The Stray

2-11: Local History

"Alright, noted." She leaned back and grumbled. "Ugh, we don't have the staves for any real trouble."

"You guys did fine the other night." The wolf lightly shook the paper. "The Fae Eater is the biggest power in the Deepshadow outside of the Queens."

"Well, yeah, but that was an emergency muster, you know? The militia shows up for emergencies, but they ain't about to sign up for joint patrols." Amos nodded glumly.

"That so." The wolf frowned. "Y'got bad blood?"

Ella crunched a crouton all annoyed. "It's a whole stupid thing. Y'gotta understand how new having an actual watch around here is, right?"

"...Is it?" Oh, wait, Miss Larue had told him Locke was a founding member of the watch. He hadn't paid it much mind, but...

The golden played with one floppy ear. "'Fore the Nightmare Lord attack, this place wasn't much more than honeyfluff fields and fruit orchards. The birdfolk call it 'flyover country.' The war didn't help, either."

It was the same story everywhere. "I hear that..." Back home, word after the war was that whole clans were nothing but children and the elderly. It's what happens when what amounts to a foreign god goes to war.

"Yeah... Anway, when we got clobbered eight ways to Sunday by Setrai— the NL, yeah?—the folks who were left made a bunch of changes. After all, the monster didn't start with us, we just ended him here."

"Zana got wiped off the map. It's just ruins over there now, too tainted to do anything with." Amos shuddered. "We learned about it in school."

"Yeah." Ella nodded. "Uva, Framba, and all the rest got hit first, and the survivors fled our way. The road to Naran was blockaded by the monsters. None of them got it as bad as Zana, but in the end a lot of people chose to stay here."

"Like the Banks family. They lost everything in Framba, so they chose to start fresh here." Amos smiled wistfully. "Mils..."

"So, when the survivors rebuilt Fresa, they got busy. That's when the wall got built, the old wizard tower became town property—the guy was dead, anyhow, lotta good that magic did him— and tons of houses and shops and farms and whatnot sprang up. Fresa went from a dinky patch of dirt to the biggest Wrightville."

"I knew this was a big town." Timothy said with satisfaction. Amos giggled as he and his girlfriend shared a look. "...What's so funny?"

"Well... big for a Wrightville's still a small town. We've got, what, less than 1500 people?" She directed that at Timothy's stunned face.

"That's small?"

"Well, yeah. There's more fluffs and sleps than people, I'm pretty sure."

"It looks smaller'n it does, cuz a bunch of us are nocturnals! Or slimes. Or nocturnal slimes!" He waved at a sleepy looking slime, who wiggled their body back at him cheerily before hopping on its merry way.

Timothy just kinda gaped. It doesn't look small at all! His Streneli village had, like, maybe a hundred people in it? "Er... right. What's a Wrightville, anyway?" Amos lookedto Ella expectantly, which got an amused eye roll from the golden.

"Amos, I know you passed local history too..." Then he fixed her with weapons-grade puppydog eyes that almost stopped the witch's heart. "Oh, fine. So, Timothy, most of Bunch County was founded by Anna Wright and her entourage a couple hundred years ago. We call her towns Wrightvilles. Most of 'em are pretty small, and we're..."

"Medium small!" The rat cut in brightly.

"Oh."

"But like, they figured the problem was all most of our fighters were just, y'know... gone. So they picked Mrs. Ashborne to head up and train a town Watch. Problem, is, well... the war. Again." She sounded embarrassed.