They had always lived in that town, the family; it was the same for their neighbors, and even further outwards it was the same for the people who lived in their stoic cabins upon lonely hills, in the bitter penumbras of the forests and the flats of the heartlands. More-so it was the same for the things that ran in the valley, that found houses in fallen trees; the archers, the dragons, the fairy-tales that her father would tell to her near the fireplace; the things that disguised themselves as rocks and pebbles and other miscellaneous objects during the morning or under the vision of human eyes. Her father called them Fae; he was a learned, European man, but he recognized well the importance of that land to the people, for the Natives -- how holy it was. He knew, perhaps better than anyone else, that it was the same for these things that lived there even before humanity came to cognizance, stumbling into the light of bonfires under a sky so dark and pregnant with the distant light of suns long since dead, of planets stolen of life and water; there were fewer now, the worms beneath the earth and other, minion things living under the darkness of grykes that the sun had never touched, but they were here before and it was best not to take granted of their courtesy.
Her father had dealings with them; the ones that hid in the dark, it's easier to get their attention, they were older legends, stable in their mindsets and actions; they protected the land as best they could but they were weaker now than they had ever been, they began speaking of human deeds and how frightened they were now; her father learned many things from the old legends, the worms; alchemy and ancient sciences and runes. Runes to never go hungry. Runes to never become ill. Runes to always be loved. And runes to never die alone. The runes were out there now, carved on the rocks adorning their yard, they're not like the ancient Nordic alphabet -- her father informed her -- calling that ancient language 'runic' would be an erroneous misnomer, fabricated by the ignorance of Christians and the too human fear of losing their heritage. But by the time the Nords were trying to reclaim their culture, they had already forgotten more than they would uncover. There were reasons that the traditions were oral in nature. Father said to her that he would someday teach her; the girl sometimes wondered if that day would ever come, she had not seen her father in several years now, though she heard him in the walls sometimes. And with the persistent rustling of his movement throughout the nights, there sometimes came his voice, and he would whisper to her the fairy-tales of the things that he had learned; legends of the worms.
