Timeline: Right after Lastadron’s arrival in Bree-land, which is maybe 30-40 years pre-Epic.
Sure, he was expecting the first few months to be hard— he’d be a fool if he hadn’t. A greater fool, anyway. But he had not anticipated this kind of hardship.
Strange stars hung overhead, just like he’d always dreamed of, but the unfamiliarity was sharply wrong surrounded by so much that he knew. Warm firelight after a long hunt, the easy camaraderie and chatter between men who lived off the land, the wild ghost-tales and exaggerated feats.
“And you there, southman— that was a fine shot you got off on that boar! Why, I thought we’d all be mauled and done with before anyone could so much as draw. What’d’you say your name was, again?”
“It’s Lastadron, Tad. Thank you.” Tad steamrolls onward, and Lastadron fades back into his thoughts.
Had he been home in the dense forestland scattered about the Beacon Hills hundreds of miles southward, he’d be more talkative. Old man Gondrad would already be quizzing him on his thoughts during the lightning-quick encounter, and Lavandir recounting the tale two fire pits over. His father—
Elanion would be laughing with the best of them, brilliantly proud and beaming even though his son was long grown.
Lastadron remains silent now, here in the shadow of the old Ost Baranor ruins near Andrath. It has been a long day, but he is as accustomed to those as to the sunrise by now. They are not so far from the path he had followed months and months ago, out from the warped door of an empty house and northward toward a child’s dream.
It had been dreadfully dumb, stepping out and not stopping. Leaving before the flowers could sprout o’er his father’s grave, before Elanion’s wide array of acquaintances could all drop in with their condolences. Before the fire of grief could settle, leaving him cold and empty in the same place he’d always been.
Glad men’s chatter melt even the hardest hearts, and so too did the Bree-men’s. He would know them well in time: Tad the Ever-Talking, Broderic-who-could-lift-two-barrels, and even Flambard, known for the shortest bow and the lightest step. Right now, he merely kept quiet, and let the echoes of a life now abandoned sweep over him.
