Dragon Age One Shots

Autumn in Dragon Age -- Fenris

After putting the tractor in idle, I turned in the duct-taped seat to look over my shoulder. "All right, everyone. We're here!"

Normally, I'd have kids leaping off of the straw-bales the moment the trailer tires stopped turning and threatening to chip a tooth, but this group was nothing but adults. Various ages and the like, so they took their time rising to rickety knees and shuffling towards the iron stairs. Still, there was a bit of a hop in their step when they hit the cornstalk strewn grounds and dashed off towards the pit deeper into the clearing.

I tapped my fingers on the wheel, singing a damn commercial that lodged in my head before this trip began, while waiting. By the end of the second round I glanced over my left shoulder to watch the leader helping what had to be the last of the crew down. Reaching forward to revive the temperamental tractor, I caught a blank darkness on the edge of my eye.

Huddled in the corner, sat a body trying to blend into the shadows. His legs stretched clear out into the straw-flecked bed of the trailer, but he kept his arms hidden deep inside the hoodie.

Turning to face the path ahead of me, I said, "This is the last stop if you want to get off."

I could hear whoever it was shuffling in place, his boot heels banging against the metal of the trailer bed as he sat up higher. But he didn't rise to his feet, nor walk towards the stairs. A few laughs broke out from within the clearing, the group having a grand time running around in the field. The bonfire itself was hemmed in by a mess of field corn, which quickly became the place to host the corn maze. Kids had a habit of finding it fun to full body run at stalks, rip off ears, and just in general be little shits unsupervised by their parents.

At least this group was more civilized, only a few of the adults yanking at the corn stalks to see what would happen.

"So," I said to the horizon haloing from the final sprays of red and orange sunlight, "I'm guessing you're not gonna join them."

"No." The voice rumbled like thunder on the open plain and I shivered. My eyes hunted through the sky as if there should be clouds moving in instead of the open as a bowl vista.

I glanced once more at the group of people finally gathering in a circle. Their leader had them all holding hands, heads tipped down in prayer. With a shrug, I twisted the wheel of the tractor and lurched it and the trailer forward. "Okay." As I drove us off the beaten path deeper into the cornfield, I heard the man scrabble deeper into his seat.

"Just so you know," I said over my shoulder, my body lurching as the tires managed to find every muddy pit in the back field, "I wasn't gonna head back to the front gate."

Nothing answered me. With a shrug, I guided the tractor towards the massive turn around. While the tires found the tried and true ruts circling the edge, I glanced at the mass of sunflowers that sprouted up in the middle of our homemade roundabout.

As I got the tractor and trailer fully turned about and ready to return towards the group, I hit the brake. Normally, I'd leave it idling as this damn thing needed a prayer to start on a good day. But, glancing back at the dark shadow glaring into nothing, I killed her dead. If worse came to it, I could call my good-for-nothing brother to help revive it.

The sound of the engine cutting out must have shaken the silent man from his funk as his head rose. Nestled in the shadows of the cornfield it was hard to make out much, but his shock of snow-white hair practically glowed even in the dark. His wide eyes landed upon me as I climbed over the trailer's edge to land beside him.

"Hope you don't mind, but when it's groups like that I tend to just stay out in the field," I said, sliding towards the other edge across from him and plopping down onto the straw. I too stretched my legs as far as possible, my aching back slinking downward until my ass barely hugged the bale's edge.