1.1 Farthest From Nowhere

Sometimes the world is too long for tired feet.

Stopped in a field of sparse grain, a figure stared towards binary sunsets, realized she lost too much blood and couldn’t walk further. Not that there was anywhere else left to go. She had chased the suns west for a lifetime across Evma and found only rock and sand here at the end. Forward was nothing, but on her right stood a broad farmstead. An anomaly surviving in otherwise desolation hidden in a valley of mesaed plateaus, this cultivated oasis features slightly less rock and sand with a few trees and patches of grass. A spring from the northern end streaming lazily into a muddy pond, inviting more wild foliage before succumbing back to the prevailing rock and dirt. A respectable farmstead, or what might have been a respectable farm, now in disrepair. Most fields left fallow or scattering withered plants, half a dozen buildings empty and quiet in the dusk breeze. Another few years weathering harsh conditions and the land would reclaim it, leaving nothing but hollow husks and forgotten toil.

“I reckon this is where I die,” the traveler said, shuffling towards the largest timber barn and creaked the old threshold open. A hundred yards (92 m) of livestock, equipment and feed greeted the intruder while dusk faded into twilight. Animals rustled and woke, then quieted when the traveler hunched and scrunched into the space. Stumbling at the end to collapse onto straw and dirt, she coughed blood gently while clutching a round object close and tenderly to her chest. No tears remained to weep. Only regret filled her eyes as she accepted fate, her life about to set with the suns.

“Evenin’.”

The traveler failed to perceive the wizened and leathery old man hunched over a cane earlier, slowly limping into the barn under her cautious glare. Falussan in coloring and features, forty years ago likely a towering and healthy specimen of human male, distantly full of life and vigor and the strange energy humans possessed despite supposed shortcomings. Today, his body hunched like a bundle of tough reeds dried in the suns, any moment a breeze likely to tip him over. Garbed in frayed and worn burlap tunic and hose, the cane a twisted root as gnarled as he, baby blue eyes sparkled metaphorically under wisps of white hair belying an intense energy. No amount of physical age dampened the fire of his spirit.

The traveler raised her head from the straw, coughing more blood but resolute. Pride remained her only defiance thrown towards unfair Pantheons and petty godlings, surreptitiously setting her treasure behind and facing whatever would come in this barn. One advantage, the deep shadows hid her from limited Falussan vision and if there was one thing this traveler retained in spades, it was intimidation. Eyes ignited immolating citrine from the blackness and hinted into dangers not witnessed on the continent of Bronelle for eons forgotten. She said nothing, yet her obfuscated bearing became regal as a queen in court.

“Now now, none of that,” the man said, smiling with more gap than teeth, holding out a sack as he shuffled further into the dark barn. “Saw ya comin’ hours ago, obvious you was hurtin’. Have some herbs here I use when the animals get abscessed hoof, might do ya some good. Might not. Can’t do any worse, I figure.”

The traveler hesitated, recent betrayals still fresh and unsure how much to trust this old human. She eventually realized there was nothing to lose, taking the bag of pungent medicines and spreading them into the gaping wound that nearly cut her in half. She hissed, the shock of the remedy burning through her infection enough to roar agony, only a whimper escaping before she slumped into the straw, breath heaving wet rasps.

The human nudged a stool forward and creaked onto it, his joints arthritic crackling knobs as he took a moment to catch his own laborious halations. “Seein’ as ya look ready to sleep in my barn, polite introduction seems the right turn. Name’s Plone Lewfich. Been a fair time since any visitors come round. My wife, Asavn - rest her soul - followed me to Nowhere sixty odd years ago and we built this farm with our own hands. Always thought I’d leave something for our children, but, well, lost three to bad birthin’s and the twins died during the flood. All we had after was each other. Eventually got old, but we muddled through anyway. Now I hardly move in the mornings and I don’t have the energy for nothin’ in the evenin’s.” He paused, leaning forward with a grin on his face, searching through his barn to spy something of his guest in the gloam. “Sorry for jawin’, been so long by myself on the farm my mouth is recouping for lost opportunity, heha!”

“Qastael,” said the traveler, part of the name jumbled inside a fit of coughing. “My name is Qastael.”

“Odd name for these parts, but I already guessed you weren’t from ‘round nearby.”

