or woman there old enough to command respect among their peers.

Adversity of any form was seen as almost desirable, as a method of deterring wills too weak and minds too accustomed to pleasantness from staying too long and laying a claim to one of the many empty lots that served to its population as visible reminders of the long vacated families who found themselves unfit to remain within their fold.

One of the younger couples, relative to their elderly neighbors, were the Kallerds: Rane and Faleen. Whose marriage had been arranged farther back than either of them cared to recall. There was no surplus of viable singles in the town at any given time. So sensible pairings were usually decided by the town's elders unless an equitable alternative was argued for by those involved. But neither Rane nor Faleen had protested. Both had seen the few alternatives that were available, and neither were keen on them. And so it was that the two were wed into lifelong matrimony, by default. Adding the weight of their marriage to the ancient scale of those primarily bonded by proximal geography.

But the two fared well enough together, better than many in fact, at least for a while. It festered and stretched between them as would an unencumbered vine. For nearly one and twenty springs they had lived in quiet contentment, inescapably entangled with each other's lives by matching promises made to their parents at the end of their adolescence. It had been a struggle at first, for both of them, being so inexperienced in lying next to another breathing body each night, and the differing anatomies involved. There were the initial petty frustrations that come from cohabitating with a stranger, but eventually, she learned how to breathe when she slept so as not to overtly wake him with a startling snort, and he learned to reach lower on the occasions she compelled him for assistance. But after a season or two of their beginnings, each found their partnership to be unwaveringly tolerable. With their shared days passing by without significant cause for complaint from either of them.

Until, when their second decade had concluded, Rane found himself to be more interested in the assorted chores of their homestead than in sharing the stale presence of his wife. A change whose gradual nature did nothing to obscure it from her perception. There had been times, distant times, when she would wake up to a slight cough. Nothing warranting a call for medicine, just a couple of wheezes before her voice would meet her in mutual wakefulness. Times when Rane used to redress before her to contend against approaching darkness and pick pine needles in the chilled twilight, bind some together in a narrow stack, and sit them in a small pot of boiled water until their color started to bleed. Then he'd give her a cup of it to drink and warm whatever phlegm annoyed her lungs. Even at his most attentive, he hadn't done it often. And would still grunt audibly at the performance of each step involved in preparing the concoction, but as he handed her the steaming mug he always held it from the bottom, leaving the handle free for her to grasp so as not to be singed by its sides. This gesture of care, and many less measurable, had atrophied from his character thoroughly enough that she no longer bothered even attempting to incite any of them out of him, so sure was she of their absence. An absence whose resentment had brought in her a brand of atrophy all her own as it decayed into a bland resignation. Wherein she finally thought no better of him than he was, and now wished no more from him than nothing, so as not to risk rekindling her forgotten disappointment.