The entire village was gathered around the roaring bonfire, drinking and cheering as the flames cast embers high overhead to fall amongst them as glowing flakes of warm snow. Long, wood-hewn tables stretched across the square laden with the harvest of the past season.

The square stood in the centre of the village, surrounded by low-slung wooden buildings with long-eaved roofs of curved tiles and ornate decorations. The larger buildings had sliding shōji walls of paper as their entrances, the smaller a mix of wooden frames and stone walls, and the ground underfoot was trodden earth, kept clear of vegetation by the traffic of each villager’s passing. Trees surrounded the village, the green of them rising up into the mountains all around save for one eastern edge where a valley stretched down into the lowlands.

Rial sat on a carved stump as close to the fire as he could tolerate, watching as the party carried on around him. Tall and lithe, firelight reflecting off his dark features, he looked barely in his late teens.

He sat close to the fire not because on this balmy night he was somehow chill, but because he knew most others would be unlikely to come so close for any length of time, affording him privacy and time to take in the goings-on around him.

The party was something everyone attended, a time when all the village shared the products of the first summer of this sun and celebrated the start of the long autumn. It was a happy event, but not one Rial was yet ready to participate in. Not until his friends returned from the outpost.

He had tried to convince the elders that he was ready to go, that though he was the youngest of his group of peers he should be permitted to travel with them on their first journey outside the village, but all his pleadings had been in vain. He was still too young, he was told. No one before their 13th sun[1] had ever embarked on the outpost run before, and he would be no exception.

Barely halfway through the current sun, Rial had almost 300 days to go before he would be allowed to go on such a journey.

His cheeks flushed at the memory of his friends waving back to him as they left. The frustration and shame of being left behind was an itch he could not scratch.

“Still mad, Rial? Honestly, there’s no use in holding onto your anger for so long.”

The voice of Trian, the youngest of the family retainers, startled him from his thoughts. Rial spun on the bench to face him as he approached.

“I’m not angry,” replied Rial, heat rising to his cheeks. “I just don't want to join the festivities yet.”

Trian was a young man, not more than a sun or two older than Rial, and still carried himself with a youthful energy and confidence that the older retainers found exasperating. He threw himself onto the bench besides Rial, chuckling.

Unusually for a retainer Trian spoke and acted informally, almost familiarly, with his patrons. For any other such person this would almost certainly mean a swift loss of patronage and the concomitant privileges, yet somehow Trian managed to inveigle his way into the regards of even the sterner members of the family; Rial suspected even Seb, the family’s ancient and severe head servant, had a secret fondness for the man.

“Well, the party will still be here when you are ready,” Trian said. “The same as the outpost run. You’ll do it soon enough, and until then you shouldn’t waste time worrying about it. Besides..,” he said with a wink, “…it’s not that interesting anyway. Just a long, dusty walk.”

Trian also liked to brag to any who would listen about his travels across the continent. Only members of the Five Families were bound by history and tradition to remain in the village; those who carried no Name could leave as and when they wanted, though few did so. Even fewer returned.

Trian was unusual in that he had apprenticed to a Schol, an itinerant teacher, when he was barely a child, during one of the Schol’s rare visits into the mountains. People still spoke of the small boy who sat atop the teacher’s wagon, refusing to come down and easily avoiding the progressively more and more frustrated, chaotic attempts to grab him until the Schol finally agreed to take the boy down to the plains.

Trian had returned suns later strong and healthy, carrying strange tales of cities and contraptions no villager could properly comprehend. He had immediately taken employ with Rial’s family, and to the surprise of more than a few turned out to be an excellent retainer, despite his unique and wilful nature.

Rial, though, had never left the village boundaries. It was not done for any child of a Family to even hint at such a desire.

“Obert is telling his stories again, I see,” said Trian, looking across the fire to where an old man sat with the village children gathered at his feet.

Rial had heard the story many times, of the People of the Star, of how their ancestors had come here long ago from a land high in the sky, higher even than the clouds. Obert enjoyed telling the stories of how these people had come to the mountains, the trek to find heights that matched the lands of their birth, crossing river and desert, jungle and wasteland. Canyons were crossed, monsters were vanquished, and the land was tamed.

“He embellishes it a little more with every year,” said Rial.

Trian laughed. “I expect he enjoys it more with each telling, too. Look, the children love it. You did as well, once.”

Rial gave an involuntary smile as he remembered sitting in the same position as the children, listening with rapt attention to tales of fantastical creatures and great adventures.

“There may be something to it, anyway. I’ve seen any number of people and places, yet every town, every city, has a similar story. It’s always a people expelled from the heavens and an epic journey across the world. What changes is how far they walked. Each place believes they were the sought-for location. Everywhere else, well that’s just… people.”

Trian finished speaking and stood up.

“It looks like your friends are back,” he said.

Rial darted to his feet, then felt embarrassed at showing such earnestness in front of Trian. The feeling was swept away, however, at the sight of the returning trekking party, toiling upwards towards the village through the pass below.

[1] The inhabitants of this land used both years and suns, a sun being the time it took for the second sun to complete one cycle of its astrological course. The first sun by which the years were measured lit the land, the second sun was its dimmer, more distant cousin – little more than a very bright star.