Qastael chuckled, scaring some of the animals as she attempted to stop laughing with a grimace, her body cramping up. “I was hatched in a land so far east you probably never heard of it. Kuri’vlaat’mehn is barely a legend in Faluss. Been centuries since I last witnessed Magmation Fields or the Mountains of Glass.”

“Hard to leave home, sometimes harder to stay.” Plone nodded sagely, reminiscing his own youth. “Not much else of anythin’ west from here, though Libertania keeps petitioning land rights while northern devils send regular raids from the Cliffs. The fat cats in New Yerm back east hardly remember anyone this far west is Falussan, ‘cept maybe the occasional tax man, heha!”

Both laughed painfully, sharing company and a common dislike for authority. Animals acclimated to the new and frightening presence of Qastael while twilight transitioned into true night. The lowing of livestock became a calming ambiance when laughter faded, silence a familiar friend to both. After the lull, Plone leaned to his side and picked up an old lantern, flint from a belt pouch sparking from a small knife to coax flame on the wick. “Asavn always wanted those fancy magic lamps, like they have down in Yrlmuh. Only the best magic comes out of Yrlmuh, she kept telling me. Have one back in the house, but it arrived too late. Never saw the need, my own fool self, lantern’s plenty bright.” He raised the light with a trembling hand, getting his first good look at his guest. What he saw widened his eyes and dropped his mouth a mite.

Lumination prismed through mother of pearl, rainbowed scales sprouting fine silk hairs saturating between black and gray and white fur. A perfect blend of delicate mane and hardened serpentine plating, flowing in different and elegant ratios: heavier fur along pawed feet and her back, less fur and more exposed scales along her abdomen. From nose to tail, she stretched through half the length of the barn, laying on her right side to keep her injury out of the dirt. Plone was no expert on the various races, thinking his guest possessed the body of a long snake or alligator, the feet and hands of a wolf, the floppy ears of a hound and a long and narrowed snout on a head atop a neck stretching as long as her tail; she blended disparate features seamlessly and not in a hodgepodge manner. Hands shaped from paws reached behind and clutched a large egg made entirely of gold, tightly pressing it into her chest. Six malachite green feathered wings draped along her back, though the bottom two on her left size were badly burned and limp. A scathing jagged line starting under her ribs and slithered behind where he couldn’t see, dried blood caking the edges and most of her side. Yet despite the alienness - exposing his limited racial experience living in Faluss all his life - there was no mistaking the breasts and hips of a voluptuous woman. A voluptuous, gargantuan, naked woman.

“Figure the first thing we’ll need to fetch is clothing,” he said, gentlemanly turning in his stool to face away. To keep busy, Plone pulled out a bundle of pages kept in loose leather binding with a charcoal nub, using the light to scribble notes. “Falussans aren’t as fussy as them stuck up Breenans, but if’n you’ll be workin’ as a farmhand here, some modesty will be expected and accounted polite manners.”

“Pardon, what?” Qastael asked, not following entirely. Didn’t help her eyes were so heavy and her maw didn’t form words proper, the poultice either healing or killing her.

“Well, if ya wanna, I don’t see anythin’ wrong with it.” He paused to squint and sum figures on the page. “I’m gettin’ on in years and all my kin done gone on ahead to heaven. Would ease me a whit to leave the farm with someone when I’m gone. I’ll give ya what ya need to know and what to farm, all my tricks and tips, then whatever is mine is yours. Just be sure to let me help now and then, so I get enough exercise, heha!” He paused, nodding when the numbers added up, at least for the coming months. “Still have a fair bit stored in the root cellar, should be enough to keep a healthy gal like you fed until harvest.”

“I don’t know the first thing about farming,” Qastael muttered, thinking and speaking equally difficult as she snuggled her head into the hay. “What would you want with a failure like me?”

“Oh, you poor child,” Plone said, hobbling the distance to her face, running his hand along her neck and through her fur. “Failures are where we start, not where we end. All farming is a collection of failures until you succeed. It is simple arithmetic: two plus two equals something better. Sometimes a negative four rolls into town like a drought and you have to push up your sleeves to plow other numbers, sometimes it isn’t enough and the whole crop fails. Still worth it, because you try again. Plant a seed, raise a calf, nourish them, care for them, the harvest will be abundant and sweet because every crop is a promise realized.”

“That sounds like bliss,” Qastael said, or might have said, her mind fading. The last she glimpsed was the smile of a kind old man. Her first kindness in a long, long time.