Good morning all and welcome to Monday morning. Did you have a good weekend? I did. There was sleep, there was grocery shopping, there was reading for pleasure and all sorts of other non-work related activities. It was a quiet weekend, but I rather enjoy those. It leaves me rested and refreshed for the week ahead. So rested and refreshed, shall we start our morning prompt? Good. Let’s go.
I feel like I was just starting to get somewhere when the timer went off. That always leaves me slightly unsettled and wanting to dip back into the story, just to see where it is going. I suppose that is a good sign.
Monday, October 25th: Smoke curled gently upwards.
Smoke curled gently upwards. There was no breeze, no gusts to mar the single spiral. As he watched from his horse on the ridge he studied that single spiral. It could have been from a cook fire. A single person cooking their evening meal. He knew it wasn’t. There was no accompanying scent of food in the air.
‘And at this time of day there would be a dozen or so people working at their hearths to prepare the evening meal.” In this community most of the men folk and even some of the women would be out in the fields. Life in the Gevernwold was hard and survival demanded hard work from every member of a family. Those left at home would be too elderly to handle the fields, injured or too heavily pregnant and assigned a temporary respite to work in the home.
The communal fields were worked as one and what was not taken by the king was divided among all of those in town. The Gevernwold was hard, but they took care of their own. Trevor allowed his gaze to drop down from the sky and the small curl of smoke.
The curl was fading as the source of the fire was fading. Trevor surveyed the town, forcing himself to take in the sight laid before him. He knew when he came upon the fields, that the town would not be a pretty sight. The best he could hope for was to convey the news of the horror to those that remained in town.
He knew at a glance there was no lone left to tell. There was no one here to feel the pains of those losses. Still he had a task before him. Trevor touched his heels to his house and turned the gelding towards the path leading from the ridge to the town.
It hadn’t been much of a town, but he recalled passing through once before and thinking it pleasant enough. His troop hadn’t stayed the nights, planning to push through the vale before darkness, but they stopped for a bit to rest their horses and gather what news they could of the land ahead.
Now not a single building was left standing. The charred remains of the buildings mixed with the charred remains of the people. He counted it a blessing that there was little detail remaining. Still he forced himself to take in what details he could.
Like the fields, there was little to indicate that those left in town had any warning. There seemed to be no attempt to run, to gather for defense or hide. The dead looked as though they fell where they were and then were burned in the fire that came after. Like the fields, it made little sense. At the moment though, making sense was not his task. His task was to see what there was to see and to compare the details to those of the other attacks.
Ten til Midnight 